About - Technical Details

data.gov.uk runs open source software. All of our code is available from our Github: https://github.com/datagovuk under an open licence.

Overview

data.gov.uk runs on a mix of Drupal and CKAN. To read more about the architecture see: Integrating CKAN and Drupal. The site code is freely available to install using the package: Data.gov.uk To Go.

CKAN Software

The 'Data' section of data.gov.uk runs on the CKAN software, which was designed as an open data catalogue by the Open Knowledge Foundation. Customisations (such as visual branding) for data.gov.uk are developed in a CKAN extension called 'ckanext-dgu'. Other CKAN extensions have been adapted and developed for the site to provide spatial metadata harvesting, map search & preview, data caching, five stars of openness, analytics reporting etc.

These are the CKAN modules used in data.gov.uk (last updated Jan 2014):

• CKAN version 2.2 (with minor modifications)
• CKAN data.gov.uk extension
• CKAN Archiver extension
• CKAN Data Preview extension
• CKAN Google Analytics Report extension
• CKAN Harvest extension
• CKAN Hierarchy extension
• CKAN Import Library extension
• CKAN ODI Certificates extension
• CKAN Ordnance Survey extension
• CKAN QA extension
• CKAN Spatial extension

The site reuses icons from famfamfam.com under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License and by Yusuke Kamiyamane under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.