Open Data Certificates help to assess and recognise the sustainable publication of quality open data to encourage its ongoing re-use. Auto-certification makes the process of certifying existing open data faster and easier, helping publishers to start the process and focus resources on where they can best add value.

What is it?

Auto-certification is a free online tool that allows open data publishers and portal owners to quickly create large numbers of Open Data Certificates in one go. We use existing metadata stored in a data portal to fill in as many answers as possible, ensuring that publishers can focus on adding extra information not already captured.

Who is this for?

Data portal owners and publishers that use the CKAN platform, or publish their datasets in DCAT, and wish to quickly start certifying large quantities of data. Do you want to see greater Open Data Certificate support for other platforms, or your custom site? Get in touch.

How does it work?

Auto-certification automatically fetches the metadata of each dataset (using the CKAN API or HTML DCAT tags) and matches the information it receives to the certificate questionnaire, creating a new Open Data Certificate per dataset.

Any certificate that achieves Bronze level can be automatically published. Publishers receive a report to identify which certificates were created, what is required to achieve the next badge level, and links to edit or publish individual certificates.

Auto-certification primarily saves time spent filling in existing basic information, and does not support certificate levels above Bronze. Publishers will need to answer additional questions to be awarded higher badge levels.

What’s next?

We believe this is an important step in driving the quality and engagement within the open data ecosystem as a whole. We’ll start reaching out to portal owners over the next few months, but please get in touch if you would like to be auto-certified sooner.