The Flex-CB open source project. Christine Sommo - Federal Reserve Bank of
New York ... What is Flex-CB? ... For example, the discussion forum. 13 ...
The Flex-CB open source project Christine Sommo - Federal Reserve Bank of New York Xavier Sosnovsky - European Central Bank
What is open source?
According to Wikipedia
In short… • Right to use • Right to study • Right to modify • Right to redistribute but … – Permissive free software licenses vs. copyleft licenses
New York Fed page on Wikipedia
5
History of revisions to New York Fed page on Wikipedia
Open source projects are everywhere • Operating Systems: Linux, BSDs, Android, etc.
• Web servers: Apache, etc. • Database servers: MySQL, SQLite, etc.
• Programming languages: PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. • Web browsers: Firefox, Google Chrome, etc. • Countless other applications, including content management systems, blogs, etc.
What is Flex-CB?
Data visualisation for SDMX The power to convey complex statistical concepts with dense data sets to a broad audience: • Improve communication with the public
• Facilitate understanding of statistics • Leverage IT usage: new web technologies as well as users’ computers
What does it offer? • Tools to extract information out of SDMX-ML data and structure files • Various ways to visualise statistical data (line charts, column charts, maps, tables, etc) and structural metadata • Various metadata-based filters • Various utilities (movie functionality, etc)
Based on SDMX Data SDMX-ML data files (data sets, series, observations, etc) SDMX-ML data structure definitions (concepts, code lists, data structure definitions, etc)
ECB SDMX Framework Read
Applications Application 1
SDMX-ML Readers
Application 2 Translate Application 3 SDMX Information model
Use
Application 4
View Access
Visual display
Users
11
How does it work? (Governance) • • • • • •
Started in October 2008 (ECB, New York Fed, Bank of Canada) Open participation and transparency Code hosted and publicly available on Google Code BSD license Strict commit policy and change management Roles – Leadership roles (Project Manger, Project Architect, Project Advisor): three institutions – Committers: three individuals – Contributors: contributions are welcome from all – Users: the code is available to all
• Decision making via forums 12
For example, the discussion forum
13
Where is it used? • ECB: Inflation dashboard and various dynamic charts published on the ECB website
• New York Fed: Credit conditions in the U.S., Securities lending, Maiden Lane Transactions, etc.
• Bank of Canada: Credit conditions website • Statistics Korea: dashboards presenting key economic and financial indicators of the G20 countries
• IMF: Used for data extraction in the IMF Data Mapper • OECD: SDMX Browser for CD-Roms • UNIDO: Prototype for web dissemination
ECB inflation dashboard
15
New York Fed charts
16
Bank of Canada Credit Conditions
17
Statistics Korea
18
IMF Data Mapper
19
Lessons learned • It works: – SDMX-based visualisations available on various web sites, and using Flex-CB code – Versatile: From the very simple to the rather complex – Features added by the community
• But: – As for other open source projects (Eclipse, Android, etc), owners must dedicate sufficient resources. – Plan for additional tasks (documentation, support, etc).
How to participate • Contact Xavier (
[email protected]) or Christine (
[email protected]) • Visit the code repository: http://code.google.com/p/flex-cb • Join the central bank forum: http://www.cbwiki.net/forum/ (registration required)
• Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/flexcb • Use the code!
Thank you!
