Open Goverment Data: Insights from the International Open Goverment Data Conference
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Transcript of Open Goverment Data: Insights from the International Open Goverment Data Conference
Open Government Data
Insights from the International OpenGovernment Data Conference
September 17, 2012
Peter Speyer
Director of Data Development
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The conference
• Objective:Gather policymakers, developers, and others with a keen interest in open government data to share lessons learned, stimulate new ideas, and demonstrate the power of democratizing data
• 400 people / 50 countries / 3 days
• 100 speakers (including 2 days of online lightning talks)
• Policy & technical track
• Presentations and videos onlinehttp://www.data.gov/communities/conference
• LinkedIn Open Data Innovation Grouphttp://bit.ly/ODNetwork
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Organizers
• Launched in May 2009
• “The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high-value, machine-readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government”
• More than 450,000 datasets
• Several communities & community features
• Launch of Open Government Platform (OGPL) in May 2012
• Launched in April 2010
• “Bringing global economic and development data to the web for the world to use”
• Centered around data.worldbank.org
• Indicators, data catalog, microdata
• Next frontier for open data at World Bank: help governments open up (Jim Yong Kim)o Mapping aid-funded projects:
Malawi done, 13 countries to follow
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Benefits of open government data
• Outsource creativity to improve public services:most of the world’s smartest people don’t work for you(Sun co-founder Bill Joy)
• Improve accountability of government
• Increase trust in government through transparency
• Save time/expenditure of answering citizens’ data requests
• Enable government to use own data
• Create economic opportunity, e.g., $100B weather data market
• Show gaps in data collected
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Critical considerations
• Release of irrelevant data to demonstrate commitment to open data
• Release of open data to fend off demands for more press freedom
• Valid reasons not to share/open up datao National security
o Privacy
o Creating inequality, e.g., due to digital divide (information is power)
Photo: stevendepolo via flickr
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Creating an open data ecosystem
• Only the first step: launch and grow an open data portal
• Market the data to potential data users
• Build community catalyst groups and embed change agents, e.g., inside media houses
• Build skills (boot camps, master classes, university classes)
• Create proof of concept (e.g., via code-a-thons, datapaloozas, challenges, seed funding)
• Enable rapid prototyping (e.g., inincubator spaces)
• Scale success (venture funds)
Examples at OIGDC: Kenya, Brazil, Mexico, Moldova
Photo: thinkpanama via flickr
Keys to success
• Focus on bigger agenda than just launching a portal
• Involve all data owners and stakeholders early on
• Engage data users (entrepreneurs, developers, journalists) and citizens to encourage the use of data
• Use standardization carefully: can be useful or straightjacket
• Consider open-source software
• Launching a platform is easy; the real work is making it sustainable and creating an ecosystem around it
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Role of the data user
• Create innovative uses for data
• Improve access for others via software/portal
• Redistribute data to specific audiences, e.g., mywarming.org from opendata.org
• Collect complementary data
• Request sharing/opening ofadditional data
• Overcome challengeso Understand data
o Find partners
o Get funding
o Achieve financial sustainability
Photo: edbury via flickr
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Key points
• Focus of open data discussions will have to shift from data publishing to data use
• The best validator of open data is usage
• Open data should be optimized for consumption, not for business/process
• Sustainability of open data depends on creation of ecosystems around them
• Biggest obstacle for governments to open data is not doing something
Photo: Erik Moberg via flickr