OpenTech PresentationV2

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    OpenData Cities

    Julian Tait@julianlstar

    1Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    FutureEverything is based in Manchester UK and has been established for 16 years. It started out being a festival of mostly music and art and hassince developed into a cutting edge, international conference looking at the societal impact of technology and mapping various future outcomes, aninternational art and technology award and year a round digital innovation lab.The Open Data Cities project is one such lab that was born out of the then Futuresonic conference in 2009

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    Engels circa 1840

    OpenData Cities

    2Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    The Open Data Cities project arose out of a question. How would cities evolve if all information was openly available. Would a city evolve in thesame way? Would the asymmetries that we find in the cities of today still exist and would they be diminished, shifted or exaggerated.This is a map that Frederich Engels created whilst he was working in his fathers mill in Ancoats, Manchester. It is through this mapping of theinequities of the industrial city that prompted him to write The Plight of the Working Classes. As with most northern hemisphere industrial citiesthe prevailing winds meant that the poorer areas were mostly on the eastern side of the city.

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    Rochdale

    206,500

    Oldham

    217,273

    Tameside

    215,500

    Stockport

    281,000

    Manchester

    483,800

    Trafford

    211,800

    Salford

    218,000

    Wigan

    305,500

    Bolton

    262,400Bury

    183,300

    Conceptual overadministrative model of city

    Population 2.6 million

    OpenData Cities

    3Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    At the start of the Open Data Cities project, there werent many city based open data initiatives and most of those were in North America and thesewere underpinned by mayoral decree. In 2009 Greater Manchester was slated to become a City Region that would pave the way for an electedmayor for Greater Manchester. In order for City Region status to be granted there had to be some reform as to how the ten local authorities useddata.We saw that the time was right to bring open data to the fore and we set about talking to the 10 local authorities and other public bodies.The idea of talking about the conceptual idea of the city over the administrative one is also key. People work, rest and play across authorities,

    people see the city diferently to the administrative model. Also if open data was to be sustainable it would have to have a larger impact - andpotential market - than any one local authority.

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    THREE COMMUNITIES

    Data users

    Data managers

    Executive

    OpenData Cities

    Not members

    4Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    FutureEverything sees itself as a grassroots organisation and although it has an international presence and works with many institutions,companies and public bodies, it is sustained by the various communities that engage with it.Community focus was key and it was essential that the project engaged with, created and spoke to as many communities as possible. These couldbe loosely described as Data Users - People who would eventually create services and applications out of data that would be released. It wasessential to engage with and sustain this community as we had to prove demand in the system for data release.Data Managers - People who had day to day contact with data. Often the people who we thought would know about data didnt. We had a great

    deal of help from people who dealt with FOI requestsExecutive - Initially these people were dicult to engage. It was through persistence and being awarded a small amount of funding that wemanaged to get their ear.We did not try and engage member as we were wary of making open data in Greater Manchester a party political issue.

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    BUILDING MOMENTUM BY

    TARGETING VALUABLE DATA

    OpenData Cities

    5Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    The establishing of the Open Data Manchester community was key to opening up data. The idea that there was a community of people who wereeager to create stufwas appealing to a number of data holders. We were particularly keen on getting hold of data that would have potentialquality of life impact and would get positive press coverage. TfGM - formerly GMPTE - dipped their toe in the water and made their entire bustimetable database open. Which through a hackcamp created a number of transport applications. This eventually encouraged TfGM to commit tomaking other data open.

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    Trafford

    ManchesterSalford

    Bury

    RochdaleBolton

    Wigan

    StockportOldham

    Tameside

    TfGM

    NHSFire and Rescue

    Police

    Developer CommunityFutureEverything

    Partnership

    6Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    In September 2010 FutureEverything with Traford Council as the lead were given some funding to deliver DataGM - The Greater ManchesterDatastore. It was an obvious partnership as Traford had seen the potential benefits of creating a centralised repository of Greater Manchestersdata and the potential eciencies that it would create and had started to release open data. The project was energised by executive level buy-in atTraford. This allowed DataGM to form a steering group involving executive nominated ocials from all the local authorities and pan-GreaterManchester public bodies.The datastore is based upon CKAN and is adding more datasets all the time.

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    7Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    There is a diagram that was created by the Sunlight Foundation that describes the virtuous circle of open data and transparency. It describes asustainable process where by opening up data, you create a demand for the data from people who can interpret and build value through apps etc.This allows the public to understand more about their society, giving legitimacy and feeding back into government. My description is a grosssimplification of the process but it outlines that open data and transparency has to engage a broad spectrum of people. Journalists are key in thisas they are in a position to interpret and provide context. When the Fire Service released data about fire incidents a number of journalists reportedthe data that it described. This created a better understanding of the diculties that the fire service faced which has encouraged the Fire Service to

    look at more data that could be released.

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    8Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    At present their hasnt been a deluge of applications built ofdata that has been released. But stuf is being created that is creating value. Acompany called Swirrl has been making linked data out of some of the datasets that have been released on DataGM. This has allowed the data tobe easier to use by application developers. I imagine that with the release of data a lot of the value wont necessarily come from the development ofnovel smartphone applications - in fact I hope it isnt or open data will be constrained. What I think well see are the developments of things thatiteratively add value to data, that will allow people to enhance the things that they are creating already.

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    Environment

    We are at the start

    Health

    Realtime data

    9Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    We are most definitely at the start of this process. Although live DataGM hasnt been ocially launched. With our colleagues in Traford we arehaving new conversations everyday and there is a sense from many in the public sector that this is a good thing to do. Colleagues in Tra fordworked out that on any working day, there were 600 people in Greater Manchester public bodies, who couldnt find the data that they needed tocarry out their work. That has real impact on the workings of the public sector. This coupled with the cost of approx. 4 million per annum ofservicing FOI requests means that there is a real incentive for the public sector.

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    YES

    10Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    As far as the initial question as to whether cities would evolve diferently if all information was made open. The answer at the moment is that theasymmetries would still exist and they could become amplified. It is incumbent on ourselves to make sure that this doesnt happen.FutureEverything amongst others, is working on ways that can enhance Data Literacy in communities through working with artists, designers andeducationalists. As we move into a world where being able to understand and navigate through this data becomes more important, these dataskills will become essential.

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    @opendatamcr

    @FuturEverything

    @julianlstar

    @datagm

    11Tuesday, 24 May 2011

    Some twitter names. I can also be contacted on [email protected]