A Passionate Plea for More Open Data Initiatives

Krems.
The final keynote speaker at CeDEM 2011 is Stefan Gehrke, whose focus is on open data. He notes that open data was a niche term at first, but turned more mainstream after President Obama launched the opendata.gov initiative – as a result, the increased availability of public sector information (PSI) initiated a change from from a permissions culture (where data access must be requested) to an innovations culture (where access is the default setting, and no permissions are necessary for the development of new services using these data).

PSI puts citizens into focus and highlights the importance of government-to-citizen interaction between elections. This increases the focus on citizens’ needs, and the potential at a local government level is especially high. But in spite of all of this, the digital civic rights movement has been faster than government in harnessing open data; they have developed projects showcasing the potential of open data, if not always with the support of government.

This new transparency has even led to significant controversies – Websites tracking where EU farm subsidy funds are going have been severely criticised for their transparency, for example; some have even been shut down after complaints from powerful farm lobbyist organisations.

But there are many civic society initiatives around Europe that are driving open data initiatives. The question here becomes whether PSI should be available for free, or whether payment models should be introduced; one side of the argument claims that quality data costs, and needs to be paid for; the other says that locking such data behind paywalls is counterproductive.

Their argument is that if data is no longer used because it is locked away, this is a tragedy. PSI data is usually already available somewhere anyway, but not in particularly useful formats; open data helps address this (so paying for these services seems especially nonsensical). Key principles here are that data must be complete (so they cannot be subject to privacy or other limitations); from primary sources (and thus at high levels of resolution and granularity); timely; accessible to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes; provided in machine-processable formats; non-discriminatory, with no requirement for users to register as users; non-proprietary (in open formats); and licence-free (not subject to copyright, trademark, patent, or trade secret restrictions).

Pricing open data, on the other hand, prevents innovation and lowers the benefits these data can generate; open data generate more value than a potential sale of the data could. This generates more transparency, more participation, self-empowerment, improvement of commercial products and services, the development of new commercial and non-commercial products and services, and new knowledge and insights.

There are countless examples for these benefits; at regional and state levels, implementation of such principles has begun. This need not happen immediately and all at once, but there are low-hanging fruits to begin with, and we can start here. There are hidden treasures which currently exist only in other, less accessible formats, but they can be addressed later.

But there is a fear that governments may turn PSI into a giant IT project, orchestrated through central processes, which is not necessary or constructive – we need raw, not processed data. Open government breaks traditional value chains, enabling third parties to provide services (as shown in how open democracy contests have already generate innovative new apps).

Open data is an infrastructure, and government is a platform. Cost-free publishing of data in several formats should be the standard, with everything open by default; corruption and waste of money will no longer be a problem.

Because of the enormous public debts at present, we need to rely on everyone’s creativity to improve services. Open data becomes a new currency to stimulate economic growth, promote democracy, and provide better governance. But we also need good examples to push this forward. If we do, democracy itself will benefit.