Open Data: moving the immovable – getting data out of bureaucracies

William Perrinwilliam@talkaboutlocal.org@willperrinFormer Secretary to Power of Information Taskforcehttp://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/

Local Public Data Panel Memberhttp://www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/researchandstatistics/publicdatasources/localdatapanel/

Founder talk about localhttp://talkaboutlocal.org

Future Everything: Open Data conference 13 May 2010#futr

The Dozer

Apply huge force or do something so outrageous they can’t miss it

BCC DIY

Functional rebuild by volunteers of £2.8m Birmingham City Council site

Arguably most radical grass roots web project in this space right now

Make sure you do in fact have a bulldozer and don’t suffer a scale problemCan your bulldozer deliver?You look stupid if not

‘A crack team of data ferrets working for the Task Force have returned from their first forays into the bowels of Government. ‘People inside the organisation who can seek out specific data targets and release themSay in chief executives office

AvalancheBury them in FOI requests and build an external archive

BirminghamEpic parking ticket investigation using data from FOIIsolated weird behaviour by wardens

Snow machineReference the data released in CKAN

For a big leap you need leadershipExternal influencers make best impact

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/GovData.html

There are two philosophies to putting data on the web. The top-down one is to make a corporate or national plan, by getting committees together of all the interested parties, and make a consistent set of terms (ontology) into which everything fits. This in fact takes so long it is often never finished, and anyway does not in fact get corporate or national consensus in the end. The other method experience recommends is to do it bottom up. A top-level mandate is extremely valuable, but grass-roots action is essential. Put the data up where it is: join it together later.Tim Berners-Lee

You need a blend of all of theseNo magic bulletNew government expected to continue drive to open data

Never ever bide your time and waitBureaucracies are world class at waiting and they will win