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

• ObjectiveGather 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 heed 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, data paloozas, 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 & stakeholders early on

• Engage data users (entrepreneurs, developers, journalists) and citizens to encourage the use of data

• Use standardization carefully: can be useful or straight jacket

• 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 new and innovative uses for data

• Improve access for others via software/portal

• Re-distribute 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 learnings

• 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