Keynote presentation at 2015 UK Public Sector Communications Conference with GovDelivery.

1. Data isn’t Just Datasets:
The Role of Communications, Content &
Community in Your Open Data Strategy

2. Contents
● My Story – New York State
● Open Data Today – 2015 Data Catalogs
● Engagement – Ask More, Tell More
● The Tools – CKAN, DKAN, etc.

3. Data.gov 2009 launch

4. Data.gov.uk 2009 launch

5. NY State Senate Circa 2009

6. News “Clips” ($1.5 MM/year)

7. “CRM”

8. Senate.State.ny.gov January 2009

9. NYSenate.gov by March 2009

10. NYSenate Open Data

11. Content = Data (Legislative Committees)

12. Senators are Data Too

13. Events = Data (Calendars)

14. Video = Data (Senate Session)

15. Laws = Data

16. With Lots of Metadata…

17. Allow Data to be Augmented

18. Data as Content = Easy to Render Anywhere

19. Easy to Share Data Everywhere

20. And Easy to Find

21. Data Access Collapsed Distance

22. And Delivered Results
• 10,000s watching live events
• New interaction w/ 100,000s of New Yorkers
• Senators getting 1,000,000s of YouTube views
• “They are clearly setting the pace that all other
legislative bodies will have to follow. The US
Congress ought to be taking some clue from
them.” - Sunlight Foundation Executive Director
Ellen Miller
• Three “Best of New York” Awards
• Cut IT spend > 10%

23. Contents
My Story – New York State
Open Data Today – 2015 Data Catalogs
Engagement – Ask More, Tell More
The Tools – CKAN, DKAN, etc.

24. 2015: Gov’t Data Becoming Ubiquitous

25. Open Data for Transparency

26. Open Data for Gov Ops Innovation

27. Open Data for Civic Engagement

28. Open Data for Entrepreneurs

29. Open data can help unlock $3-$5 trillion
Products and increased convenience.
Economic value in the form of improved efficiency,
Source: McKinsey Global Institute
Analysis

30. 2015: 100s of Companies, 1000s Govt’s, 10,000s Apps, MMs Data Sets..

31. Contents
My Story – New York State
Open Data Today – 2015 Data Catalogs
Engagement – Ask More, Tell More
The Tools – CKAN, DKAN, etc.

32. US Health & Human Services: Leaders in Open Data

33. But Still Highly Challenged in Engaging Stakeholders
Credit: US HHS IdeaLab

34. Enter “Demand-Driven Open Data”…
Credit: US HHS IdeaLab

35. Engage People, Make Opening Data Participatory

36. Communications in your Open Data Strategy
● Reach: leverage engaged network
of subscribers across all channels
to promote portal and drive
adoption
● Usage: distil data to tell relevant
stories to engaged stakeholders
● Audience Segmentation: target data
outreach based on users’ interests
& industry
● Demand-Driven Open Data:
prioritize data release and
improvement based on requests,
usage and feedback

37. And Content…
● Your digital content already provides numerous data assets
● It’s already managed like data, w/ structured metadata and
adherence to open standards
● You have mature content management system (CMS) tools
and skills in your organization to manage it, publish it, and
measure it
● It often has mature tested governance established for it
● It’s what your customers are already used to interacting with,
and its where they will experience value from your data–
telling stories, getting an answer, collaborating to solve
problems, etc.

38. And Community (internal & external)
● Thematically focused
● Experts in their domain
● Often the source of the
best data (including
crowdsourced)
● Often both data
consumers and creators

39. Forging a Maker Community

40. Forging a Maker Community

41. Solving Sanitation Problems

42. Sharing Government Apps that Work

43. Improving Disaster Resilience

44. Curating Peer Communities

45. Organizing Online for Offline Impact

46. Helping Parents Choose the Best Schools

47. Bringing New Yorkers Closer To Their Laws

48. Contents
My Story – New York State
Open Data Today – 2015 Data Catalogs
Engagement – Ask More, Tell More
The Tools – CKAN, DKAN, etc.

49. Open Data Platforms Purpose-Built for Data

50. Too Much Focus on Centralized Data Catalogs,
Not Enough on the Humans?

51. Data USE Requires Integration with a CMS

52. So Why Not Use Your CMS to Manage Data?
● Holistic Open Information Management: manage content,
data, documents, and community conversations through
same platform
● Less technology debt: single software stack to secure,
maintain, design, learn, etc.
● Easy to extend with social features, standards compliant,
good search engine optimizations
● Already integrated with your communications channels
● Focused on engagement, with mature storytelling and
collaboration features built-in

53. Example: “DKAN” Drupal Platform for Open Data
Datasets: are simply another content
type (plus a datastore and an API)
Open Standards: open source and
adheres to same global open
standards as “CKAN”
Organizations: Community
management features can be applied
to data management
Data consumers: search datasets,
see visualizations, read and share
data stories, download data, use API

54. DKAN Unified CMS/DMS: In the Cool War

55. DKAN Unified CMS/DMS: And Closer to Home

56. Open Data Strategy Take-Homes
Communications Creates Value from Data
● When developing an open data initiative, start with what problems your
customers and peers envision solving, not just with what data you have –
make it demand-driven
● When a problem is solved with data, tell that story to make the solution
available to move people, and to validate the value of the open data
program
Web Content Can Be Your Best Data Source
● Think holistically in terms of open information management– including
documents, content, and community interaction, as well as data
● For data inventory, talk to content managers to find data by another name
Community Creates Sustainable Deep Engagement with Data
● Get feedback on your data from thematically focused customer
communities that already interact w/ your content (e.g.: parks, transit)
● Everyone is a data creator or consumer now; like IT, it’s becoming a skill
not a profession

57. Followup
Andrew Hoppin
@ahoppin
andrew@nucivic.com