Getting data out of bureaucracies

Open Data: moving the immovable – getting data out of bureaucracies
Future Everything: Open Data conference 13 May 2010
#futr
William Perrin
william@talkaboutlocal.org
@willperrin
Former Secretary to Power of Information Taskforce
http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/
Local Public Data Panel Member
http://www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/researchandstatistics/publicdatasources/localdatapanel/
Founder talk about local
http://talkaboutlocal.org

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 problem
Can 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 them
Say in chief executives office

Avalanche
Bury them in FOI requests and build an external archive

Birmingham
Epic parking ticket investigation using data from FOI
Isolated weird behaviour by wardens

Snow machine
Reference the data released in CKAN

For a big leap you need leadership
External influencers make best impact

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

You need a blend of all of these
No magic bullet
New government expected to continue drive to open data

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

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Getting data out of bureaucracies

by william perrin

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