How to Make Successful Open Data Initiatives

CHIS: Open Data e Linked Open Data
3: How to make successful Open Data?
Vittorio Scarano
vitsca@dia.unisa.it
Dipartimento di Informatica
Università di Salerno (Italy)
1 CHIS: Open Data and Linked Open Data

•  Success in Open Data Initiatives
•  Open Data Barometer
•  readiness, implementation, impact
•  Sustainability
•  Conclusions
•  Reading list, credits and acknowledgements

CHIS: Open Data and Linked Open Data 2
Outline of the talk

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  Actually this is not the principal issue
•  Issues:
•  readiness (capacity to delivery it)
•  implementation (choice of the key dataset)
•  impact in the real world
•  Need for prioritising user needs
•  over producer needs
•  Focus on the demand of data
Not only quantity..

•  A demand-focused approach prioritises the needs
of the data user over the data publisher.
•  Demand-focussed open data also enables a range
of additional benefits such as:
•  open data as an educator: increasing data literacy,
crucial to understand our world
•  open data as key enabler of open innovation
•  encourage people to communicate and innovate
•  open data enhancing business
Focussing on demand for open data

•  … Demand-focussed open data
also enables a range of additional
benefits such as:
•  open data can bring change within
societies
•  Swiss transport safety map increased
awareness of danger
•  open data can make communities to
talk to each other
•  FixMyStreet
Focussing on demand for open data

7
Swiss crashmap: unfallkarte.ch

KPI: Key Performance Indicators
•  Help to identify and communicate success
•  Flag areas where more investment is
needed
•  Identify where to refocus
•  Show where better to direct resources
•  Open Data Barometer uses three indicators
1.  readiness
2.  implementation
3.  impact

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  W3 Consortium (released 2015)
•  92 countries analyzed
•  Previous versions: 2013, 2014
•  Methods:
•  Peer reviewed expert survey
•  Government self-assessment
•  Secondary data by the World Economic Forum, World
Bank, UN oﬀices, Freedom House
Open Data Barometer 3rd report

•  The majority of countries (55%) have an open
Data initiative in place
•  New countries are promising with planned new
initiatives
•  Demand is high: civil society and the tech
community are using government data in 93% of
the countries
Some key ﬁndings - 1

•  Advertisement open data as democratic and
transparent credentials
•  Open data is one component of a responsible and
accountable government
•  No support from culture of openness
•  citizens are encouraged to ask and engage
•  Disturbingly, a backside in some countries

•  Implementation and impact: progress is stalling
•  Getting branches of the government to identify
budget and staﬀ to publish OD is uphill battle
•  Tendency of government to see OD as an
experiment (no long-term strategy)
•  resulting in haphazard implementation, weak demand
and limited impact

•  26 out of top 30 countries are high-income
•  Half of the datasets are in the top 10 OECD countries
•  “A whole new inequality frontier” (UN pointed out)
•  Some initiatives are launched in developing countries
•  often with no adequate resources

•  Traditional open data stalwarts (UK, USA)
•  But new generation of open data adopters
•  France, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, South Korea, …
•  Activities of the International Open Data Charter is
able to stimulate challenger countries and
renovate energy in traditional leaders

•  Success in Open Data Ini?a?ves
– readiness, implementa?on, impact
•  Conclusions
Outline of the talk

•  Policies and data management approaches
•  do governments have policies/protocols to ensure
open data are available on the long term?
•  Government actions (national/regional)
•  groundwork so that OD are used at all levels
•  Civil rights and the role of citizens
•  citizens/society empowered to participate, via OD
•  Business and entrepreneurship
•  are they able to take advantage?
1. Readiness: some questions

•  Only 6 countries have explitic policy committment to
make data open-by-default
•  including Italy
•  with some diﬀerences (binding/non-binding)
•  Often, clear are “open data principles”
•  but weak on specifics of implementation, and standards
•  Publication of data is not a KPI of the government
•  No evidence of quality control processes
•  Need to engage with users before setting policies
Policies and data management

Strength of OD policies/mgmt

24
Government actions (nat./reg.)

•  Open Data puts information (power) in the hands
of citizens
•  How does it change the accountability of
government?
•  Some foundations needed:
•  strong privacy laws, freedom of information act, right
to access data
•  Without foundation: only “open washing”
Civil rights and the role of citizens

•  Benefits from unlocking OD: training and
promotion of innovation
•  Training: still not enough
•  no full range of advanced training on data/open-data
•  no courses on specific, sectoral approach (e.g. health)
•  Only 20% of countries have an established
program for supporting innovation (designed to
use OD)
Business and entrepreneurship

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  Often, governments are publishing only selected
data sets
•  The implementation looks at the:
•  extent of publishing (which data)
•  openness of data published and if timely accessible
•  Some problems to find high-quality government
data
2. Implementation

•  Government budget is most likely to be open
•  18% of the countries
•  Some critical data are unlikely to be found:
•  company register (only in Australia)
•  Government spending (only Brasil and UK)
•  Legislation (only Brazil, France, Korea and UK)
•  Land ownership (only Australia, Canada, Estonia, UK,
Uruguay)
Data availability

(from United Na?ons, to be reached by 2030)

•  Appropriately licensed
•  Free
•  Properly formatted (machine-readable, bulk)
•  xls(x), csv/tsv, xml, json and raw dbf/mdb db dump
•  pdf, plain html, ods or plain txt and plain jpeg/png
•  Up-to-date (irregular, inconsistent)
•  Easy to find
•  Sustainable (guarantee for the future to be regularly
available)
•  Linked
Open government data quality

CHIS: Open Data and Linked Open Data

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  Difficult to measure: evidence is limited
•  Assessment of countries for:
•  transparency & accountability, and improved
government efficiency and effectiveness
•  environmental impacts
•  greater inclusion for marginalised groups
•  contribution to economy
•  support to startups, enterpreneurs and existing business
•  Warning! Political impact is declining
•  not enough resources/staff
3. Impact

•  The long-standing leaders (UK, USA) still remain
top of the rankings
•  A new generation is challenging their leadership
•  France, Canada
•  Korea, Japa, Singapore, Philippines
•  Mexico, Uruguay
•  Africa is the exception (no clear new challenger)
•  Rwanda stable, Kenya and Ghana holding
Rankings.. (at least!)

Conclusions of the ODB - 1

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  Open data must be
•  relevant
•  up-to-date
•  accessible
•  A sustainable open data programma
•  continues to release data regularly
•  (at least) with the same or improving quality and quantity
•  A sustainable open dataset is supported by
•  secure funding, active support, wide reuse
Why sustainability matters

•  “Freely used” does not mean there is no cost to
collecting or releasing the data.
•  Funding can be secured by:
•  Charging for access or enhanced services
•  Funding from another source who supports open data
publication
•  Demonstrating the ongoing value of open data to the
organisation
Secure funding

•  Making open data sustainable for an organisation
usually requires
•  the backing of its management, to make it a priority,
•  the support of staﬀ responsible for maintaining
quality.
•  Active support is most commonly achieved by a
company committing to maintaining open data as
part of its daily operations.
Active support for open data

•  When the services created with that data become
critical to the success of the publisher’s business.
•  Example
•  Datasets of the Berlin transport system are used by
millions when they access transport apps (Citymapper)
•  These apps drive usage of VBB services
•  VBB commits to regularly update the data.
Wide reuse of open data

•  Not good only for the users.. but also for the publisher
•  Eﬀects: Enhancing the trust of the community in the
publisher’s organisation.
•  allows a large community to build and analyse data in order
to draw their own conclusions, often in support of a
publisher's view.
•  Eﬀect: Supporting the creation of new products and
services
•  build business connections that bring direct feedback to the
publisher
•  Simplifying the publishers reuse of their own data.
Why? Solid foundations

•  Improves data usability
•  Often, the publisher is using the
Open Data that it is publishing for
internal purposes
•  Why separate the public release of
data from the internal data usage?
•  Data of increasing quality enhances
eﬀiciency from the inside!
Eﬀect: publishers reuse of OD

•  What is the source?
•  confidence in its commitment
•  can a change in politics aﬀect the priority of OD?
•  Who is funding the release?
•  is the organization subject to transparency pressures
or is there a beneficial use, that drives the demand?
•  What does the license say?
•  some suggestions on the future of the dataset
The questions to sustainability -1

•  Who is already using the data?
•  wide pressure to keep it active and updated
•  is it used internally?
•  What is the publishing history?
•  How long is the dataset been published?
•  Is there a project term?
•  How can I contribute? (to sustainability)
•  by using it increases dataset’s demand
•  join communities
The questions to sustainability -2

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  Success must be measured: KPI
•  Diﬀerent measure
•  inside and outside the publisher
•  Process must be sustainable
•  stimulating its sustainability is part
of the success
•  Since the beginning of the project
Conclusions

•  Conclusions

Outline of the talk

•  European Data Portal: Measuring success for Open
Data.
http://www.europeandataportal.eu/elearning/en/
module6/#/id/co-01
•  Open Data Barometer: http://opendatabarometer.org
•  European Data Portal: Why should we worry about
sustainability?
http://www.europeandataportal.eu/elearning/en/
module7/#/id/co-01
Reading list

•  Part of the material comes with license CC-BY or CC-
SA
•  from the European Data Portal Library
•  http://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/training-library
•  from the Open Data Barometer Report
Credits

•  Part of the work was funded by the
ROUTE-TO-PA H2020 project
•  www.routetopa.eu for more info
Acknowledgments
The project has received funding from the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innova<on programme under grant
agreement No 645860.

•  Author: Vittorio Scarano,
ROUTE-TO-PA project
•  vitsca@dia.unisa.it
•  License: This Work is licensed
with Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
•  https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0/
•  Available onSlideShare
License

How to Make Successful Open Data Initiatives

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