The document discusses finding the next innovative website like GapMinder.com that better visualizes data to reach wide audiences. It proposes a vision of government and civil society collaborating through bidirectional data and service sharing. Government could act as a platform, building on both public and citizen-contributed data to reduce trade-offs in decision making. International cooperation and involving stakeholders across government, research, companies and civil society could help achieve this.

1. Looking for the next
GapMinder.com
Brussels, 2nd February 2009
David Osimo - Tech4i2 ltd.

2. An inspiration: GapMinder.com
• started by a Swedish
professor and his son to
better represent WB data
on demographics
• developed visual software
application reaching great
audiences
• bought by Google for
GoogleDocs
• Success: better decisions
and technological
innovation
2

3. General trends
• there is no such thing as
web 3.0
• new metaphors (web
squared?)
• government as a platform:
building on public data
AND on citizens data
• data.gov: repositories of
linked data > RDFa...
http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/28/web2009_websquared-whitepaper.pdf 3

4. Anybody, not everybody
• reaching out to and augmenting the knowledge of
citizens and civil servants (tools)
• posing questions you didnt ask (e.g. visual
analytics). Crossover between design and IT.
Research that lowers costs and increases usability
www.ii.uib.no/vis/team/kehrer/
4

5. International
collaboration

6. http://www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map_feb09.html
6

7. A vision
Government and civil society
are not a zero sum game
Permantently changing,
mutually necessary
Bidirectional flows of
services and data
government users

8. Reducing the trade-offs
of public decision-making
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9. "The
new
availability
of
huge
amounts
of
data,
along
with
the
statistical
tools
to
crunch
these
numbers,
offers
a
whole
new
way
of
understanding
the
world.
Correlation
supersedes
causation,
and
science
can
advance
even
without
coherent
models,
uni:ied
theories,
or
really
any
mechanistic
explanation
at
all".
Chris
Anderson
(2007)

10. Stakeholders
• Government: the smart users ICT govmod (e.g.
NVAC group, data.gov people)
• Research: e.g. Beth Novek at White House, Harvard
Kennedy School of government, dowire.org
• Companies: e.g. Cognitive Edge in Singapore
• Civil society: e.g. MySociety.org in UK and
SunlightFoundation in US
• Existing networks: W3C eGov group, govloop, public
blogosphere, #gov20, #eups20
10

11. International cooperation 2.0
11

12. In summary
• reach out beyond eGov scientific community
• involve the gov users (e.g. Illuminating the
path) and the civil society
• combine structured and unstructured
collaboration, theory and practice-based,
incremental and disruptive innovation
12

13. Thanks
david.osimo@tech4i2.com

14. 14