Open Data is the idea that "certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control”. Open Data follows similar “open” concepts that have proven to be valuable in the information economy such as Open Standards, Open Source Software, Open Content and has been followed more recently by variations on the theme such as Open Science and Open Government. Open Data allows information of common value to be reused without needing to be recreated. The economic benefits of Open Data include cost reduction, organizational efficiencies and the facilitation of commonly held understanding. The costs of implementing Open Data deployment strategies tend to be iterative on top of existing information infrastructure. This presentation will describe Open Data and its place in the ecosystem of economic and governmental discourse.