The “Government” Does Not Have A Plan For Open Data
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Jason Hare BaleFire Global LLC - Director of Open Data Tuesday, Oct 20th 3:30 pm - Open Data & Open Government
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The “Government” Does Not Have A Plan For Open Data
- 1. THE UNITED STATES OF OPEN DATA WE DON’T REALLY HAVE A PLAN, BUT DO WE NEED ONE?
- 2. THIS SESSION COVERS • What is Open Data and how does it relates to Open Source? • What is the bottom line for governments versus private sector? Risk Avoidance vs. Financial Reward is the bottom line. • Why the United States as a national government should not and does not have a plan for Open Data? What about local government? • If the government can’t do it then how do we as a people get access to Open Data as a public asset? • New models of public/private collaboration bring about data standards and inherently more useful data. • What does Open Data look like in the next 12 months?
- 3. I TALK TO A LOT OF PEOPLE ABOUT OPEN DATA
- 4. OPEN DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
- 9. HOW THE PUBLIC VIEWS FEDERAL OPEN DATA
- 10. HOW DOES THIS AFFECT OPEN DATA?
- 11. DATA AS A PUBLIC ASSET Open Government and Open Data have become dangerously conflated. Data needs to be re-used if it is to have any value. Data needs standards to ease re-use. Where do standards come from?
- 12. LIVES AS A STANDARD- WAKE CO.
- 13. WHAT COULD THIS LOOK LIKE?
- 14. THE VALUE MODEL OF OPEN DATA
- 15. THANK YOU Jason M. Hare @jasonmhare
Editor's Notes
- I tweet frequently about open data. Thomas Levine is a valued colleague and commentator on open data and its true value. I categorize Thomas as more of a skeptic than I am. I think there is potential in Open Data. So does Thomas. In my conversations with him he thinks the way we currently distribute data leaves a lot of value on the table. We will examine a few of the themes Thomas, Mark and myself have espoused over the years. These conversations will hopefully leave you with some idea of where we should go with Open Data.
- Both are about Free Thought and Freedom…not free beer. Open Data and Open Source share a philosophy Open Source is not an SDLC Open Data is not a data governance plan
- Citizens in the US overwhelmingly turn out for national elections far more than they turn out for local elections. Source is US Census Bureau. Image from Pew Research Center. The political reasons for the difference in voter turnout has more to do with the way Midterms are marketed. Lower turn out helps keep incumbents in office. The point of this is though, there is a disconnect between what people “feel” is an important interaction with “The Government” versus what IS an important interaction with “The Government”.
- The US was founded originally as 13 United States with a weak central government and powerful state governments. The Civil War was fought for, among many other things, the idea of stronger states rights. After the Civil War Federalism rose. The power shifted from sates to the Federal level. This trend continued and reached its apex under the New Deal in the 1930’s. From 1980 until today Federalism has been eroded by giving states more power to self govern. Why is this important? The Federal level of government plays a small role in the everyday lives of citizens. I assert that Federal data is less useful without local government data to give it context.
- There are over 8700 local governments across the US. In my years as an open data practitioner I often air quoted the idea of “The Government”. We are a bottom up governance model. The US is very different from other countries. In fact very few countries in the world are truly based on the Federalist model of the US.
- This is data.gov. Data.gov and 18F, the US Digital Service, are two Federal organizations trying to create an impact on our lives by opening data. Here is what Data.Gov says about its own impact assessment: Open government data is important because the more accessible, discoverable, and usable data is the more impact it can have. These impacts include, but are not limited to: cost savings, efficiency, fuel for business, improved civic services, informed policy, performance planning, research and scientific discoveries, transparency and accountability, and increased public participation in the democratic dialogue. Did this really happen? There have been some data quality issues on many high level Federal Open Data Projects.
- There is a problem with this statement- the Pew Research Center is a wonderfully politically agnostic organization that publishes survey data on humans and the Internet, among other things. This particular survey falls into the open data versus open government trap. Open data and open government are two very different things. Our President signed the first ever executive order releasing public open data on his first day in office. Sadly, this movement started out as a transparency effort that obviously came up short after the Snowden affair.
- Local efforts will affect local lives far greater than federal data will. Open Data projects should be modeled after Open Source projects- what problem are we trying to solve? Releasing data for the sake of releasing data is the same as writing a bunch of code that has no function. There must be a greater effort to bring about civil society to participate in the release and re-use of open data.
- Public Sector data should be treated as infrastructure or a public asset. One of the problems with current Federal and local open data efforts is there is little, if any, communication or community building around the release of data. Some exceptions happen between the Code for America brigades and open data initiatives. Does anyone see a problem with this limited amount of civic engagement? Where is the private sector? Data is a valuable asset if it is reused. BILDS and LIVES are two standards that arose for commercial reasons. Having LIVES means anyone can now public restaurant inspection data. Yelp has taken advantage of this.
- Standards happen when it becomes inconvenient not to use them. The W3C releases standards and expects browsers to comply. This enables us to use the World Wide Web. Tim Berners Lee donated the HTML standard to the world. At one time, not to long ago, several companies ignored the W3C standard and released proprietary features and necessitated developers to build in browser detection systems to optimize sites. The LIVES standard arose out of a need to public restaurant inspection data. Several cities across the US now use LIVES in publishing open data. This data is then consumed by commercial entities such as YELP.
- Using data to modify behavior. The end user or consumer of public data could use a tool powered by open data to see how they compare to their peers. This relates to the IoT and the gameification of data to modify user behavior.
- Transparency can be a byproduct of open data but not an end unto itself. The danger of ambiguity in conflating open data and open government can be disastrous. The model proposed here is data is released to the public. Public organizations can evangelize the existence of open data. Private sector can find ways to power applications and blend public data with their own data to create value for consumers and to create revenue for themselves.