Tim Willoughby explains the benefits of open government and open data. He advocates for making government data openly available in standardized, machine-readable formats and developing applications that leverage open data. While open data faces challenges including loss of control and fear of the unknown, its benefits include more informed decisions, higher quality data, and new business opportunities through opening up data.

1. Open Data
Open Government
Tim Willoughby
Assistant Director
LGMA

2. Open Government?
“If people don’t know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong”
“Jim Hacker”
Open Government (I980)

3. My name is Tim
I explain technology…

4. to people who don’t understand it…

5. people who think
they do understand it…

6. people who despise it…

7. and people who worship it.

8. …that help people understand how
technology might help their Organisation…
I
research,
pilot
and
write
things...

9. I live here... According to Google Streetmaps
9

11. I live in Naas…
•
NAAS
–
Network as a Service
•
Used to be a Nice place to shop!

12. So far ICT has not fundamentally
changed government
1990s: lCT expected
to make government
more transparent, efcient
and user oriented
2005+: disillusion as
bureaucracy still in existence
Can Cloud Help?
Jane E. Fountain – Gov 1.0 – Just Replicating the Silos on the Internet

13. Do We Understand What the Citizen Wants?

14. Yes, but its not always cohesive

15. Local Government

16. Why would government look at Open Data

17. Sharing!

18. Local Government Evolution

19. Where Next…Open Data
●
What we are talking about is -
●
Government As A Platform?
●
Open Data is not the end..
●
Cannot be – just for Open Data Sake...
●
Open Data has to be part of the Day Job

20. Open is forcing Radical Change
With or Without the Owners / Shareholders

21. So – What are we Doing
●Enterprise Ireland have set up Irish Cross
National Working Group on Open Data
Academia
Large / Small Business
Central / Local / Semi-State Gov
●Fingal County Council – Open Fingal
●Dublin County Councils - DubLinked

22. Cross Industry National Working Group
Addressing Prime 2, Opportunities for change, GeoDirectory, PRA
Security Surveillance, Privacy, Confidentiality,
Standards Protocol for Use, Governance, Adoption, Developments,
Enterprise Apps, Commercialisation, Economic Benefits, Education, Jobs
Initiatives,
Citizenship What does the citizen want from Open Data?

23. Decisions
●
Open Data week 7th
Nov-12th
Nov
●All Government Tenders will reference Open
Data
●Paper for Government
●It makes sense
●Continue the Journey Together

24. 10/3/11
open source / open data
the fix your street model

25. 10/3/11
mobile apps – the new frontier of local
government

26. 10/3/11
Metered Water Application
FUTURE DOMESTIC WATER APPLICATION

27. 10/3/11
from: physical, the (qr code), online source,
& augmented reality

28. 10/3/11
qr code to detailed further information

29. 10/3/11
Social and Multi Media
Responding through innovation

30. It is all about the Data
2010 Spend on Spatial data and Software in the USA - IDC

31. Issues
Data Harvesting
How / Why does data get into your system
Position, accuracy, improvement.
Data Management
How do we manage our data
Do we have to capture data more than once
Geo Data
Costs of collection
Costs of Management
Quality
Data Quality
If we can’t trust the data to Share it, how do we use it to make decisions?

32. Data Standards
Most Adopting Standards from their software Supplier.
Have to move away from this position!
Open Standards

33. What do we aspire to…
Real Life Standards

34. Its Hard for
Governments to
experiment

37. Why Open Data?
●
More information might lead to more informed and beter
decisions – The Right to Knowledge…
●
Higher Quality?
●
Open Source – More Eyes – Beter Systems…
●
Higher degree of effectiveness & efficiency
●
Strengthen trust in establishment
●
Leverage benefits of peer production
●
New business models

38. Why Not?
●
Loss of control & power?
●
Undermining of statutory Powers
●
Loss of revenues to existing business by threatening their
established business models
●
Only those with the Social Tools can benefit?
●
Fear of the unknown

39. FixYourStreet
Programme for Government
In local services, we will establish a website – www.fixmystreet.ie – to assist residents
in reporting problems with street lighting, drainage, graffiti, waste collection and road
and path maintenance in their neighbourhoods, with a guarantee that local officials
will respond within two working days.

40. Principles of FixYourStreet
●
Digitise everything Once.
●
Dynamic Data Capture
●
Open data
●
Open source
●
Reduce the Barriers to Adoption
●
Social Media is the Glue
●
There can only be one fixyourstreets
●
One Front End
●
More than one Back End?
●
Taxonomy – We all call things the same

41. Semantic Web

42. Semantic Web
Adult Humour
Political Insight
Current Affairs
SlapStick
Colours
Bart is Funny
Homer - Doh!

43. Pages as a Database
Cool Stuff for sale

44. Pages as a Database

45. Apps

47. Cloud Application

49. Data is hidden behind the Applications…
But yet not available in Linked Format…
What is the Solution?
Open Data, Open Source, Open Standards

50. QR Codes for Public Participation

53. These are Small, Near… Far Away

54. Architecture Model for Open
Five level saturation model by Tim Berners-Lee
★ Available on the web (whatever format), but with an open licence
★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan
of a table)
★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)
★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to
identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide
context

56. Conclusion
 We can learn from the early adopters
 Key Challenges
 Policies – Corporate culture – change management
- refresh needed
 Innovation by Design – Crowdsourcing internally
and externally
 Community engagement
 Sustainable resourcing
 Technology – Public Cloud / Open Source
 Standards
 Cross Industry Support