Questioning Smart Urbanism: Is Data-Driven Governance a Panacea?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Alice Tang at the Chicago Policy Review: “In the era of data explosion, urban planners are increasingly relying on real-time, streaming data generated by “smart” devices to assist with city management. “Smart cities,” referring to cities that implement pervasive and ubiquitous computing in urban planning, are widely discussed in academia, business, and government. These cities are characterized not only by their use of technology but also by their innovation-driven economies and collaborative, data-driven city governance. Smart urbanism can seem like an effective strategy to create more efficient, sustainable, productive, and open cities. However, there are emerging concerns about the potential risks in the long-term development of smart cities, including political neutrality of big data, technocratic governance, technological lock-ins, data and network security, and privacy risks.

In a study entitled, “The Real-Time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism,” Rob Kitchin provides a critical reflection on the potential negative effects of data-driven city governance on social development—a topic he claims deserves greater governmental, academic, and social attention.

In contrast to traditional datasets that rely on samples or are aggregated to a coarse scale, “big data” is huge in volume, high in velocity, and diverse in variety. Since the early 2000s, there has been explosive growth in data volume due to the rapid development and implementation of technology infrastructure, including networks, information management, and data storage. Big data can be generated from directed, automated, and volunteered sources. Automated data generation is of particular interest to urban planners. One example Kitchin cites is urban sensor networks, which allow city governments to monitor the movements and statuses of individuals, materials, and structures throughout the urban environment by analyzing real-time data.

With the huge amount of streaming data collected by smart infrastructure, many city governments use real-time analysis to manage different aspects of city operations. There has been a recent trend in centralizing data streams into a single hub, integrating all kinds of surveillance and analytics. These one-stop data centers make it easier for analysts to cross-reference data, spot patterns, identify problems, and allocate resources. The data are also often accessible by field workers via operations platforms. In London and some other cities, real-time data are visualized on “city dashboards” and communicated to citizens, providing convenient access to city information.

However, the real-time city is not a flawless solution to all the problems faced by city managers. The primary concern is the politics of big, urban data. Although raw data are often perceived as neutral and objective, no data are free of bias; the collection of data is a subjective process that can be shaped by various confounding factors. The presentation of data can also be manipulated to answer a specific question or enact a particular political vision….(More)”

Build digital democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Dirk Helbing & Evangelos Pournaras in Nature: “Fridges, coffee machines, toothbrushes, phones and smart devices are all now equipped with communicating sensors. In ten years, 150 billion ‘things’ will connect with each other and with billions of people. The ‘Internet of Things’ will generate data volumes that double every 12 hours rather than every 12 months, as is the case now.

Blinded by information, we need ‘digital sunglasses’. Whoever builds the filters to monetize this information determines what we see — Google and Facebook, for example. Many choices that people consider their own are already determined by algorithms. Such remote control weakens responsible, self-determined decision-making and thus society too.

The European Court of Justice’s ruling on 6 October that countries and companies must comply with European data-protection laws when transferring data outside the European Union demonstrates that a new digital paradigm is overdue. To ensure that no government, company or person with sole control of digital filters can manipulate our decisions, we need information systems that are transparent, trustworthy and user-controlled. Each of us must be able to choose, modify and build our own tools for winnowing information.

With this in mind, our research team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), alongside international partners, has started to create a distributed, privacy-preserving ‘digital nervous system’ called Nervousnet. Nervousnet uses the sensor networks that make up the Internet of Things, including those in smartphones, to measure the world around us and to build a collective ‘data commons’. The many challenges ahead will be best solved using an open, participatory platform, an approach that has proved successful for projects such as Wikipedia and the open-source operating system Linux.

A wise king?

The science of human decision-making is far from understood. Yet our habits, routines and social interactions are surprisingly predictable. Our behaviour is increasingly steered by personalized advertisements and search results, recommendation systems and emotion-tracking technologies. Thousands of pieces of metadata have been collected about every one of us (seego.nature.com/stoqsu). Companies and governments can increasingly manipulate our decisions, behaviour and feelings1.

Many policymakers believe that personal data may be used to ‘nudge’ people to make healthier and environmentally friendly decisions. Yet the same technology may also promote nationalism, fuel hate against minorities or skew election outcomes2 if ethical scrutiny, transparency and democratic control are lacking — as they are in most private companies and institutions that use ‘big data’. The combination of nudging with big data about everyone’s behaviour, feelings and interests (‘big nudging’, if you will) could eventually create close to totalitarian power.

Countries have long experimented with using data to run their societies. In the 1970s, Chilean President Salvador Allende created computer networks to optimize industrial productivity3. Today, Singapore considers itself a data-driven ‘social laboratory’4 and other countries seem keen to copy this model.

The Chinese government has begun rating the behaviour of its citizens5. Loans, jobs and travel visas will depend on an individual’s ‘citizen score’, their web history and political opinion. Meanwhile, Baidu — the Chinese equivalent of Google — is joining forces with the military for the ‘China brain project’, using ‘deep learning’ artificial-intelligence algorithms to predict the behaviour of people on the basis of their Internet activity6.

The intentions may be good: it is hoped that big data can improve governance by overcoming irrationality and partisan interests. But the situation also evokes the warning of the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, that the “sovereign acting … to make the people happy according to his notions … becomes a despot”. It is for this reason that the US Declaration of Independence emphasizes the pursuit of happiness of individuals.

Ruling like a ‘benevolent dictator’ or ‘wise king’ cannot work because there is no way to determine a single metric or goal that a leader should maximize. Should it be gross domestic product per capita or sustainability, power or peace, average life span or happiness, or something else?

Better is pluralism. It hedges risks, promotes innovation, collective intelligence and well-being. Approaching complex problems from varied perspectives also helps people to cope with rare and extreme events that are costly for society — such as natural disasters, blackouts or financial meltdowns.

Centralized, top-down control of data has various flaws. First, it will inevitably become corrupted or hacked by extremists or criminals. Second, owing to limitations in data-transmission rates and processing power, top-down solutions often fail to address local needs. Third, manipulating the search for information and intervening in individual choices undermines ‘collective intelligence’7. Fourth, personalized information creates ‘filter bubbles’8. People are exposed less to other opinions, which can increase polarization and conflict9.

Fifth, reducing pluralism is as bad as losing biodiversity, because our economies and societies are like ecosystems with millions of interdependencies. Historically, a reduction in diversity has often led to political instability, collapse or war. Finally, by altering the cultural cues that guide peoples’ decisions, everyday decision-making is disrupted, which undermines rather than bolsters social stability and order.

Big data should be used to solve the world’s problems, not for illegitimate manipulation. But the assumption that ‘more data equals more knowledge, power and success’ does not hold. Although we have never had so much information, we face ever more global threats, including climate change, unstable peace and socio-economic fragility, and political satisfaction is low worldwide. About 50% of today’s jobs will be lost in the next two decades as computers and robots take over tasks. But will we see the macroeconomic benefits that would justify such large-scale ‘creative destruction’? And how can we reinvent half of our economy?

The digital revolution will mainly benefit countries that achieve a ‘win–win–win’ situation for business, politics and citizens alike10. To mobilize the ideas, skills and resources of all, we must build information systems capable of bringing diverse knowledge and ideas together. Online deliberation platforms and reconfigurable networks of smart human minds and artificially intelligent systems can now be used to produce collective intelligence that can cope with the diverse and complex challenges surrounding us….(More)” See Nervousnet project

The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard H. Thaler in the New York Times: “Nudges, small design changes that can markedly affect individual behavior, have been catching on. These techniques rely on insights from behavioral science, and when used ethically, they can be very helpful. But we need to be sure that they aren’t being employed to sway people to make bad decisions that they will later regret.

Whenever I’m asked to autograph a copy of “Nudge,” the book I wrote with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor, I sign it, “Nudge for good.” Unfortunately, that is meant as a plea, not an expectation.

Three principles should guide the use of nudges:

■ All nudging should be transparent and never misleading.

■ It should be as easy as possible to opt out of the nudge, preferably with as little as one mouse click.

■ There should be good reason to believe that the behavior being encouraged will improve the welfare of those being nudged.
As far as I know, the government teams in Britain and the United States that have focused on nudging have followed these guidelines scrupulously. But the private sector is another matter. In this domain, I see much more troubling behavior.

For example, last spring I received an email telling me that the first prominent review of a new book of mine had appeared: It was in The Times of London. Eager to read the review, I clicked on a hyperlink, only to run into a pay wall. Still, I was tempted by an offer to take out a one-month trial subscription for the price of just £1. As both a consumer and producer of newspaper articles, I have no beef with pay walls. But before signing up, I read the fine print. As expected, I would have to provide credit card information and would be automatically enrolled as a subscriber when the trial period expired. The subscription rate would then be £26 (about $40) a month. That wasn’t a concern because I did not intend to become a paying subscriber. I just wanted to read that one article.

But the details turned me off. To cancel, I had to give 15 days’ notice, so the one-month trial offer actually was good for just two weeks. What’s more, I would have to call London, during British business hours, and not on a toll-free number. That was both annoying and worrying. As an absent-minded American professor, I figured there was a good chance I would end up subscribing for several months, and that reading the article would end up costing me at least £100….

These examples are not unusual. Many companies are nudging purely for their own profit and not in customers’ best interests. In a recent column in The New York Times, Robert Shiller called such behavior “phishing.” Mr. Shiller and George Akerlof, both Nobel-winning economists, have written a book on the subject, “Phishing for Phools.”

Some argue that phishing — or evil nudging — is more dangerous in government than in the private sector. The argument is that government is a monopoly with coercive power, while we have more choice in the private sector over which newspapers we read and which airlines we fly.

I think this distinction is overstated. In a democracy, if a government creates bad policies, it can be voted out of office. Competition in the private sector, however, can easily work to encourage phishing rather than stifle it.

One example is the mortgage industry in the early 2000s. Borrowers were encouraged to take out loans that they could not repay when real estate prices fell. Competition did not eliminate this practice, because it was hard for anyone to make money selling the advice “Don’t take that loan.”

As customers, we can help one another by resisting these come-ons. The more we turn down questionable offers like trip insurance and scrutinize “one month” trials, the less incentive companies will have to use such schemes. Conversely, if customers reward firms that act in our best interests, more such outfits will survive and flourish, and the options available to us will improve….(More)

‘Democracy vouchers’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gregory Krieg at CNN: “Democracy vouchers” could be coming to an election near you. Last week, more than 60% of Seattle voters approved the so-called “Honest Elections” measure, or Initiative 122, a campaign finance reform plan offering a novel way of steering public funds to candidates who are willing to swear off big money PACs.

For supporters, the victory — authorizing the use by voters of publicly funded “democracy vouchers” that they can dole out to favored candidates — marks what they hope will be the first step forward in a wide-ranging reform effort spreading to other cities and states in the coming year….

The voucher model also is “a one-two punch” for candidates, Silver said. “They become more dependent on their constituents because their constituents become their funders, and No. 2, they’re part of what I would call a ‘dilution strategy’ — you dilute the space with lots of small-dollar contributions to offset the undue influence of super PACs.”

How “democracy vouchers” work

Beginning next summer, Seattle voters are expected to begin receiving $100 from the city, parceled out in four $25 vouchers, to contribute to local candidates who accept the new law’s restrictions, including not taking funds from PACs, adhering to strict spending caps, and enacting greater transparency. Candidates can redeem the vouchers with the city for real campaign cash, which will likely flow from increased property taxes.

The reform effort began at the grassroots, but morphed into a slickly managed operation that spent nearly $1.4 million, with more than half of that flowing from groups outside the city.

Alan Durning, founder of the nonprofit sustainability think tank Sightline, is an architect of the Seattle initiative. He believes the campaign helped identify a key problem with other reform plans.

“We know that one of the strongest arguments against public funding for campaigns is the idea of giving tax dollars to candidates that you disagree with,” Durning told CNN. “There are a lot of people who hate the idea.”

Currently, most such programs offer to match with public funds small donations for candidates who meet a host of varying requirements. In these cases, taxpayer money goes directly from the government to the campaigns, limiting voters’ connection to the process.

“The benefit of vouchers … is you can think about it as giving the first $100 of your own taxes to the candidate that you prefer,” Durning explained. “Your money is going to the candidate you send it to — so it keeps the choice with the individual voter.”

He added that the use of vouchers can also help the approach appeal to conservative voters, who generally are supportive of voucher-type programs and choice.

But critics call that a misleading argument.

“You’re still taking money from people and giving it to politicians who they may not necessarily want to support,” said Patrick Basham, the founder and director of the Democracy Institute, a libertarian think tank.

“Now, if you, as Voter X, give your four $25 vouchers to Candidate Y, then that’s your choice, but only some of [the money] came from you. It also came from other people.”…(More)”

UK police force trials virtual crime visits over Skype

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nick Summers at Engadget: In an effort to cut costs and make its officers more efficient, police in Peterborough, England are asking citizens to report their crimes over Skype. So, whereas before a local “bobby” would come round to their house, notepad in hand, to ask questions and take down what happened, the entire process will now be conducted over webcam. Alternatively, victims can do the follow-up on the phone or at the station — handy if Skype is being its usual, unreliable self. The system is being trialled for crimes reported via 101, the police’s non-emergency contact number. The force says it’ll give people more flexibility with appointment times, and also ensure officers spend more hours each day on patrol. We suspect it also has something to do with the major budget cuts facing forces up and down the country….(More)”

OpenBeta. USAspending.gov

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “Instead of building the future USAspending.gov and getting feedback from users after the launch, Treasury took the innovative approach of launching OpenBeta.USAspending.gov in November 2015 to gather your recommendations and suggestions on the features you want in the final iteration. Based on forum and email feedback, Treasury will add new features and functionalities on a rolling basis.

OpenBeta.USAspending.gov currently features several search options and a demo of a search functionality that provides access to the data quickly. In addition, search filters similar to what you might find on a commercial site allow you to narrow your search results. You can also create charts, graphs, and maps from your search results.

Vision

When the final USAspending.gov – the taxpayer site built for taxpayer needs – goes live in May 2017, you will have an open window into government spending. You will be able to track Federal spending from congressional appropriation down to purchase and grant details — what was bought, from whom, when, and for how much….(More)”

Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Case studies of emerging practice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Javiera Atenas and Leo Havemann: “…is the outcome of a collective effort that has its origins in the 5th Open Knowledge Open Education Working Group call, in which the idea of using Open Data in schools was mentioned. It occurred to us that Open Data and open educational resources seemed to us almost to exist in separate open worlds.

We decided to seek out evidence in the use of open data as OER, initially by conducting a bibliographical search. As we could not find published evidence, we decided to ask educators if they were in fact, using open data in this way, and wrote a post for this blog (with Ernesto Priego) explaining our perspective, called The 21st Century’s Raw Material: Using Open Data as Open Educational Resources. We ended the post with a link to an exploratory survey, the results of which indicated a need for more awareness of the existence and potential value of Open Data amongst educators…..

the case studies themselves. They have been provided by scholars and practitioners from different disciplines and countries, and they reflect different approaches to the use of open data. The first case study presents an approach to educating both teachers and students in the use of open data for civil monitoring via Scuola di OpenCoesione in Italy, and has been written by Chiara Ciociola and Luigi Reggi. The second case, by Tim Coughlan from the Open University, UK, showcases practical applications in the use of local and contextualised open data for the development of apps. The third case, written by Katie Shamash, Juan Pablo Alperin & Alessandra Bordini from Simon Fraser University, Canada, demonstrates how publishing students can engage, through data analysis, in very current debates around scholarly communications and be encouraged to publish their own findings. The fourth case by Alan Dix from Talis and University of Birmingham, UK, and Geoffrey Ellis from University of Konstanz, Germany, is unique because the data discussed in this case is self-produced, indeed ‘quantified self’ data, which was used with students as material for class discussion and, separately, as source data for another student’s dissertation project. Finally, the fifth case, presented by Virginia Power from University of the West of England, UK, examines strategies to develop data and statistical literacies in future librarians and knowledge managers, aiming to support and extend their theoretical understanding of the concept of the ‘knowledge society’ through the use of Open Data….(More)

The book can be downloaded here Open Data as Open Educational Resources

Building Trust and Protecting Privacy: Progress on the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The White House: “Today, the White House is releasing the Privacy and Trust Principles for the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI). These principles are a foundation for protecting participant privacy and building trust in activities within PMI.

PMI is a bold new research effort to transform how we characterize health and treat disease. PMI will pioneer a new model of patient-powered research that promises to accelerate biomedical discoveries and provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients. The initiative includes development of a new voluntary research cohort by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a novel regulatory approach to genomic technologies by the Food and Drug Administration, and new cancer clinical trials by the National Cancer Institute at NIH.  In addition, PMI includes aligned efforts by the Federal government and private sector collaborators to pioneer a new approach for health research and healthcare delivery that prioritizes patient empowerment through access to information and policies that enable safe, effective, and innovative technologies to be tested and made available to the public.

Following President Obama’s launch of PMI in January 2015, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy worked with an interagency group to develop the Privacy and Trust Principles that will guide the Precision Medicine effort. The White House convened experts from within and outside of government over the course of many months to discuss their individual viewpoints on the unique privacy challenges associated with large-scale health data collection, analysis, and sharing. This group reviewed the bioethics literature, analyzed privacy policies for large biobanks and research cohorts, and released a draft set of Principles for public comment in July 2015…..

The Privacy and Trust Principles are organized into 6 broad categories:

  1. Governance that is inclusive, collaborative, and adaptable;
  2. Transparency to participants and the public;
  3. Respecting participant preferences;
  4. Empowering participants through access to information;
  5. Ensuring appropriate data sharing, access, and use;
  6. Maintaining data quality and integrity….(More)”

2015 Digital Cities: Winners Experiment with Forward-Thinking Tech Projects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

List of winners at Govtech:

1st place // City of Philadelphia, Pa.

A savvy mix of data-driven citizen engagement, tech modernization and outside-the-box thinking powered Philadelphia to its first-place ranking. A new city websitelaunched last year is designed to provide new levels of user convenience. For instance, three navigation options are squeezed into the top of the site — a search bar, a list of common actions like “report a problem” or “pay a bill,” and a menu of city functions arranged topically — giving citizens multiple ways to find what they need. The site was created using agile principles, launching as a work in progress in December and shaped by user feedback. The city also is broadening its use of open data as a citizen-engagement tool. A new generation of civic apps relies on open data sets to give residents easy access to property tax calculations, property ownership information anddetailed maps of various city resources. These improvements in customer-facing services have been facilitated by upgrades to back-end systems that are improving reliability and reducing staff support requirements. The city estimates that half of its IT systems now are procured as a service. Finally, an interesting pilot involving the city IT department and a local middle school is aimed at drawing more kids into STEM-related careers. Students met weekly in the city Innovation Lab for a series of hands-on experiences led by members of the Philadelphia Office of Information Technology.

2nd place // City of Los Angeles, Calif.

Second-ranked Los Angeles is developing a new model for funding innovative ideas, leveraging private-sector platforms to improve services, streamlining internal processes and closing the broadband gap. The city established a $1 million innovation fund late last year to seed pilot projects generated by city employees’ suggestions. More than a dozen projects have been launched so far. Through open APIs, the city trades traffic information with Google’s Waze traffic app. The app consumes city traffic data to warn drivers about closed roads, hazards and dangerous intersections, while the city transportation department uses information submitted by Waze users to identify potholes, illegal road construction and traffic patterns. MyPayLA, launched by the LA Controller’s Office and the city Information Technology Agency, is a mobile app that lets city employees view their payroll information on a mobile device. And theCityLinkLA broadband initiative is designed to attract broadband providers to the city with expedited permitting and access to existing assets like streetlights, real estate and fiber.

2nd place // City of Louisville, Ky.

Louisville’s mobile-friendly Web portal garnered the city a second-place finish in the Center for Digital Government’s Best of the Web awards earlier this year. Now, Louisville has a No. 2 ranking in the 2015 Digital Cities Survey to add to its trophy case. Besides running an excellent website — built on the open source Drupal platform and hosted in the cloud — Louisville is equipping its entire police force with body-worn cameras and expects to be finished by the end of 2015. Video from 1,000 officers, as well as footage from Metro Watch cameras placed around the city, will be stored in the cloud. Louisville’s Metro Police Department, one of 21 cities involved in the White House Police Data Initiative, also became one of the first in the nation to release data sets on assaulted officers, arrests and citations, and hate crimes on the city’s open data portal. In addition, a public-private partnership called Code Louisville offers free technology training to local residents. More than 500 people have taken 12-week classes to learn Web or mobile development skills.

3rd place // City of Kansas City, Mo.

Kansas City’s Art of Data initiative may be one of the nation’s most creative attempts to engage citizens through open data. The city selected 10 local artists earlier this year to turn information from its open data site into visual art. The artists pulled information from 10 different data sets, ranging from life expectancy by ZIP code to citizen satisfaction with the safety of their neighborhoods. The exhibit drew a large crowd when it opened in June, according to the city, and more than 3,000 residents eventually viewed the works of art. Kansas City also was chosen to participate in a new HUD digital inclusion program called ConnectHome, which will offer broadband access, training, digital literacy programs and devices for residents in assisted housing units. And the city is working with a local startup business, RFP365, to simplify its RFP process. Through a pilot partnership, Kansas City will use the RFP365 platform — which lets buyers track and receive bids from vendors and suppliers — to make the government purchasing process easier and more transparent.

3rd place // City of Phoenix, Ariz.

The development of a new citywide transportation plan in Phoenix offers a great example of how to use digital engagement tools. Using the MindMixer platform, the city developed a website to let citizens suggest ideas for new transit services and street infrastructure, as well as discuss a range of transportation-related issues. Using polling, mapping, open-ended questions and discussion prompts, residents directly helped to develop the plan. The engagement process reached more 3,700 residents and generated hundreds of comments online. In addition, a city-led technology summit held late last year brought together big companies, small businesses and citizens to discuss how technology could improve city operations and boost economic development. And new court technology lets attorneys receive hearing notifications on a mobile device and enables Web and interactive voice response (IVR) payments for a variety of cases.

…(More)”

Does Open Data Need Journalism?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jonathan Stoneman at Reuters Institute for Journalism: “The Open Data movement really came into being when President Obama issued his first policy paper, on his first day in office in January 2009. The US government opened up thousands of datasets to scrutiny by the public, by journalists, by policy-makers. Coders and developers were also invited to make the data useful to people and businesses in all manner of ways. Other governments across the globe followed suit, opening up data to their populations.

Opening data in this way has not resulted in genuine openness, save in a few isolated cases. In the USA and a few European countries, developers have created apps and websites which draw on Open Data, but these are not reaching a mass audience.

At the same time, journalists are not seen by government as the end users of these data. Data releases, even in the best cases, are uneven, and slow, and do not meet the needs of journalists. Although thousands of journalists have been learning and adopting the new skills of datajournalism they have tended to work with data obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation.

Stories which have resulted from datajournalists’ efforts have rarely been front page news; in many cases data-driven stories have ended up as lesser stories on inside pages, or as infographics, which relatively few people look at.

In this context, therefore, Open Data remains outside the mainstream of journalism, and out of the consciousness of the electorate, begging the question, “what are Open Data for?”, or as one developer put it – “if Open Data is the answer, what was the question?” Openness is seen as a badge of honour – scores of national governments have signed pledges to make data open, often repeating the same kind of idealistic official language as the previous announcement of a conversion to openness. But these acts are “top down”, and soon run out of momentum, becoming simply openness for its own sake. Looking at specific examples, the United States is the nearest to a success story: there is a rich ecosystem – made up of government departments, interest groups and NGOs, the media, civil society – which allows data driven projects the space to grow and the airtime to make an impact. (It probably helped that the media in the US were facing an existential challenge urgent enough to force them to embrace new, inexpensive, ways of carrying out investigative reporting).

Elsewhere data are making less impact on journalism. In the UK the new openness is being exploited by a small minority. Where data are made published on the data.gov.uk website they are frequently out of date, incomplete, or of limited new value, so where data do drive stories, these tend to be data released under FOI legislation, and the resulting stories take the form of statistics and/or infographics.

In developing countries where Open Data Portals have been launched with a fanfare – such as Kenya, and more recently Burkina Faso – there has been little uptake by coders, journalists, or citizens, and the number of fresh datasets being published drops to a trickle, and are soon well out of date. Small, apparently randomly selected datasets are soon outdated and inertia sets in.

The British Conservative Party, pledging greater openness in its 2010 manifesto, foresaw armies of “Armchair Auditors” who would comb through the data and present the government with ideas for greater efficiency in the use of public funds. Almost needless to say, these armies have never materialised, and thousands of datasets go unscrutinised by anybody. 2 In countries like Britain large amounts of data are being published but going (probably) unread and unscrutinised by anybody. At the same time, the journalists who want to make use of data are getting what they need through FOI, or even by gathering data themselves. Open Data is thus being bypassed, and could become an irrelevance. Yet, the media could be vital agents in the quest for the release of meaningful, relevant, timely data.

Governments seem in no hurry to expand the “comfort zone” from which they release the data which shows their policies at their most effective, and keeping to themselves data which paints a gloomier picture. Journalists seem likely to remain in their comfort zone, where they make use of FOI and traditional sources of information. For their part, journalists should push for better data and use it more, working in collaboration with open data activists. They need to change the habits of a lifetime and discuss their sources: revealing the source and quality of data used in a story would in itself be as much a part of the advocacy as of the actual reporting.

If Open Data are to be part of a new system of democratic accountability, they need to be more than a gesture of openness. Nor should Open Data remain largely the preserve of companies using them for commercial purposes. Governments should improve the quality and relevance of published data, making them genuinely useful for journalists and citizens alike….(More)”