Data is Inert — It’s What You Do With It That Counts

Kevin Merritt, CEO and Founder, Socrata, in NextGov: “In its infancy, the open data movement was mostly about offering catalogs of government data online that concerned citizens and civic activists could download. But now, a wide variety of external stakeholders are using open data to deliver new applications and services. At the same time, governments themselves are harnessing open data to drive better decision-making.
In a relatively short period of time, open data has evolved from serving as fodder for data publishing to fuel for open innovation.
One of the keys to making this transformation truly work, however, is our ability to re-instrument or re-tool underlying business systems and processes so managers can receive open data in consumable forms on a regular, continuous basis in real-time….”