Reality Mining: Using Big Data to Engineer a Better World


New book by Nathan Eagle and Kate Greene : “Big Data is made up of lots of little data: numbers entered into cell phones, addresses entered into GPS devices, visits to websites, online purchases, ATM transactions, and any other activity that leaves a digital trail. Although the abuse of Big Data—surveillance, spying, hacking—has made headlines, it shouldn’t overshadow the abundant positive applications of Big Data. In Reality Mining, Nathan Eagle and Kate Greene cut through the hype and the headlines to explore the positive potential of Big Data, showing the ways in which the analysis of Big Data (“Reality Mining”) can be used to improve human systems as varied as political polling and disease tracking, while considering user privacy.

Eagle, a recognized expert in the field, and Greene, an experienced technology journalist, describe Reality Mining at five different levels: the individual, the neighborhood and organization, the city, the nation, and the world. For each level, they first offer a nontechnical explanation of data collection methods and then describe applications and systems that have been or could be built. These include a mobile app that helps smokers quit smoking; a workplace “knowledge system”; the use of GPS, Wi-Fi, and mobile phone data to manage and predict traffic flows; and the analysis of social media to track the spread of disease. Eagle and Greene argue that Big Data, used respectfully and responsibly, can help people live better, healthier, and happier lives.”

How you can help build a more agile government


at GovFresh: “Earlier this year, I began doing research work with CivicActions on agile development in government — who was doing it, how and what the needs were to successfully get it deployed.
After the Healthcare.gov launch mishaps, calls for agile practices as the panacea to all of government IT woes reached a high. While agile as the ultimate solution oversimplifies the issue, we’ve evolved as a profession (both software development and public service) that moving towards an iterative approach to operations is the way of the future.
My own formal introduction with agile began with my work with CivicActions, so the research coincided with an introductory immersion into how government is using it. Having been involved with startups for the past 15 years, iterative development is the norm, however, the layer of project management processes has forced me to be a better professional overall.
What I’ve found through many discussions and interviews is that you can’t just snap your fingers and execute agile within the framework of government bureaucracy. There are a number of issues — from procurement to project management training to executive-level commitment to organizational-wide culture change — that hinder its adoption. For IT, launching a new website or app is this easy part. Changing IT operational processes and culture is often overlooked or avoided, especially for a short-term executive, because they reach into the granular organizational challenges most people don’t want to bother with.
After talking with a number of agile government and private sector practitioners, it was clear there was enthusiasm around how it could be applied to fundamentally change the way government works. Beyond just execution from professional project management professionals, everyone I spoke with talked about how deploying agile gives them a stronger sense of public service.
What came from these discussions is the desire to have a stronger community of practitioners and those interested in deploying it to better support one another.
To meet that need, a group of federal, state, local government and private sector professionals have formed Agile for Gov, a “community-powered network of agile government professionals.”…

The Emergence of Government Innovation Teams


Hollie Russon Gilman at TechTank: “A new global currency is emerging.  Governments understand that people at home and abroad evaluate them based on how they use technology and innovative approaches in their service delivery and citizen engagement.  This raises opportunities, and critical questions about the role of innovation in 21st century governance.
Bloomberg Philanthropies and Nesta, the UK’s Innovation foundation, recently released a global report highlighting 20 government innovation teams.  Importantly, the study included teams that were established and funded by all levels of government (city, regional and national), and aims to find creative solutions to seemingly intractable solutions. This report features 20 teams across six continents and features some basic principles and commonalities that are instructive for all types of innovators, inside and outside, of government.
Using Government to Locally Engage
One of the challenges of representational democracy is that elected officials and government officials spend time in bureaucracies isolated from the very people they aim to serve.  Perhaps there can be different models.  For example, Seoul’s Innovation Bureau is engaging citizens to re-design and re-imagine public services.  Seoul is dedicated to becoming a Sharing City; including Tool Kit Centers where citizens can borrow machinery they would rarely use that would also benefit the whole community. This approach puts citizens at the center of their communities and leverages government to work for the people…
As I’ve outlined in a earlier TechTank post, there are institutional constraints for governments to try the unknown.  There are potential electoral costs, greater disillusionment, and gaps in vital service delivery. Yet, despite all of these barriers there are a variety of promising tools. For example, Finland has Sitra, an Innovation fund, whose mission is to foster experimentation to transform a diverse set of policy issues including sustainable energy and healthcare. Sitra invests in both the practical research and experiments to further public sector issues as well as invest in early stage companies.
We need a deeper understanding of the opportunities, and challenges, of innovation in government.    Luckily there are many researchers, think-tanks, and organizations beginning analysis.  For example, Professor and Associate Dean Anita McGahan, of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, calls for a more strategic approach toward understanding the use of innovation, including big data, in the public sector…”

Opportunities for strengthening open meetings with open data


at the Sunlight Foundation Blog: “Governments aren’t alone in thinking about how open data can help improve the open meetings process. There are an increasing number of tools governments can use to help bolster open meetings with open data. From making public records generated by meetings more easily accessible and reusable online to inviting the public to participate in the decision-making process from wherever they may be, these tools allow governments to upgrade open meetings for the opportunities and demands of the 21st Century.
Improving open meetings with open data may involve taking advantage of simple solutions already freely available online, developing new tools within government, using open-source tools, or investing in new software, but it can all help serve the same goal: bringing more information online where it’s easily accessible to the public….
It’s not just about making open meetings more accessible, either. More communities are thinking about how they can bring government to the people. Open meetings are typically held in government-designated buildings at specified times, but are those locations and times truly accessible for most of the public or for those who may be most directly impacted by what’s being discussed?
Technology presents opportunities for governments to engage with the public outside of regularly scheduled meetings. Tools like Speakup and Textizen, for example, are being used to increase public participation in the general decision-making process. A continually increasing array of toolsprovidenewways for government and the public to identify issues, share ideas, and work toward solutions, even outside of open meetings. Boston, for example, took an innovative approach to this issue with its City Hall To Go truck and other efforts, bringing government services to locations around the city rather than requiring people to come to a government building…”

Fifteen open data insights


Tim Davies from ODRN: “…below are the 15 points from the three-page briefing version, and you can find a full write-up of these points for download. You can also find reports from all the individual project partners, including a collection of quick-read research posters over on the Open Data Research Network website.

15 insights into open data supply, use and impacts

(1) There are many gaps to overcome before open data availability, can lead to widespread effective use and impact. Open data can lead to change through a ‘domino effect’, or by creating ripples of change that gradually spread out. However, often many of the key ‘domino pieces’ are missing, and local political contexts limit the reach of ripples. Poor data quality, low connectivity, scarce technical skills, weak legal frameworks and political barriers may all prevent open data triggering sustainable change. Attentiveness to all the components of open data impact is needed when designing interventions.
(2) There is a frequent mismatch between open data supply and demand in developing countries. Counting datasets is a poor way of assessing the quality of an open data initiative. The datasets published on portals are often the datasets that are easiest to publish, not the datasets most in demand. Politically sensitive datasets are particularly unlikely to be published without civil society pressure. Sometimes the gap is on the demand side – as potential open data users often do not articulate demands for key datasets.
(3) Open data initiatives can create new spaces for civil society to pursue government accountability and effectiveness. The conversation around transparency and accountability that ideas of open data can support is as important as the datasets in some developing countries.
(4) Working on open data projects can change how government creates, prepares and uses its own data. The motivations behind an open data initiative shape how government uses the data itself. Civil society and entrepreneurs interacting with government through open data projects can help shape government data practices. This makes it important to consider which intermediaries gain insider roles shaping data supply.
(5) Intermediaries are vital to both the supply and the use of open data. Not all data needed for governance in developing countries comes from government. Intermediaries can create data, articulate demands for data, and help translate open data visions from political leaders into effective implementations. Traditional local intermediaries are an important source of information, in particular because they are trusted parties.
(6) Digital divides create data divides in both the supply and use of data. In some developing countries key data is not digitised, or a lack of technical staff has left data management patchy and inconsistent. Where Internet access is scarce, few citizens can have direct access to data or services built with it. Full access is needed for full empowerment, but offline intermediaries, including journalists and community radio stations, also play a vital role in bridging the gaps between data and citizens.
(7) Where information is already available and used, the shift to open data involves data evolution rather than data revolution. Many NGOs and intermediaries already access the information which is now becoming available as data. Capacity building should start from existing information and data practices in organisations, and should look for the step-by-step gains to be made from a data-driven approach.
(8) Officials’ fears about the integrity of data are a barrier to more machine-readable data being made available. The publication of data as PDF or in scanned copies is often down to a misunderstanding of how open data works. Only copies can be changed, and originals can be kept authoritative. Helping officials understand this may help increase the supply of data.
(9) Very few datasets are clearly openly licensed, and there is low understanding of what open licenses entail. There are mixed opinions on the importance of a focus on licensing in different contexts. Clear licenses are important to building a global commons of interoperable data, but may be less relevant to particular uses of data on the ground. In many countries wider conversation about licensing are yet to take place.
(10) Privacy issues are not on the radar of most developing country open data projects, although commercial confidentiality does arise as a reason preventing greater data transparency. Much state held data is collected either from citizens or from companies. Few countries in the ODDC study have weak or absent privacy laws and frameworks, yet participants in the studies raised few personal privacy considerations. By contrast, a lack of clarity, and officials’ concerns, about potential breaches of commercial confidentiality when sharing data gathered from firms was a barrier to opening data.
(11) There is more to open data than policies and portals. Whilst central open data portals act as a visible symbol of open data initiatives, a focus on portal building can distract attention from wider reforms. Open data elements can also be built on existing data sharing practices, and data made available through the locations where citizens, NGOs are businesses already go to access information.
(12) Open data advocacy should be aware of, and build upon, existing policy foundations in specific countries and sectors. Sectoral transparency policies for local government, budget and energy industry regulation, amongst others, could all have open data requirements and standards attached, drawing on existing mechanisms to secure sustainable supplies of relevant open data in developing countries. In addition, open data conversations could help make existing data collection and disclosure requirements fit better with the information and data demands of citizens.
(13) Open data is not just a central government issue: local government data, city data, and data from the judicial and legislative branches are all important. Many open data projects focus on the national level, and only on the executive branch. However, local government is closer to citizens, urban areas bring together many of the key ingredients for successful open data initiatives, and transparency in other branches of government is important to secure citizens democratic rights.
(14) Flexibility is needed in the application of definitions of open data to allow locally relevant and effective open data debates and advocacy to emerge. Open data is made up of various elements, including proactive publication, machine-readability and permissions to re-use. Countries at different stages of open data development may choose to focus on one or more of these, but recognising that adopting all elements at once could hinder progress. It is important to find ways to both define open data clearly, and to avoid a reductive debate that does not recognise progressive steps towards greater openness.
(15) There are many different models for an open data initiative: including top-down, bottom-up and sector-specific. Initiatives may also be state-led, civil society-led and entrepreneur-led in their goals and how they are implemented – with consequences for the resources and models required to make them sustainable. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to open data. More experimentation, evaluation and shared learning on the components, partners and processes for putting open data ideas into practice must be a priority for all who want to see a world where open-by-default data drives real social, political and economic change.
You can read more about each of these points in the full report.”

The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance


New book by Stephen Goldsmith, and Susan P. Crawford: “The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance. The Responsive City is a guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age that will help leaders link important breakthroughs in about technology and big data analytics with age-old lessons of small-group community input to create more agile, competitive, and economically resilient cities. Featuring vivid case-studies highlighting the work of individuals in New York, Boston, Rio de Janeiro, Stockholm, Indiana, and Chicago, the book provides a compelling model for the future of cities and states. The authors demonstrate how digital innovations will drive a virtuous cycle of responsiveness centered on “empowerment” : 1) empowering public employees with tools to both power their performance and to help them connect more personally to those they service, 2) empowering constituents to see and understand problems and opportunities faced by cities so that they can better engage in the life of their communities, and 3) empowering leaders to drive towards their missions and address the grand challenges confronting cities by harnessing the predictive power of cross-government Big Data, the book will help mayors, chief technology officers, city administrators, agency directors, civic groups and nonprofit leaders break out of current paradigms in order to collectively address civic problems. Co-authored by Stephen Goldsmith, former Mayor of Indianapolis, and current Director of the Innovations in Government Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The Responsive City highlights the ways in which leadership, empowered government employees, thoughtful citizens, and 21st century technology can combine to improve government operations and strengthen civic trust. It provides actionable advice while exploring topics like:

  • Visualizing service delivery and predicting improvement
  • Making the work of government employees more meaningful
  • Amplification and coordination of focused citizen engagement
  • Big Data in big cities – stories of surprising successes and enormous potential”

 

The Quiet Revolution: Open Data Is Transforming Citizen-Government Interaction


Maury Blackman at Wired: “The public’s trust in government is at an all-time low. This is not breaking news.
But what if I told you that just this past May, President Obama signed into law a bill that passed Congress with unanimous support. A bill that could fundamentally transform the way citizens interact with their government. This legislation could also create an entirely new, trillion-dollar industry right here in the U.S. It could even save lives.
On May 9th, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) became law. There were very few headlines, no Rose Garden press conference.
I imagine most of you have never heard of the DATA Act. The bill with the nerdy name has the potential to revolutionize government. It requires federal agencies to make their spending data available in standardized, publicly accessible formats.  Supporters of the legislation included Tea Partiers and the most liberal Democrats. But the bill is only scratches the surface of what’s possible.
So What’s the Big Deal?
On his first day in Office, President Obama signed a memorandum calling for a more open and transparent government. The President wrote, “Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” This was followed by the creation of Data.gov, a one-stop shop for all government data. The site does not just include financial data, but also a wealth of other information related to education, public safety, climate and much more—all available in open and machine-readable format. This has helped fuel an international movement.
Tech minded citizens are building civic apps to bring government into the digital age; reporters are now more able to connect the dots easier, not to mention the billions of taxpayer dollars saved. And last year the President took us a step further. He signed an Executive Order making open government data the default option.
Cities and states have followed Washington’s lead with similar open data efforts on the local level. In San Francisco, the city’s Human Services Agency has partnered with Promptly; a text message notification service that alerts food stamp recipients (CalFresh) when they are at risk of being disenrolled from the program. This service is incredibly beneficial, because most do not realize any change in status, until they are in the grocery store checkout line, trying to buy food for their family.
Other products and services created using open data do more than just provide an added convenience—they actually have the potential to save lives. The PulsePoint mobile app sends text messages to citizens trained in CPR when someone in walking distance is experiencing a medical emergency that may require CPR. The app is currently available in almost 600 cities in 18 states, which is great. But shouldn’t a product this valuable be available to every city and state in the country?…”

This Exercise App Tracks Trends on How We Move In Different Cities


Mark Byrnes at CityLab: “An app designed to encourage exercise can also tell us a lot about the way different cities get from point A to B.
The app, called Human, runs in the background of your iPhone, automatically detecting activities like walking, cycling, running, and motorized transport. The point is to encourage you to exercise for at least 30 minutes a day.
Almost a year since Human launched (last August), its developers have released stunning visualization of all that movement: 7.5 million miles traveled by their app users so far.
On their site, you can look into the mobility data inside 30 different cities. Once you click on one, you’ll be greeted with a pie chart that shows the distribution of activity within that city lined up against a pie chart that shows the international average.
In the case of Amsterdam, its transportation clichés are verified. App users in the bike-loving city use two wheels way more than they use four. And they walk about as much as anywhere else:

Human then shows the paths traveled by their users. When it comes to Amsterdam, the results look almost exactly like the city’s entire street grid, no matter what physical activity is being shown:

Selected Readings on Economic Impact of Open Data


The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of open data was originally published in 2014.

Open data is publicly available data – often released by governments, scientists, and occasionally private companies – that is made available for anyone to use, in a machine-readable format, free of charge. Considerable attention has been devoted to the economic potential of open data for businesses and other organizations, and it is now widely accepted that open data plays an important role in spurring innovation, growth, and job creation. From new business models to innovation in local governance, open data is being quickly adopted as a valuable resource at many levels.

Measuring and analyzing the economic impact of open data in a systematic way is challenging, and governments as well as other providers of open data seek to provide access to the data in a standardized way. As governmental transparency increases and open data changes business models and activities in many economic sectors, it is important to understand best practices for releasing and using non-proprietary, public information. Costs, social challenges, and technical barriers also influence the economic impact of open data.

These selected readings are intended as a first step in the direction of answering the question of if we can and how we consider if opening data spurs economic impact.

Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Bonina, Carla. New Business Models and the Values of Open Data: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities. NEMODE 3K – Small Grants Call 2013. http://bit.ly/1xGf9oe

  • In this paper, Dr. Carla Bonina provides an introduction to open data and open data business models, evaluating their potential economic value and identifying future challenges for the effectiveness of open data, such as personal data and privacy, the emerging data divide, and the costs of collecting, producing and releasing open (government) data.

Carpenter, John and Phil Watts. Assessing the Value of OS OpenData™ to the Economy of Great Britain – Synopsis. June 2013. Accessed July 25, 2014. http://bit.ly/1rTLVUE

  • John Carpenter and Phil Watts of Ordnance Survey undertook a study to examine the economic impact of open data to the economy of Great Britain. Using a variety of methods such as case studies, interviews, downlad analysis, adoption rates, impact calculation, and CGE modeling, the authors estimates that the OS OpenData initiative will deliver a net of increase in GDP of £13 – 28.5 million for Great Britain in 2013.

Capgemini Consulting. The Open Data Economy: Unlocking Economic Value by Opening Government and Public Data. Capgemini Consulting. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://bit.ly/1n7MR02

  • This report explores how governments are leveraging open data for economic benefits. Through using a compariative approach, the authors study important open data from organizational, technological, social and political perspectives. The study highlights the potential of open data to drive profit through increasing the effectiveness of benchmarking and other data-driven business strategies.

Deloitte. Open Growth: Stimulating Demand for Open Data in the UK. Deloitte Analytics. December 2012. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://bit.ly/1oeFhks

  • This early paper on open data by Deloitte uses case studies and statistical analysis on open government data to create models of businesses using open data. They also review the market supply and demand of open government data in emerging sectors of the economy.

Gruen, Nicholas, John Houghton and Richard Tooth. Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target.  Accessed July 24, 2014, http://bit.ly/UOmBRe

  • This report highlights the potential economic value of the open data agenda in Australia and the G20. The report provides an initial literature review on the economic value of open data, as well as a asset of case studies on the economic value of open data, and a set of recommendations for how open data can help the G20 and Australia achieve target objectives in the areas of trade, finance, fiscal and monetary policy, anti-corruption, employment, energy, and infrastructure.

Heusser, Felipe I. Understanding Open Government Data and Addressing Its Impact (draft version). World Wide Web Foundation. http://bit.ly/1o9Egym

  • The World Wide Web Foundation, in collaboration with IDRC has begun a research network to explore the impacts of open data in developing countries. In addition to the Web Foundation and IDRC, the network includes the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, the Open Development Technology Alliance and Practical Participation.

Howard, Alex. San Francisco Looks to Tap Into the Open Data Economy. O’Reilly Radar: Insight, Analysis, and Reach about Emerging Technologies.  October 19, 2012.  Accessed July 24, 2014. http://oreil.ly/1qNRt3h

  • Alex Howard points to San Francisco as one of the first municipalities in the United States to embrace an open data platform.  He outlines how open data has driven innovation in local governance.  Moreover, he discusses the potential impact of open data on job creation and government technology infrastructure in the City and County of San Francisco.

Huijboom, Noor and Tijs Van den Broek. Open Data: An International Comparison of Strategies. European Journal of ePractice. March 2011. Accessed July 24, 2014.  http://bit.ly/1AE24jq

  • This article examines five countries and their open data strategies, identifying key features, main barriers, and drivers of progress for of open data programs. The authors outline the key challenges facing European, and other national open data policies, highlighting the emerging role open data initiatives are playing in political and administrative agendas around the world.

Manyika, J., Michael Chui, Diana Farrell, Steve Van Kuiken, Peter Groves, and Elizabeth Almasi Doshi. Open Data: Unlocking Innovation and Performance with Liquid Innovation. McKinsey Global Institute. October 2013. Accessed July 24, 2014.  http://bit.ly/1lgDX0v

  • This research focuses on quantifying the potential value of open data in seven “domains” in the global economy: education, transportation, consumer products, electricity, oil and gas, health care, and consumer finance.

Moore, Alida. Congressional Transparency Caucus: How Open Data Creates Jobs. April 2, 2014. Accessed July 30, 2014. Socrata. http://bit.ly/1n7OJpp

  • Socrata provides a summary of the March 24th briefing of the Congressional Transparency Caucus on the need to increase government transparency through adopting open data initiatives. They include key takeaways from the panel discussion, as well as their role in making open data available for businesses.

Stott, Andrew. Open Data for Economic Growth. The World Bank. June 25, 2014. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://bit.ly/1n7PRJF

  • In this report, The World Bank examines the evidence for the economic potential of open data, holding that the economic potential is quite large, despite a variation in the published estimates, and difficulties assessing its potential methodologically. They provide five archetypes of businesses using open data, and provides recommendations for governments trying to maximize economic growth from open data.

How to harness the wisdom of crowds to improve public service delivery and policymaking


Eddie Copeland in PolicyBytes: “…In summary, government has used technology to streamline transactions and better understand the public’s opinions. Yet it has failed to use it to radically change the way it works. Have public services been reinvented? Is government smaller and leaner? Have citizens, businesses and civic groups been offered the chance to take part in the work of government and improve their own communities? On all counts the answer is unequivocally, no. What is needed, therefore, is a means to enable citizens to provide data to government to inform policymaking and to improve – or even help deliver – public services. What is needed is a Government Data Marketplace.

Government Data Marketplace

A Government Data Marketplace (GDM) would be a website that brought together public sector bodies that needed data, with individuals, businesses and other organisations that could provide it. Imagine an open data portal in reverse: instead of government publishing its own datasets to be used by citizens and businesses, it would instead publish its data needs and invite citizens, businesses or community groups to provide that data (for free or in return for payment). Just as open data portals aim to provide datasets in standard, machine-readable formats, GDM would operate according to strict open standards, and provide a consistent and automated way to deliver data to government through APIs.
How would it work? Imagine a local council that wished to know where instances of graffiti occurred within its borough. The council would create an account on GDM and publish a new request, outlining the data it required (not dissimilar to someone posting a job on a site like Freelancer). Citizens, businesses and other organisations would be able to view that request on GDM and bid to offer the service. For example, an app-development company could offer to build an app that would enable citizens to photograph and locate instances of graffiti in the borough. The app would be able to upload the data to GDM. The council could connect its own IT system to GDM to pass the data to their own database.
Importantly, the app-development company would specify via GDM how much it would charge to provide the data. Other companies and organisations could offer competing bids for delivering the same – or an even better service – at different prices. Supportive local civic hacker groups could even offer to provide the data for free. Either way, the council would get the data it needed without having to collect it for itself, whilst also ensuring it paid the best price from a number of competing providers.
Since GDM would be a public marketplace, other local authorities would be able to see that a particular company had designed a graffiti-reporting solution for one council, and could ask for the same data to be collected in their own boroughs. This would be quick and easy for the developer, as instead of having to create a bespoke solution to work with each council’s IT system, they could connect to all of them using one common interface via GDM. That would good for the company, as they could sell to a much larger market (the same solution would work for one council or all), and good for the councils, as they would benefit from cheaper prices generated from economies of scale. And since GDM would use open standards, if a council was unhappy with the data provided by one supplier, it could simply look to another company to provide the same information.
What would be the advantages of such a system? Firstly, innovation. GDM would free government from having to worry about what software it needed, and instead allow it to focus on the data it required to provide a service. To be clear: councils themselves do not need a graffiti app – they need data on where graffiti is. By focusing attention on its data needs, the public sector could let the market innovate to find the best solutions for providing it. That might be via an app, perhaps via a website, social media, or Internet of Things sensors, or maybe even using a completely new service that collected information in a radically different way. It will not matter – the right information would be provided in a common format via GDM.
Secondly, the potential cost savings of this approach would be many and considerable. At the very least, by creating a marketplace, the public sector would be able to source data at a competitive price. If several public sector bodies needed the same service via GDM, companies providing that data would be able to offer much cheaper prices for all, as instead of having to deal with hundreds of different organisations (and different interfaces) they could create one solution that worked for all of them. As prices became cheaper for standard solutions, this would in turn encourage more public sector bodies to converge on common ways of working, driving down costs still further. Yet these savings would be dwarfed by those possible if GDM could be used to source data that public sectors bodies currently have to manually collect themselves. Imagine if instead of having teams of inspectors to locate instances X, Y or Z, it could instead source the same data from citizens via GDM?
There would no limit to the potential applications to which GDM could be put by central and local government and other public sector bodies: for graffiti, traffic levels, environmental issues, education or welfare. It could be used to crowdsource facts, figures, images, map coordinates, text – anything that can be collected as data. Government could request information on areas on which it previously had none, helping them to assign their finite resources and money in a much more targeted way. New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics has demonstrated that up to 500% increases in the efficiency of providing some public services can be achieved, if only the right data is available.
For the private sector, GDM would stimulate the growth of innovative new companies offering community data, and make it easier for them to sell data solutions across the whole of the public sector. They could pioneer in new data methods, and potentially even take over the provision of entire services which the public sector currently has to provide itself. For citizens, it would offer a means to genuinely get involved in solving issues that matter to their local communities, either by using apps made by businesses, or working to provide the data themselves.
And what about the benefits for policymaking? It is important to acknowledge that the idea of harnessing the wisdom of crowds for policymaking is currently experimental. In the case of Policy Futures Markets, some applications have also been considered to be highly controversial. So which methods would be most effective? What would they look like? In what policy domains would they provide most value? The simple fact is that we do not know. What is certain, however, is that innovation in open policymaking and crowdsourcing ideas will never be achieved until a platform is available that allows such ideas to be tried and tested. GDM could be that platform.
Public sector bodies could experiment with asking citizens for information or answers to particular, fact-based questions, or even for predictions on future outcomes, to help inform their policymaking activities. The market could then innovate to develop solutions to source that data from citizens, using the many different models for harnessing the wisdom of crowds. The effectiveness of those initiatives could then be judged, and the techniques honed. In the worst case scenario that it did not work, money would not have been wasted on building the wrong platform – GDM would continue to have value in providing data for public service needs as described above….”