The transition towards transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Roland Harwood at the Open Data Institute Blog: “It’s a very exciting time for the field of open data, especially in the UK public sector which is arguably leading the world in this emerging discipline right now, in no small part thanks to the efforts to the Open Data Institute. There is a strong push to release public data and to explore new innovations that can be created as a result.
For instance, the Ordnance Survey have been leading the way with opening up half of their data for others to use, complemented by their GeoVation programme which provides support and incentive for external innovators to develop new products and services.
More recently the Technology Strategy Board have been working with the likes of NERC, Met Office, Environment Agency and other public agencies to help solve business problems using environmental data.…
It goes without saying that data won’t leap up and create any value by itself any more than a pile of discarded parts outside a factory will assemble themselves into a car.   We’ve found that the secret of successful open data innovation is to be with people working to solve some specific problem.  Simply releasing the data is not enough. See below a summary of our Do’s and Don’ts of opening up data
Do…

  • Make sure data quality is high (ODI Certificates can help!)
  • Promote innovation using data sets. Transparency is only a means to an end
  • Enhance communication with external innovators
  • Make sure your co-creators are incentivised
  • Get organised, create a community around an issue
  • Pass on learnings to other similar organisations
  • Experiement – open data requires new mindsets and business models
  • Create safe spaces – Innovation Airlocks – to share and prototype with trusted partners
  • Be brave – people may do things with the data that you don’t like
  • Set out to create commercial or social value with data

Dont…

  • Just release data and expect people to understand or create with it. Publication is not the same as communication
  • Wait for data requests, put the data out first informally
  • Avoid challenges to current income streams
  • Go straight for the finished article, use rapid prototyping
  • Be put off by the tensions between confidentiality, data protection and publishing
  • Wait for the big budget or formal process but start big things with small amounts now
  • Be technology led, be business led instead
  • Expect the community to entirely self-manage
  • Restrict open data to the IT literate – create interdisciplinary partnerships
  • Get caught in the false dichotomy that is commercial vs. social

In summary we believe we need to assume openness as the default (for organisations that is, not individuals) and secrecy as the exception – the exact opposite to how most commercial organisations currently operate. …”

Making All Voices Count

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Launch of Making All Voices Count: “Making All Voices Count is a global initiative that supports innovation, scaling-up, and research to deepen existing innovations and help harness new technologies to enable citizen engagement and government responsiveness….Solvable problems need not remain unsolved. Democratic systems in the 21st century continue to be inhibited by 19th century timescales, with only occasional opportunities for citizens to express their views formally, such as during elections. In this century, many citizens have access to numerous tools that enable them to express their views – and measure government performance – in real time.
For example, online reporting platforms enable citizens to monitor the election process by reporting intimidation, vote buying, bias and misinformation; access to mobile technology allows citizens to update water suppliers on gaps in service delivery; crisis information can be crowdsourced via eyewitness reports of violence, as reported by email and sms.
The rise of mobile communication, the installation of broadband and the fast-growing availability of open data, offer tremendous opportunities for data journalism and new media channels. They can inspire governments to develop new ways to fight corruption and respond to citizens efficiently, effectively and fairly. In short, developments in technology and innovation mean that government and citizens can interact like never before.
Making All Voices Count is about seizing this moment to strengthen our commitments to promote transparency, fight corruption, empower citizens, and harness the power of new technologies to make government more effective and accountable.
The programme specifically aims to address the following barriers that weaken the link between governments and citizens:

  • Citizens lack incentives: Citizens may not have the necessary incentives to express their feedback on government performance – due to a sense of powerlessness, distrust in the government, fear of retribution, or lack of reliable information
  • Governments lack incentives: At the same time, governments need incentives to respond to citizen input whenever possible and to leverage citizen participation. The government’s response to citizens should be reinforced by proactive, public communication.  This initiative will help create incentives for government to respond.  Where government responds effectively, citizens’ confidence in government performance and approval ratings are likely to increase
  • Governments lack the ability to translate citizen feedback into action: This could be due to anything from political constraints to a lack of skills and systems. Governments need better tools to effectively analyze and translate citizen input into information that will lead to solutions and shape resource allocation. Once captured, citizens’ feedback (on their experiences with government performance) must be communicated so as to engage both the government and the broader public in finding a solution.
  • Citizens lack meaningful opportunities: Citizens need greater access to better tools and know-how to easily engage with government in a way that results in government action and citizen empowerment”

Explore the world’s constitutions with a new online tool

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Official Google Blog: “Constitutions are as unique as the people they govern, and have been around in one form or another for millennia. But did you know that every year approximately five new constitutions are written, and 20-30 are amended or revised? Or that Africa has the youngest set of constitutions, with 19 out of the 39 constitutions written globally since 2000 from the region?
The process of redesigning and drafting a new constitution can play a critical role in uniting a country, especially following periods of conflict and instability. In the past, it’s been difficult to access and compare existing constitutional documents and language—which is critical to drafters—because the texts are locked up in libraries or on the hard drives of constitutional experts. Although the process of drafting constitutions has evolved from chisels and stone tablets to pens and modern computers, there has been little innovation in how their content is sourced and referenced.
With this in mind, Google Ideas supported the Comparative Constitutions Project to build Constitute, a new site that digitizes and makes searchable the world’s constitutions. Constitute enables people to browse and search constitutions via curated and tagged topics, as well as by country and year. The Comparative Constitutions Project cataloged and tagged nearly 350 themes, so people can easily find and compare specific constitutional material. This ranges from the fairly general, such as “Citizenship” and “Foreign Policy,” to the very specific, such as “Suffrage and turnouts” and “Judicial Autonomy and Power.”
Our aim is to arm drafters with a better tool for constitution design and writing. We also hope citizens will use Constitute to learn more about their own constitutions, and those of countries around the world.”

Open Data 500 gives voice to companies using government data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
data
Fedscoop: “Federal agencies have been working toward a Nov. 1 deadline to unlock their data, as mandated by an executive order issued in May. But what has yet to be examined is how useful those data sets have been to companies and the economic value they have created.
Enter the Open Data 500 – a project that gives companies the opportunity to provide feedback to government about which data sets are most useful and which type of data demand exists.
The initiative is part of a broader effort by the New York University’s Governance Lab’s research of how government can work more effectively with its constituents, said Joel Gurin, GovLab’s senior adviser and director of Open Data 500.
“We hope this will be a research project that illuminates the way government open data sets are being used by the private sector and help people gauge the economic impact and also help to make open data more effective, more useful,” he said.

Companies participating in Open Data 500 submit their responses via a survey to give insight into which data has been easiest to use and which type of data they would like to see made available. The survey also ranks agencies’ data sets on how useful they are.
What the project won’t do is score companies based on their use of federal data, but instead gives them a chance to interact with government and express which data they want.”

Open Data’s Road to Better Transit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stephen Goldsmith in GovTech: “Data is everywhere. It now costs less to capture, store and process data than ever before, thanks to better technology and economies of scale. And more than ever, the public expects government to use data to improve its services. Increasingly, government’s problem is not capturing the data, but having sufficient resources to clean and analyze the information in order to address issues, improve performance and make informed decisions.
In particular, public transit not only produces an immense volume of data, but it also stands to benefit from good analysis in the form of streamlined operations and a better rider experience. More than 200 transit agencies worldwide — from Buffalo to Budapest — are well on their way. They are publishing their schedules, fares and station locations to Google’s TransitDataFeed in a common format and for free. Such information is called open data, which is any data that’s publicly shared.
Open data allows anyone to download and use the information for his or her purposes, particularly software developers who can use it to create mobile and Web-based applications. Google, for example, incorporates the information into its Maps application to help riders plan trips and learn about service updates across bus, rail and bike systems. Other third parties have built successful apps on top of open transit data.
Innovations like these allow transit agencies to leverage external expertise and resources, and have also reduced customer service costs and increased ridership levels. In fact, some members of the American Public Transportation Association believe that open data initiatives have catalyzed more innovation throughout the industry than any other factor in the last three decades….
In Philadelphia, the City Planning Commission is using text message surveying to capture the opinions of transit riders across the demographic spectrum to determine the usefulness of a proposed rapid transit line into downtown. Philadelphia uses the transit information to inform its comprehensive city plan, but this digital citizen survey mechanism, created by a company called Textizen, is a platform that can be used by any government that wants to solicit feedback or begin a dialog with its citizens.
In 2012, Dubuque, Iowa, collaborated with IBM to run a Smarter Travel pilot study. The pilot used a mobile app and RFIDs to collect anonymous travel data from volunteer transit riders. The city has already used the data to open a new late-night bus line for third-shift workers and college students, and by next year will incorporate data into more route planning decisions.”

Introducing Socrata’s Open Data Magazine: Open Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“Socrata is dedicated to telling the story of open data as it evolves, which is why we have launched a quarterly magazine, “Open Innovation.”
As innovators push the open data movement forward, they are transforming government and public engagement at every level. With thousands of innovators all over the world – each with their own successes, advice, and ideas – there is a tremendous amount of story for us to tell.
The new magazine features articles, advice, infographics, and more dedicated exclusively to the open data movement. The first issue, Fall 2013, will cover topics such as:

  • What is a Chief Data Officer?
  • Who should be on your open data team?
  • How do you publish your first open data set?

It will also include four Socrata case studies and opinion pieces from some of the industry’s leading innovators…
The magazine is currently free to download or read online through the Socrata website. It is optimized for viewing on tablets and smart phones, with plans in the works to make the magazine available through the Kindle Fire and iTunes magazine stores.
Check out the first issue of Open Innovation at www.socrata.com/magazine.”

GovLab Seeks Open Data Success Stories

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Wyatt Kash in InformationWeek: “A team of open government advocates, led by former White House aide Beth Novek, has launched a campaign to identify 500 examples of how freely available government data is being put to profitable use in the private sector.Open Data 500 is part of a broader effort by New York University’s Governance Lab (GovLab) to conduct the “first real, comprehensive study of the use of open government data in the private sector,” said Joel Gurin, founder of OpenDataNow.com and senior adviser at GovLab.
Novek, who served in the White House as the first U.S. deputy CTO and led the White House Open Government Initiative from 2009-2011, founded GovLab while also teaching at the MIT Media Lab and NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
In an interview with InformationWeek Government, Gurin explained that the goal of GovLab, and the Open Data 500 project, is to show how technology and new uses of data can make government more effective, and create more of a partnership between government and the public. “We’re also trying to draw on more public expertise to solve government problems,” he said….
Gurin said Open Data 500 will primarily look at U.S.-based, revenue-producing companies or organizations where government data is a key resource for their business. While the GovLab will focus initially on the use of federal data, it will also look at cases where entrepreneurs are making use of state or local data, but in scalable fashion.
“This goes one step further than the datapaloozas” championed by U.S. CTO Todd Park to showcase tools developed by the private sector using government data. “We’re trying to show how we can make data sets even more impactful and useful.”
Gurin said the GovLab team hopes to complete the study by the end of this year. The team has already identified 150 companies as candidates. To submit your company for consideration, visit thegovlab.org/submit-your-company; to submit another company, visit thegovlab.org/open500“

Here’s how the Recovery Act became a test case for open data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrea Peterson in the Washington Post: “Making sure that government money is spent efficiently and without fraud can be difficult. You need to collect the right data, get the information to the right people, and deal with the sheer volume of projects that need tracking. Open data make the job easier to draw comparisons across programs and agencies. And when data are released to the public, everyone can help be a government watchdog.
When President Obama was first elected in 2008, he promised transparency. Almost immediately after he was sworn into office, he had an opportunity to test that promise with the implementation of the Recovery Act. And it worked….
Recovery.gov used geospatial technology to “allow Americans to drill down to their zip codes exactly where government money was being spent in their neighborhood.” It’s this micro-level of attention that increased accountability, according to Devaney.
“The degree of transparency forced them to get it right because they didn’t want to be embarrassed by their neighbors who they knew were going to these Web sites and could see what they were doing with the money.”
As to the second question of what data to collect: “I finally put my foot down and said no more than 100 pieces of data,” Devaney recalls, “So naturally, we came up to 99.” Of course, even with limiting themselves to that number of data points, transparency and fraud prevention was a daunting task, with the 300,000 some grantees to keep tabs on.
But having those data points in an open format was what allowed investigators to use “sophisticated cyber-technology and software to review and analyze Recovery-related data and information for any possible concerns or issues.” And they were remarkably successful on that end. A status report in October, 2010 showed “less than 0.2 percent of all reported awards currently have active fraud investigations.” Indeed, for Devaney’s  tenure leading the board he says the level of fraud hovered somewhere below half of one percent of all awards.”

OpenPrism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
thomas levine: “There are loads of open data portals There’s even portal about data portals. And each of these portals has loads of datasets.
OpenPrism is my most recent attempt at understanding what is going on in all of these portals. Read on if you want to see why I made it, or just go to the site and start playing with it.

People don’t know much about open data

Nobody seems to know what is in the data portals. Many people know about datasets that are relevant to their work, municipality, &c., but nobody seems to know about the availability of data on broader topics, and nobody seems to have a good way of finding out what is available.
If someone does know any of this, he probably works for an open data portal. Still, he probably doesn’t know much about what is going on in other portals.

Naive search method

One difficulty in discovering open data is the search paradigm.
Open data portals approach searching data as if data were normal prose; your search terms are some keywords, a category, &c., and your results are dataset titles and descriptions.
There are other approaches. For example, AppGen searches for datasets with the same variables as each other, and the results are automatically generated app prototypes.

Siloed open data portals

Another issue is that people tend to use data from only one portal; they use their local government’s portals or their organizations’ portals.
Let me give you a couple examples of why this should maybe be different. Perhaps I’m considering making an app to help people find parking, and I want to see what parking lot data are available before I put much work into the app. Or maybe I want to find all of the data about sewer overflows so that I can expand my initiative to reduce water pollution.
OpenPrism is one small attempt at making it easier to search. Rather than going to all of the different portals and making a separate search for each portal, you type your search in one search bar, and you get results from a bunch of different Socrata, CKAN and Junar portals.”

Open Access

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Reports by the UK’s House of Commons, Business, Innovation and Skills Committee: “Open access refers to the immediate, online availability of peer reviewed research articles, free at the point of access (i.e. without subscription charges or paywalls). Open access relates to scholarly articles and related outputs. Open data (which is a separate area of Government policy and outside the scope of this inquiry) refers to the availability of the underlying research data itself. At the heart of the open access movement is the principle that publicly funded research should be publicly accessible. Open access expanded rapidly in the late twentieth century with the growth of the internet and digitisation (the transcription of data into a digital form), as it became possible to disseminate research findings more widely, quickly and cheaply.
Whilst there is widespread agreement that the transition to open access is essential in order to improve access to knowledge, there is a lack of consensus about the best route to achieve it. To achieve open access at scale in the UK, there will need to be a shift away from the dominant subscription-based business model. Inevitably, this will involve a transitional period and considerable change within the scholarly publishing market.
For the UK to transition to open access, an effective, functioning and competitive market in scholarly communications will be vital. The evidence we saw over the course of this inquiry shows that this is currently far from the case, with journal subscription prices rising at rates that are unsustainable for UK universities and other subscribers. There is a significant risk that the Government’s current open access policy will inadvertently encourage and prolong the dysfunctional elements of the scholarly publishing market, which are a major barrier to access.
See Volume I and  Volume II “