Open Data:

Opportunities and challenges for government and business.

Dr Dan Herbert

The ability to collect, store, analyse and report

data fundamentally affects the way that organisations

function.

Today’s lecture

• Some background concepts.• What is open data?• The data available• What can be done with it?• The government – opportunities and challenges• Business – opportunities and challenges• Some conclusions…

Stop me

and ask!

Some Concepts…

• Open source:• Free beer and free speech• Software, tools, data• Licences – GNU, creative commons etc…

• Hackers, developers and script kiddies

More concepts…

• The wisdom of crowds• Why Wikipedia works• Wikinomics

• The semantic web• Tagged data• Linked data

Closed data

Organisations have locked up data, formats and ideas to extract value from them. Value came from the fact they controlled them.

But value can come from sharing….the gold mine…

Open data

“Open Data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data are freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.” (opendefinition.org 2011)

Free (as in speech) and Free (as in beer)

So what data is available?

• Data.gov.uk• Mapping data• Spending data• Contracts

• World bank• Data.eu

• Bus stops• Train times – this

week!• Boris Bikes• Etc etc etc…

‘Unofficial open data’

• Scraperwiki.org• Harvesting data from web pages• A bit naughty….• But good fun!• An Example – pool temperatures.

What can be done

• Web pages• Openlylocal• OpenCharities - a scraped page

• Analysis tools• Timetric• Spotlight on Spend• Armchair Auditor on the Wight

What can be done

• Visualistions• Wheredoesmymoneygo.

• Applications• Boris Bikes

• Journalism• Datablog

A welcome from the Prime Minister!

Government…opportunities

• Accountability• Many eyes…• Armchair auditing

• Value for money…• Effectiveness• Efficiency• Economy

• Free services – train times app, boris bikes, etc• Cheap, agile service developments• Open street maps

Government…challenges

“Those with the power to determine what enters into organisational accounts have the means to articulate

and diffuse their values and concerns, and subsequently to monitor, observe and regulate the

actions of those that are now accounted for.”

(Hopwood, 1984)

What do we account for?

• In the past this has been set by experts• Open data lets anyone aggregate figures• FOI lets anyone get data• Institutions need to give context to data• “The restaurant bill”

How to create value from government data?

• Sell the data• Cash gain• Pirating?

• Free the data• Wider economic gain

Business…opportunities

• Market analysis• Collection costs are falling

• Competitive data• Business research• New market segments

• Using data to provide services

• Co-production• Sharing data for mutual gain – genome project

Business... Challenges

• Some business models are dead!• CIPFA benchmarking

• Pressure to disclose• Financial analysis/rating agencies• If we have it for government and contractors why not

everyone?

• Strategic change: knowledge is less valuable than the skill to use it.• Music is less valuable than performers

And more…

New ways to link and use data

It’s data underneath all this. The more that is open the better!

A new age??

• Social media has been the focus but DATA underpins value.

• The semantic web is emerging based on data• Location based iPhone apps

• The web of things….

A new age?

• The ‘many eyes’ of the web enable new ways of working• Holding power to account• Creating new models

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

— Tim Berners-Lee, 1999

Benchmarking business at risk

• CIPFA make money collecting and analysing spending and performance data.

• BUT• Data collection form is is FOIable• Anyone can collect and analyse returns.

• That makes the business weak