Open DataOpen Government

Tim WilloughbyAssistant Director

LGMA

Open Government?

“If people don’t know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong”

“Jim Hacker” Open Government (I980)

My name is Tim

I explain technology…

to people who don’t understand it…

people who think they do understand it…

people who despise it…

and people who worship it.

…that help people understand how technology might help their Organisation…

I rese

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I live here... According to Google Streetmaps

9

In Technical Terms

•I’m a Webservice –•Sitting between the Technical Teams and the Business Teams, translating and relating between them..•With Plenty of SOAP and REST....

Don’t bother me with your ideas now, I’ve got a job to do!

I live in Naas…

• NAAS– Network as a Service

• Used to be a Nice place to shop!

So far ICT has not fundamentally changed government

• 1990s: lCT expected to make government more transparent, efficient and user oriented

• 2005+: disillusion as bureaucracy still in existence

• Can Cloud Help?

Jane E. Fountain – Gov 1.0 – Just Replicating the Silos on the Internet

Do We Understand What the Citizen Wants?

Yes, but its not always cohesive

Local Government

• Definite reference!

Taking theego out of

egovernment

Why would government look at Open Data

Sharing!

Local Government Evolution

Where Next…Open Data

• What we are talking about is - • Government As A Platform?

Open is forcing Radical Change With or Without the Owners / Shareholders

It is all about the Data

2010 Spend on Spatial data and Software in the USA - IDC

Issues• Data Harvesting

– How / Why does data get into your system– Position, accuracy, improvement.

• Data Management– How do we manage our data– Do we have to capture data more than once

• Geo Data– Costs of collection– Costs of Management

• Quality– Data Quality– If we can’t trust the data to Share it, how do we use it to make decisions?

Data Standards

• Most Adopting Standards from their software Supplier.

• Have to move away from this position!• Open Standards

What do we aspire to…Real Life Standards

Where do we Start

• People• Places • Events • Photos• Articles / Reviews• Concepts• Comments

Its Hard for Governments to

experiment

Why Open Data?

• More information might lead to more informed and better decisions – The Right to Knowledge…

• Higher Quality? – Open Source – More Eyes – Better Systems…

• Higher degree of effectiveness & efficiency• Strengthen trust in establishment• Leverage benefits of peer production• New business models

Why Not?

• Loss of control & power?• Undermining of statutory Powers• Loss of revenues to existing business by

threatening their established business models• Only those with the Social Tools can benefit?• Fear of the unknown

Opportunities

• Apps • Maps• Community Based Information• The power of Combining Data Sets

Opportunities

• Fix My Streets

FixMyStreet

• Programme for Government• In local services, we will establish a website –

www.fixmystreet.ie – to assist residents in reporting problems with street lighting, drainage, graffiti, waste collection and road and path maintenance in their neighbourhoods, with a guarantee that local officials will respond within two working days.

Principles of FixMyStreet

• Digitise everything Once.• Dynamic Data Capture• Open data• Open source– Reduce the Barriers to Adoption

• Social Media is the Glue• There can only be one fixmystreets– One Front End– More than one Back End?– Taxonomy – We all call things the same

Semantic Web

Semantic Web

Adult HumourPolitical Insight

Current Affairs

SlapStickColours

Bart is FunnyHomer - Doh!

Pages as a Database

Cool Stuff for sale

Pages as a Database

Apps

Cloud Application

Data, Data Everywhere

These are Small, Near… Far Away

Architecture Model for Open

Five level saturation model by Tim Berners-Lee ★ Available on the web (whatever format), but with an open

licence ★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel

instead of image scan of a table) ★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of

excel) ★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF

and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff

★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context