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Open Government Starts With Open Data… (but…)

posted by Dan Kasun on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 8:34 am

Summary:
The heavy focus in the Open Government community on just “getting the data” has obscured some of the downstream requirements that are necessary to achieve the goals of OpenGov initiatives. Sometimes it seems there’s a perception that just exposing the data is enough – and there’s an expectation that useful applications will start to “magically” appear.

The success of Open Government initiatives isn’t just about getting the data right, it will depend heavily on execution across these five elements: Data, APIs, Builders & Tools, Domain Experts, and Incentives – as well as a tangible strategy and formal mechanisms to bring them all together.

Full Article:
Aggregating and exposing information is the initial hurdle to compliance with the Open Government Directive, and is the basic prerequisite for everything else. But the Open Government Directive isn’t just an exercise in publishing data – the intent, and expectation, is that the data will be an enabler for a new dimension of Government service and citizen participation.

That said, the heavy focus in the technical community on getting the data has obscured some of the downstream requirements for getting the overall vision right. Sometimes it seems there’s a perception that just exposing the data is enough – and there’s an expectation that useful applications will start to “magically” appear. I’ve tried to avoid the cliché analogy to the “Field of Dreams” movie mantra: “If you build it, they will come…” – but it’s just too tempting in this case.

Unfortunately for most initiatives, it’s likely that “they” (consumers and citizens) will NOT come if we limit the overall focus to data publication. The fact is, most people will not have the time or the interest to download datasets and scour through them for usable tidbits… nor do most people have the context to fully understand the data or the time or interest to attempt to gain the proper insight.

In order for Open Government initiatives to produce results that will truly affect political and cultural change, we need rich, usable, and USEFUL solutions that will add real value to citizens and agencies… and that doesn’t happen by accident or merely through community enthusiasm. There are a set of moons that need to align “just right” in order to produce something that will be significantly valuable.

This set of elements that must coalesce includes the Data, the APIs, the Builders & Tools, the Domain Experts, and the Incentives.

• The Data – As mentioned above, this is the cornerstone to it all… without good data, nothing else matters. The good news: as a result of the Open Government Directive, we should start to see rapidly increasing volumes of Federal information – and many States have also implemented their own data publishing initiatives.

• The APIs – The data needs to be hosted somewhere and published in a way that makes it easily consumable. The minimal expectation should be a structured format for download, such as XML (nothing burns my britches more than getting structured data in a PDF file). The problem with downloading datasets, of course, is that someone has to be responsible for ongoing synchronization… and if many organizations are using the data, that means there will be a tremendous amount of duplicate work. The best solution: a single source of the data, exposed via open standard APIs.

• The Builders & Tools – Okay, you have the data and you have the APIs… the next thing needed are developers and designers who know how consume the data and how to create interfaces that meet the needs of Citizens and Agencies. You also need good tools and technologies as a platform for the solutions. The challenge here is getting the time and focus from developers (which I’ll talk about in my last point). There is good news here, though – as there are some great tools available.

• The Domain Experts – My favorite dataset up on Data.gov is the “2005 Toxics Release Inventory data for Guam”… it just sounds very interesting and cool. Unfortunately, I have no idea what a Toxic Release Inventory is, I’d probably be challenged to find Guam on a globe, and I have no idea how to decipher the information in the dataset. However, there is likely someone out there who completely understands the information and knows how it can be used. It is critical to engage such Domain Experts as we embark on the development of solutions – otherwise, most of the data publishing work will be a useless exercise.

• The Incentives – this one is the kicker… how do we actually get people to write applications?? Yes – there will be some that are built out of interest, curiosity, and even civic responsibility. But I think it would be unreasonable to expect those things, alone, to develop an entire ecosystem of solutions that truly meet the tenets of Open Government. There needs to be a carrot that helps incent people to spend time and money building such solutions, and that typically means that that folks need visibility into how they’re going to monetize their investment – either by selling solutions, using an advertising platform, gaining visibility in the market, providing consulting opportunities, etc.

Thus, success of Open Government initiatives isn’t just about getting the data right, it will really depend heavily on execution across the above five elements (Data, APIs, Builders & Tools, Domain Experts, and Incentives) – as well as formal mechanisms and a tangible strategy to bring them all together.

Original Article posted here: http://www.dankasun.com/archive/2010/02/09/open-government-starts-with-open-data.aspx

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Jay Kesan says:

Dan, excellent post.
Two related points.
We often think of providing citizens with information (i.e., data), when they, in fact, need knowledge. Information can only be converted to knowledge by a citizen when the information is presented both in a meaningful way so that the information can be consumed and and in an efficient manner.
Efficiency, from the citizen’s perspective, is the second important point since we have to take into account the incentives/disincentives faced by the citizen. When the cost of accessing the information is more than the benefit that might be obtained from having that information, the citizen will simply choose to be without it or choose other proxies for that information.
Ajit Jaokar says:

Thanks Dan.

>>>
Agency X puts up a list of data they can spend their resources on delivering in an open way, and allow consumers to vote on them to prioritize what gets delivered, and what doesn’t.
<<<
This is a good idea! kind rgds Ajit
Sharon Dawes says:

Dan & All, thanks for this thread. I think it nicely illustrates the complex challenges of open government. In my view, we need multiple approaches that have complementary objectives. Liberating data and letting many flowers bloom encourages innovation without trying to pre-define it. But taking care that the data itself is in good shape for use (including packaging it with some domain knowledge) is equally important. The first can be an incentive for the second. The second can help move the first more effectively.
Dan Kasun says:

Hi Justin – couldn’t agree more about posting video for all public meetings (bookmarked, transcribed, and summarized) should’ve been done 5 years ago.

In addition, I think that any public meeting should also be webcast with full participatory support (with a tool such as Livemeeting). Requiring folks to attend such meetings in person is a waste of time and facilities… and is a severe limiter of citizen participation.

Yes – there are some issues with this (e.g., insuring that attendees/contributors are actually from the district and that such online collaboration doesn’t get hijacked by outside organizations…) but there good technical solutions to many of them.

Net net: in this day and age, all town hall meetings should be virtual town hall meetings – fully recorded and archived. Our kids will demand it.

-Dan
Dan Kasun says:

Thanks, Ajit-

I agree that there needs to be an overall focus on data liberations and availability, but the agencies have finite time and finite resources – and absent any guidance on what data they need to publish, they’ll likely resort to the fastest, easiest, and least risky information – whether it’s valuable or not. There will be data that has broad use/applicability and value, data that has limited use (but maybe high value to some), and then data that will literally have no use at all.

Given limited resources, it’d be great to prioritize in a better way – and letting consumers and the market decide is a good option. This doesn’t mean that we only need to focus on monetizable datasets, just anything that has greatest consumer interest (being monetizable is just one driver of interest).

What I’d like to see: Agency X puts up a list of data they can spend their resources on delivering in an open way, and allow consumers to vote on them to prioritize what gets delivered, and what doesn’t. That will help keep the lists of datasets clean, and allow the agencies to focus on the items that will provide the nearest term value. At the same time, there should be a parallel initiative (but lower priority, IMO) to just get everything possible out into the public domain.

Very good feedback and food for thought, though… appreciate the input!

_Dan
Ajit Jaokar says:

Dan

Good post – agree in some points but when you say ‘In some ways, we’re putting the cart before the horse’ – I think thats the whole point i.e. its intentional to liberate data and seek unintended consequences because the alternative(find incentives first) is a non starter.

Ex: the Guam dataset. Its not monetizable. Guam is in the south paciific with a population of 178,000. However, it is indeed possible that such an application if created may be subsequently of commercial use to someone – example conservation researchers.

My fear is: trying to find commercial incentives for applications at the outset will mean many worthy applications(ex for conservation of environment in this case) may never be built.

My belief is perhaps we should focus not on the incentives but on making the costs of the applications very low. Doing so, will lead to the mindset of a 1000 flowers bloom, of which some(we don’t know which) may be commercially successful and others may be useful but not commercial(like the one about Guam)

thoughts?

kind rgds
Ajit
Justin M says:

One USEFUL thing that local governments can do NOW to be more open is to put their public meetings on video and post them online. If the agenda items are bookmarked, it could be very useful to the average citizen so that they don’t have to sit through long meetings or miss out on important discussion info if they couldn’t make a meeting. Local government meetings aren’t always at the most convenient times either. Thoughts?
Dan Kasun says:

Couldn’t agree more – the users need to define a set of “scenarios” for which Government needs to provide openness and transparency, as well as collaboration and participation opportunities… and that will allow Governments to be more targeted about where they spend their efforts.

Right now, it’s a shotgun approach… and I’d bet that 90%+ of the data that is being published will never be used… simply because it doesn’t fit any instrinsic consumer value. In some ways, we’re putting the cart before the horse… and a lot of time and money is being spent on activity that won’t be useful to anyone.

-Dan
Gregory G Curtin says:

Good point, Dan, to focus on the usefulness of data, not simply “just data.” However, if government itself decides on what data is “useful” we may end up defeating the very purpose of open data…let the users decide what is useful and what is not.

Open Government Starts With Open Data… (but…)

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Dan Kasun

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