[open-government] Paper "Exploration, Extraction and 'Rawification'. The Shaping of Transparency in the Back Rooms of Open Data"

Thu Mar 6 16:45:55 UTC 2014

Dear All,

I would like to share with you a paper we co-wrote with Jérôme Denis
(Telecom ParisTech) and presented recently.

It is entitled "Exploration, Extraction and 'Rawification'. The Shaping of
Transparency in the Back Rooms of Open Data" and deals with the concrete
operations prior to the release of open data.

You can download it here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2403069<http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpapers%2Essrn%2Ecom%2Fsol3%2Fpapers%2Ecfm%3Fabstract_id%3D2403069&urlhash=rJ-e&_t=tracking_anet>

Abstract:
With the advent of open data initiatives, raw data has been staged as a
crucial element of government transparency. If the consequences of such
data-driven transparency have already been discussed, we still don't know
much about its back rooms. What does it mean for an administration to open
its data? Following information infrastructure studies, this communication
aims to question the modes of existence of raw data in administrations.
Drawing on an ethnography of open government data projects in several
French administrations, it shows that data are not ready-at-hand resources.
Indeed, three kinds of operations are conducted that progressively
instantiate open data. The first one is exploration. Where are, and what
are, the data within the institution are tough questions, the response to
which entails organizational and technical inquiries. The second one is
extraction. Data are encapsulated in databases and its release implies a
sometimes complex disarticulation process. The third kind of operations is
'rawification'. It consists in a series of tasks that transforms what used
to be indexical professional data into raw data. To become opened, data are
(re)formatted, cleaned, ungrounded. Though largely invisible, these
operations foreground specific 'frictions' that emerge during the
sociotechnical shaping of transparency, even before data publication and
reuses.

-- 
*Samuel Goëta *| @samgoeta
Open Knowledge Foundation France | fr.okfn.org
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