[@OKau] DataStart

Tue Nov 3 18:37:06 UTC 2015

Yep I saw it.

Initiatives in this area are always good, however I worry about what
problem this is designed to solve.

Is it the government's problem that startups aren't using lots of open data
to facilitate their businesses, or is it an actual problem where businesses
with commercial ideas involving open data cannot find alternative funding
options?

I wonder whether the first step should be to ensure that the open data
being released by government is both the right data for companies to use to
deliver on commercial needs and is being released to a commercial standard.

Frankly while I totally support the increasingly open release of data
there's very little that I see being released at a commercially ready level
and granularity. Weather and public transport data at state level being a
few of the exceptions.

There will be startup opportunists who bake a little open data into their
startups to access this fund. There also may be a few hack participants
able to take their open data fuelled ideas forward in a more commercial
way.

I am sure the government will happily support both types in the hope this
creates some momentum - and I truly hope it does.

However unless these start-ups have solid ideas with strong business cases
and could essentially be profitable even if they had to collect the data
themselves or pay for it, by and large government is still an unreliable
source of timely and relevant open data and I would prefer to see a large
proportion of these funds reinvested into ensuring government provides
reliable data rather than on fostering businesses build on data sources
that could disappear overnight,

Hmm - will make that a blog post :)

On Monday, 2 November 2015, Ryan Cross <ryanecross at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not sure if anyone else saw this announcement. Any thoughts?
>
>
> http://www.afr.com/news/politics/pm-opens-data-to-crowdsourced-startup-ideas-20151030-gknbuh
>

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