[okfn-be] Business cases / ROI

[Pieter Colpaert]

Hi Bart,

Have you seen the statements from Neelie Kroes on "open data is a goldmine"?

http://www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl/digitaal-besturen/nieuws/kroes-open-data-is-een-goudmijn.3097230.lynkx

Apart from that I think it's not a very good idea to try to quantify the
benefits of an open data policy by financial return. I often compare
quantifying an open data policy by quantifying the serendipity per
square km: it will lead to bogus results which proof nothing at all,
although everyone knows serendipity exists.

More important reasons
=======================

(I'm sure I have forgotten a lot of them, so people on the list, feel
free to add yours)

Economical
-----------

Instead of having different private companies having to compete against
each other by who has the best quality of data, we will get companies
that compete by who has the best service. This leads to better and more
services, new start-ups who pay taxes, and so on.

For instance: in the EU you can become a reseller of train tickets. The
schedules are however not open data, which makes it very hard to resell
tickets in Belgium if we cannot know at what time a train leaves.

Data quality
-------------

No dataset is perfect. There are always errors in it.

We can however try to limit the errors by making the data public and
allowing people to send feedback.

Example: a list of all public toilets can be kept up to date by people
reporting that a certain toilet has disappeared.

Internal policy
----------------

 * Implementing an open data policy is a very good excuse and a very
nice opportunity to stream-line the internal data policy. For instance:
   - which datasets are maintained by which service?
   - who is the authentic source of a dataset?

 * Services will save time finding datasets. They will save money too
because other services do not need to charge another service any longer.
A lot of administrative back and forth invoicing is substituted by
having a bit of administrative work updating your data's meta-data.

 * Government services itself will become data maintainers rather than
interface designers. Interfaces that need to be created, can be created
through co-creation. In the Ghent Living Lab, they have already created
"Take a look inside" this way, saving a lot of money on a public tender.
Take a look inside is an app for iPad, iPhone and android smart-phones
which allows you to look inside historical buildings with a closed door
by scanning a Qr-code.

For democracy
--------------

 * Transparency: by opening up data you cannot give a biased idea as a
result of this data → specialised people can draw their own conclusions.
People will feel more secure in a country where they can study data
gathered by the government.
 * More extensive e-participation: many eye-balls make every problem
shallow and when someone has a complaint, he/she can bolster the
complaint with raw data.

Technological
--------------

The "ultimate" use-case is that everyone can use their favourite
application (whether it's on a pc, phone, pda, glasses or watch) to get
information about something.

An example: when a Japanese man uses his Japanese app to know more about
cultural heritage in his country, he should be able to use the same app
that he's accustomed to in Europe. The only way that's going to happen
is when Belgium's cultural heritage data are linked to the European data
(http://europeana.eu). The raw data should be on the web in the same way
that we have sites with certain non-machine-readable content nowadays.
The technology (the semantic web) is already there, it's only policy (in
some countries) that's lacking behind.

But it's more than just cultural heritage data. It's also about
legislation, register of companies, weather, traffic, historical data,
public transport, and so on.

This might also increase ticket sales for museums, public transport
companies, and so on.

Peer pressure
--------------

* The Netherlands, the UK, the EU, the USA, Kenya... are doing it.
Belgium is lacking behind by at least 2 years again.

* The city of Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp and the Flemish Government are
doing open data. The Federal government should however help these
instances by investing in data.gov.be.

Kind regards,

Pieter

On 10/15/2012 09:11 AM, Hanssens Bart wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for some solid business cases / ROI-calculations for open data.
> 
> I did find some figures on http://wiki.linkedgov.org/index.php/The_economic_impact_of_open_data,
> but more examples are always welcome, especially if they can be linked to open data in .be or .nl / .lu  / .fr.
> 
> I'm not looking for general statements like "XYZ expects that open data will fuel a multi-billion market etc",
> but for more specific ones, like:
> 
> - "agency X in country Y spent Z.000 EUR on opening up data, now saving N.000 EUR / year"
> - "if dataset X would be available as open data, our app would generate X.000 EUR revenue"
> - "company X now spends Y.000 EUR on converting department Y's PDFs to machine-readable data"
> 
> Any help is greatly appreciated :-)
> 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Bart
> 
> _______________________________________________
> okfn-be mailing list
> okfn-be at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-be
> 


-- 
OKFN Open Transport Working group
OKFN Belgium vzw/asbl
+32 (0) 486/747122