[open-government] Economic benefits of open data

Mon Nov 15 15:34:06 UTC 2010

Right to information activists, including myself, routinely make the
argument that proactive disclosure will reduce the burden of processing
requests for information, and in some countries (eg India), this is even
built into the law. However, I do not know of any proper study on this
relationship. Intuitively, outside of the routine release of very basic
information, I believe it is equally likely that more proactive disclosure
may actually stimulate more requests for information (through whetting
peoples' appetites for information).

It may be good advocacy, but I am not sure it is correct. Certainly it is
not correct to allocate all or even most of the costs of running a right
to information system against this, since costly items such as the
processing of appeals will hardly be affected (if you have to fight public
authorities in the context of a request, they are hardly going to disclose
the information proactively).

Toby

> Hi,
>
> Even the people in Washington would say that the figure is somewhat
> dubious. Although it could be argued that it is collective R&D.
>
> One of the arguments that we use with the Open Data Cities project and the
> one that seems to have most traction at a local authority level - in
> Greater Manchester, UK at least, is that the cost of servicing requests
> that under  FOIA and Environmental Information Regulations. This is
> estimated at £3-4 million p.a. £38 million p.a for UK.
>
> Although a proportion of the requests wouldn't be suitable for release as
> Open Data due to sensitivity of information, a significant proportion of
> requests would be reduced if there was a mechanism for proactive release.
>
> Cheers
>
> Julian
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> open-government at lists.okfn.org
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>

___________________________________
Toby Mendel

Centre for Law and Democracy
toby at law-democracy.org
Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
Fax: +1 902 431-3689
www.law-democracy.org