[open-government] Economic Benefits of Open-Data - Presentation Ideas for City of Montreal

Thu Oct 28 09:58:31 UTC 2010

Hi all,

This is my first formal comment on this list, so let me introduce  
myself.

I run the Centre for Law and Democracy (www.law-democracy.org), an  
international human rights organisation based in Canada that focuses  
on promoting human rights which are foundational for democracy, such  
as the right to information (RTI or FOI), freedom of expression, the  
right to participate and the rights to assembly and association. Prior  
to that I served for over 12 years as the Senior Director for Law at  
ARTICLE 19, another international human rights NGO that focuses on  
freedom of expression and the right to information. I have for many  
years been very active internationally on right to information issues,  
working in many countries to promote the adoption and effective  
implementation of right to information laws and also on international  
standard-setting (eg I wrote both the ARTICLE 19 principles on this,  
The Public's Right to Know, and the ARTICLE 19 Model Freedom of  
Information Law).

I have not worked much in the area of "open government" (I use quotes  
because of course RTI is very much about open government too!) but I  
am starting to get more involved in it. I believe that the RTI and OG  
movements can learn a lot from each other. OG advocates can learn more  
about using human rights to promote their issue, and RTI advocates can  
learn more about some of the practical implications of openness,  
especially using modern technologies.

The issue of economic benefits from OG is an important one, but also  
one which needs to be approached responsibly if claims are to be  
credible and believed. I have seen some very impressive claims in this  
regard (reaching into the billions), but I confess I am sceptical  
about them.

I do not agree, for example, with Julian's claim below. First, the  
cost of running the FOI system in the UK is a different matter than  
the benefits to be derived from OG. Second, and related, governments  
do have to run complex FOI systems, because they do need to protect  
all sorts of information (eg private information, sensitive third  
party commercial information, sensitive security information, etc.). I  
am the first to agree that these costs could be cut if officials  
approached this issue with more of a culture of openness than by  
trying to find as many exceptions as possible to justify the non- 
release of information. But I suppose it would be very difficult to  
quantify this and it certainly cannot be blamed for the full cost of  
running an FOI system.

I would be very interested in hearing more about how economic benefits  
of OG, including those listed by Jonathan below (which, by the say,  
seem relatively modest and hence realistic compared to some of the  
claims I have seen), are calculated.

Toby

___________________________________
Toby Mendel
Executive Director

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

On 28 Oct 2010, at 03:42, Julian Tait wrote:

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> I often use the 2008 figures collected by the Constitution Unit at  
> the University College London for the cost of servicing Freedom of  
> Information Act requests in the UK i.e. the costs of maintaining a  
> closed system of £38,000,000. Although FOI requests can sometimes be  
> for information that cant be released to the public domain.
>
> Cheers
>
> Julian Tait
>
> On 28 Oct 2010, at 07:16, Jose M. Alonso wrote:
>
>> El 28/10/2010, a las 7:51, Ton Zijlstra escribió:
>>> hi Jonathan,
>>> do you have a source for the first item, the danish figures?
>>
>> In fact, I'd appreciate if you could provide sources for all of  
>> those or someone could point me to them since they would be very  
>> useful to me. I'm quite (too) often involved in ROI discussions and  
>> people usually asks for figures.
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Jose.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I will dig up a figure of the Spanish cadastral office, and the
>>> savings for citizens and themselves they calculated.
>>>
>>> best,
>>> Ton Zijlstra
>>>
>>> On Thursday, October 28, 2010, Jonathan Brun  
>>> <jbrun at jonathanbrun.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> I am scheduled to speak for 30 minutes on the economic benefits  
>>>> of open-data at the TechnoMontreal conference on November 9th in  
>>>> Montreal. Below is what I have so far, feel free to add comments  
>>>> or ideas. Ignore typos please.
>>>> L'ouverture des données du gouvernement danois (couts: 14  
>>>> millions, bénéfices 62 millions (euros))
>>>> •	Partage des informations entre les municipalités de la  
>>>> Catalogne (couts: 21.5 Millions, bénéfices : 14 millions (euros))
>>>> •	Les données météorologiques américaine supporte une industrie  
>>>> de plus de 1.5 milliards de dollars.
>>>> •	Concours d'applications qui utilisent les données ouvertes à  
>>>> Washington D.C. (couts : 50 000$, bénéfices : 2 000 000 (dollars  
>>>> US))
>>>> •	Site web sur la transparence en Californie (couts : 61 000,  
>>>> bénéfices : 20 000 000 ) et au Texas (bénéfices : 5 000 000).  
>>>> (dollars US)
>>>> •	L'accès aux informations géospatial en Angleterre et au Pays de  
>>>> Galles a augmenté le PIB de presque 320 millions de livres  
>>>> Sterling en 2008-2009.
>>>> - Entreprises qui permet au citoyens américains de comparer les  
>>>> différents programmes de retraites gouvernementales grâce au  
>>>> portail data.gov - revenues 100k - 3 millions et 10 millions.
>>>> Developpement du talent à Montréal. Les grandes entreprises de la  
>>>> Californie prennent de l'avancent et accumule des expériences, du  
>>>> talent et de la technologie. Le plus longtemps qu'on attend le  
>>>> plus difficile ca sera de ratraper.
>>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> -------------------------------------------
>>> Interdependent Thoughts
>>> Ton Zijlstra
>>>
>>> ton at tonzijlstra.eu
>>> +31-6-34489360
>>>
>>> http://zylstra.org/blog
>>> -------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> open-government mailing list
>>> open-government at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> Jose M. Alonso
>> Manager, eGovernment and Open Data, CTIC
>> co-Chair, eGovernment Interest Group, W3C
>> Senior Advisor, W3C Spain
>> Parque Científico-Tecnológico
>> C/ Ada Byron, 39
>> 33203 - Gijón, Asturias, Spain
>> tel.: +34 984390616; +34 984291212; fax: +34 984390612
>> email: josema.alonso at fundacionctic.org
>> twitter: @josemalonso
>> http://datos.fundacionctic.org
>> http://www.w3.org/eGov/
>> Política de Privacidad: http://www.fundacionctic.org/privacidad
>>
>>
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>
> Julian Tait
>
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