[open-government] Some issues related to users, intermediaries and interoperability

Thu Jan 27 12:13:51 UTC 2011

Dear all,

In the six months that I've been on this list, I've been following the
discussions, trying to look at how I can use ideas and results from this
forum in my own work. That work is mostly consulting in the public
sector (government organisations and cultural heritage institutions)
related to information management and interoperability.

There are a couple of things that I note and like to offer for
discussion (my apologies if these issues have already been discussed and
resolved):

1. Whenever the term "citizen" comes up, I am not sure how that class of
users is differentiated. It seems to me that there are at least four
different profiles:

a. The hacker - the person with the laptop in the backpack and a full
programming toolbox (Python, Perl, XSLT etc.) 

b. The expert - the person with good understanding of technology and its
application but no time to program and/or figure out the details of data
formats

c. The layperson - the person with basic skills in using technology,
able to install and run applications on computer and smartphone

d. The digital have-not - the person with no access to or knowledge of
technology, computers or Internet

As far as I can see, the people that are mostly the focus of the
discussions here are the hacker and the expert. Are there any studies
that have looked at or are looking at the diverse landscape of users and
their needs?

2. On the issue of the "value chain" from data producer to data
consumer, what most discussions concentrate on is a direct connection
between the two - a programmer accessing data and creating an app for
that data.

What would interest me is also to consider what types of intermediaries
there are (could/should be), i.e. organisations (public, non-profit and
for-profit) that take open government data and use it to build useful
and/or profitable, sustainable services.

In that context, it is clear (see for example the MEPSIR study I was
involved in,
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/actions_eu/policy_act
ions/mepsir/index_en.htm) that the field of government data is very
heterogeneous with some information lending itself to (commercial)
exploitation, other information with primarily social value or
information where government has a legal obligation to distribute.

What would be the relation between the type of data and the adoption of
technology and the need for legal and organisational arrangements? Would
this forum have a role in "selling" the benefits of provision and re-use
of open government data to data providers and (potential) re-users?

3. One issue that interests me very much from my own background in
building interoperable systems, is in what way data providers can work
together to build open data collections in a coherent and interoperable
way.

So far, the developments seem to look mostly at how a consumer can take
the data of a provider, maybe mix and merge this with data from other
sources to aggregate information and produce new knowledge. However, the
providers are treated as islands and consumers/programmers try to build
bridges across data islands.

In what way could or should data providers work together to implement
interoperable open data solutions? The objective would be to enable both
better "back-office" or cross-agency integration as well as making the
life of (re-)users easier (for example reducing the need for site
scraping or Linked Data vocabulary matching). Are there any
cross-agency, cross-border, cross-domain initiatives to develop and
promote common solutions and tools?

Clearly, I understand that at this time, with lots of people and
government agencies getting interested and experimenting, the best way
to get this under way is to connect hackers with data. The results of
hacking can give useful insights in what works and what not, but in the
end the objective should be user-friendly and sustainable services that
meet the needs of society. 

I am interested in views of this community. Maybe we could start mapping
out some activities for the working group in the next year or so to
start looking at some of these and other issues?

Cheers, Makx.

----------------------
Makx Dekkers
Independent Consultant
Barcelona, Spain
www.makxdekkers.com