[open-government] [datameet] Is Open Data a Good Idea for the Open Government Partnership?

Thu Sep 29 09:54:19 UTC 2011

I wrote about my own take at:
http://www.webfoundation.org/2011/09/open-data-seeing-well-beyond-the-portals/

Full text below.

I've just forwarded information about an event that the Web Foundation and the World Bank are organizing next Monday on the topic of Open Data in Developing Countries.
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-government/2011-September/001558.html

We already know there are differences, we already know Open Data approach cannot be the same as in UK, US, etc. (although several lessons learned apply), but that doesn't mean it's something that should be dismissed. There's much more to an Open Data Initiative than transparency and iPhone apps and I've to say that a significant amount of the time we're spending on telling people about OGD is spent on getting them to understand this broader vision.

Please, don't underestimate the power of "open data done well"

-- Josema

----------

Open Data: Seeing Well Beyond the Portals

The more I listen to people talk about open data, the more wrong assumptions I hear. I’ve been involved in the development and deployment of several open data initiatives for local, regional, national governments and I’m fighting these assumptions more frequently that I would have liked. I’m writing this post while in New York City upon attending the Open Government Partnership launch where governments and civil society organizations have met to also discuss the way forward, and I thought it was a good time to put the most important arguments together to point people at them on this important occasion.

Let me say it clearly, open data is not about:

	• technology alone,
	• building a portal,
	• transparency for the sake of transparency.

Back in mid 2009 when the U.S. data.gov was launched, some governments started to look at the portal and Open Government Initative as examples of innovative, engaging government. Many got interested in learning more about why that was started, how it was working and how they could replicate the successes.

I met a number of people by the time (some of them became clients later in time) where the discussion went along this line: “looks cool, innovative, Obama is leading which is good, would you help us build our portal?” My answer was always: “no”.  Building an open data portal should never ever be and end in itself and it’s not what open data is about. True that all initiatives have built one, but this should be just one of the deliverables of an initiative and never, ever and end in itself.

Experience tells me technology means probably less than 10% of an open data initiative and I’m more worried than ever before that a majority of the discussions are about technology alone and the other 90% gets ignored.

Open data is an important pillar of open government initiatives and those are about changing the way government and its constituencies relate and communicate. Would that goal be solved with technology alone? Of course, not.

There are various dimensions that should be taken into account when considering starting an open data initiative: political, legal, organizative, technical, social and economic.

Questions that people should be asking themselves should include: “what’s the best way to build the portal so people can more easily get access to and reuse information?” but should go well beyond that.

Unfortunately, dimensions beyond the technical one are often ignored, and the main reason is that they mean deep, important government reform. It’s much easier to build a sexy portal with downloadable datasets and applications and visualizations people can play with (but that are not always useful at all) than to think about legislation needs to support the initiative, capacity building requirements in the public administration, allocation of budget in these crisis times to make it a sustainable effort and similar topics.

There’s one other important issue that I’d like to address: transparency and the often overlooked benefits of open data.
I’m talking to many that believe that an open data initiative will deliver transparency and accountability . Well, it may or may not. It will all depend on the approach, as I said above. For this to become a reality, I love the concept of Director Nigel Shadbolt: “publish data that matters”. This is certainly a must and not only for transparency but for achieving the greater benefits of open data. Those are too often overlooked and are extremely important:

	• Increased internal government efficiency and effectiveness
	• Increased citizen participation and inclusion through extended offers of services closer to people’s needs
	• Increased number of services to people due to an increased base of potential service providers
	• New business opportunities and jobs for application and service developers
	• New synergies between government, public administration and civil society organizations
	• New innovative uses of open data that can help spur innovation and development in the IT sector

The main goal of the Web Foundation in this area is to build local sustainable open data ecosystems with a clear focus on low and middle income countries, and if we want to succeed we cannot avoid those important discussions, we cannot overlook that 90%, and we will not. We want governments to achieve the promises and benefits of open data and we will we also need to involve all relevant actors (from the top level political layer to the public officials and civil society organizations, academia, media, private businesses and citizenries at large) for the initiatives to be successful over time.

The launch of the Open Government Partnership is an important milestone but governments are yet to commit the resources needed to fulfill the commitments and they need to understand the whole picture if they are to succeed. I’m glad that Web Foundation Directors Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt had the chance to participate in plenary sessions and made many valid points along the lines of the post. I hope the more we talk to the various stakeholders about this, the more they get it. It won’t be easy, but we stand ready to help.

-- 

Jose M. Alonso
Program Manager, Open Data
World Wide Web Foundation
email: josema at webfoundation.org
twitter: @josemalonso
skype: josema.alonso
http://www.webfoundation.org

El 29/09/2011, a las 06:24, Pranesh Prakash escribió:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> Thanks, Laina.
> 
> I think we need to ensure that we do not fall prey to techno-triumphalism nor to techno-scepticism. I'm currently writing a note on the centrality of the right to information in the open data movement, and am examining the role of technology and databases in it too. In that I caution against myopic techno-skepticism. I'll post that as soon as I'm done with it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Pranesh
> 
> Laina Emmanuel <laina.emmanuel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Yamini Aiyar was also invited to the 'Power of Open' conference - the
>> opening conference for the Open Government Partnership.
>> She has blogged about similar issues here-
>> http://www.accountabilityindia.in/accountabilityblog/2337-power-open.
>> 
>> Regards
>> Laina
>> 
>> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 6:01 AM, Pranesh Prakash
>> <pranesh at cis-india.org>wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear all,
>>> The differences of opinion on this question are captured well in
>> Becky
>>> Hogge's [Open Data Study][] for the Transparency and Accountability
>>> Initiative.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> Pranesh
>>> 
>>> [Open Data Study]: http://goo.gl/oPVVF
>>> 
>>> =====
>>> 
>>> Is Open Data a Good Idea for the Open Government Partnership?
>>> Submitted by Global Integrity on 15 September 2011 - 12:41pm
>>> 
>>> As we’ve blogged before, Global Integrity is working to promote the
>> new
>>> [Open Government Partnership][] by serving as the [OGP’s Networking
>>> Mechanism][], which aims to connect aspiring OGP governments with
>>> providers of open government expertise (whether governments, civil
>>> society organizations, or private companies) to help those aspiring
>>> governments develop innovative, “stretch” open government
>> commitments.
>>> 
>>> An interesting (though not surprising) trend that has quickly emerged
>> in
>>> our conversations with the “supply side” providers of open government
>>> expertise is the heavy focus on technological interventions. I
>> haven’t
>>> done a precise count yet, but close to half of the nearly 40
>> providers
>>> that have already expressed interest in working with governments
>> under
>>> the OGP Networking Mechanism are software vendors, developers, or
>> other
>>> providers of technology solutions for open government challenges,
>>> particularly web-based solutions. Many of them are involved with
>> “open
>>> data” projects, which seek to unlock and put online a range of
>>> government data in machine readable, mashable formats.
>>> 
>>> The obvious explanation (in my mind) for why “open data” gets so much
>>> attention in the context of “open government” is that it is the
>> sexiest,
>>> flashiest reform of the bunch. It’s much cooler (and frankly less
>>> politically controversial) for any government to put government
>> health
>>> databases online (along with an iPhone app! Android coming soon!)
>> than
>>> it is for the same government to provide greater transparency around
>> the
>>> financing of political parties in the country.
>>> 
>>> But it does raise a core concern that we at Global Integrity (and
>> others
>>> involved in the early discussions around OGP) have voiced several
>> times
>>> before: does the OGP risk becoming a platform on which to proselytize
>> to
>>> the world about the virtues of data.gov and similar open data
>> projects?
>>> We worry that this isn’t enough by itself.
>>> 
>>> Why I mention this in the context of OGP is that there is a concern
>>> shared amongst some of us involved that open data provides an easy
>> way
>>> out for some governments to avoid the much harder, and likely more
>>> transformative, open government reforms that should probably be
>> higher
>>> up on their lists. Instead of fetishizing open data portals for the
>> sake
>>> of having open data portals, I’d rather see governments incorporating
>>> open data as a way to address more fundamental structural challenges
>>> around extractives (through maps and budget data), the political
>> process
>>> (through real-time disclosure of campaign contributions), or budget
>>> priorities (through online publication of budget line-items).
>>> 
>>> Granted, you can make a counter argument that open data is the
>> “gateway
>>> drug” to much deeper and challenging open government reforms, but
>> until
>>> I see that happen in practice I’ll remain a healthy skeptic.
>>> 
>>> So when I see the [Kenyan government’s new open data portal][] (over
>>> which many behind the US and UK data sites are absolutely gushing,
>> and
>>> at the time of this posting was actually down!), I can only wonder
>>> whether the time, expenses, and political capital devoted to building
>>> that website were really the best uses of resources. To vastly
>>> understate the problem, Kenya has a range of governance and open
>>> government challenges that go far beyond the lack of a website where
>>> citizens (many of whom are not online) can chart government datasets.
>>> 
>>> We’ve started to hear similar concerns from some of the technical
>>> providers involved with building the US and UK open data projects
>> (many
>>> of these providers have expressed their willingness to work with
>> other
>>> governments under the auspices of OGP). The basic message has been,
>>> “Yeah, there’s been plenty of excitement at political levels for
>> these
>>> projects, but it’s hard to say how significant the use or uptake [of
>> the
>>> data] has been.” A similar refrain has been “Everyone expects the
>>> private sector to simply jump in and build a bunch of ‘apps.’ But we
>>> aren’t really seeing that and don’t expect too much to happen apart
>> from
>>> apps using geospatial data.”
>>> 
>>> Sobering stuff. The open data movement is clearly still in its
>> infancy
>>> and major successes may be yet to come. But in the interim, some
>> caution
>>> may be in order before we launch a global campaign to liberate every
>>> last bit of government data out there, especially in lower-income
>>> contexts where the opportunity costs may be massive.
>>> 
>>> — Nathaniel Heller
>>> 
>>> [Open Government Partnership]: http://opengovpartnership.org
>>> [OGP’s Networking Mechanism]:
>>> http://www.globalintegrity.org/blog/call-for-ogp-networking
>>> [Kenyan government’s new open data portal]: http://opendata.go.ke/
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Pranesh Prakash
>>> Programme Manager
>>> Centre for Internet and Society
>>> W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283
>>> 
>>> 
> 
> - --
> Pranesh Prakash
> Programme Manager
> Centre for Internet and Society
> T: +91 80 40926283 | W: http://cis-india.org
> 
> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: APG v1.0.8
> 
> iG8EAREIAC8FAk6D8vooHFByYW5lc2ggUHJha2FzaCA8cHJhbmVzaEBjaXMtaW5k
> aWEub3JnPgAKCRDsmhIFHVxfB8vFAJ9rRcqu5dWKxBdMiy5MWheyyEp8gACginms
> bl5cJ1gJwG8MSDx7fkNUPOc=
> =6oJx
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> open-government mailing list
> open-government at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government