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

Thu Sep 29 11:16:38 UTC 2011

On 09/28/2011 08:31 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
> 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.

I don't really think that is it. In my experience in the U.S., 
politicians get little reward for sexy transparency because only the 
data wonks think it is sexy.

But open gov data is also the *easiest* reform. The biggest complaint 
against data.gov was that it was filled with uninteresting data --- not 
the high-valued data that was called for in the open gov directive. It's 
easy to check "data catalog" off your list and not actually have done 
anything for transparency.

That said, there is value is data that is not intended for transparency 
(i.e. government oversight). The economic side of open gov data 
shouldn't be overlooked.

The other reason why data catalogs get a lot of attention is that it 
happened to be the first big move of the Obama administration here, and 
other countries are just following what appears to be the U.S.-set "best 
practice". I don't think launching data.gov was off the mark in the 
U.S., in the sense that we already have relatively strong FOIA laws and 
a relatively large developer community exists to play with data.gov 
data. It made sense here. The data activists that supported data.gov 
here might agree it doesn't necessarily make sense elsewhere. OTOH, the 
government officials who architected it do have an interest in promoting 
data catalogs as the best thing since sliced bread.

> 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?

That depends on who is running/advising the OGP...

Josh