You can’t get there from here (part 1)

Sally Kerr
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

I’ve been working in the field of open data for almost 5 years now — I can’t actually believe this myself, but it’s true. When I started, Open Data was already a snow-ball speeding down a giant mountain, gathering followers, new data and case studies. We’ve seen some amazing uses in the UK, Europe and globally, changing people’s lives all over the planet.

There are lots of Google searches you can do to learn more, and to understand why making data more accessible and transparent is just common sense.

My journey started with a light bulb moment and a belief in the power of open data — and that hasn’t changed. However, the vision of opening up data and sustaining this has become increasingly complex, and can’t be achieved without a lot of other moving parts being put in place. If you set aside the various aspects often discussed — cultural change, assurance, licencing, resourcing, technology and management — what is the biggest challenge that has stopped the public sector from becoming the leading exponent of open data?

Understanding the data.

The biggest step for anyone I talk to who isn’t a data scientist/analyst/coder /librarian is recognising data runs through every part of our lives. We use data every day. We all instinctively collate and re-use data. It’s instinctive, so we don’t really think about what we are doing or how amazing that is. It gets us out of the house and to work on time; it makes sure we wear the right clothes for the day; it informs us about our town or city, the shopping we have to do, the events we attend, the decisions we make.

In the public sector, thinking about re-use of data can be very challenging — why is this? Because we’re used to using data the way we want to and for the purposes it was created for. It can be hard to understand data as an asset that can be-re-used in many ways, some of which are outside anything we might consider.

Let’s start with data.

So lets think about data, not open data. Does the public sector understand its data well enough to uncover the best usage for it? Here are some questions:

Do you know the data you have?
Do you know what other useful data is out there that you could use?
Do you know what you use all this data for?
Do you know what else you could be doing with this data?
Do you know who you could be working with to achieve more?
Do you know how to manage your data to give the widest range of users access and opportunity?

Can you answer those questions?

I’m asking these questions because quite recently I did a short study on popular open data sets, to identify those you might want to provide as a starting point. I approached a small number of public sector bodies to identify the data sets they published and then those that seemed most popular.

In starting this I have begun something that now has more questions than answers.

There were a lot of dependencies inherent in the answers I got:

- the data might have been easy to access so it got published — and people looked at it because it was new, so it’s popular
- the data was released because an event was being run and it was requested. It got quite high usage — it’s popular
- the organisation already published the data and it was easy to publish in an open format — it’s popular because it’s known
- the open data champion managed to get a particular service on board so subject data was published — it’s new so it’s popular
- the organisation is starting out with open data and picked some random data sets to publish (perhaps in line with their Open Data Publication Plan)

Aside from this I had to source some of my findings from portals and not people, and accuracy depended on whether those portals provided a ‘most accessed’ statistic. Quite a few did not. I then chose data sets which were most commonly updated on the basis they were probably popular. My study became more subjective and indicative. The data sets I listed were not an accurate reflection of the organisation’s own understanding or use of its data, the data-related activities such as monitoring, projects and business decisions or use by other bodies or individuals. Some of it, unashamedly, was a guess, based on my own knowledge gained over 5 years.

So, I will be re-visiting the study, and going into more depth to provide a better methodology for those embarking on or managing open data.

My data questions are now part of this study. I don’t believe the public sector knows enough about its data to be able to make good decisions on usage, on re-use and the best way to carry out open data work.

So I want to talk about why we need to manage our data more effectively so we can deliver open data more efficiently. I believe it’s all one ecosystem, and each influences the other. I will do that in my next post. For now I will say that, there is a well-known phrase, form follows function. In this case, open data and its use follows the original data function. You can’t do one without the other.

Oh the list ? Well, after due care and thought (see above) here is my top twenty. Some are owned by national bodies, others by local. I can provide the more complete study for anyone interested:

Recommended First Data Sets
Planning applications and decisions
Recycling locations
Domestic bin locations
Council land and assets (including vacant)
Cycle routes
Planned road works
Road collisions
Events
Restaurant inspections
Trees (individual and with preservation orders), parks
Footfall data
Parking locations (bays and car parks)
Schools — catchment areas
Schools — location
Local area profiles
Flood map (historic, and river levels)
Population Census
Index of Multiple Deprivation
Journey times
Libraries — locations, opening hours, usage, most popular books

)

Sally Kerr

Written by

Digital, data & innovation, arts, communicator, founder of @EdinburghApps, co-founder @EdiLivingLab. French Horn playing for fun. Posts my own.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade