11 Reasons to have open City financial data

There’s no doubt that the notion of open data is becoming more accepted through government circles. All levels of government in Canada at least have policies supporting it. See Canada, Ontario, Toronto (weak), across Canada, Wikipedia. According to James McKinney’s Database of Canadian open government data catalogs, at least the following governments maintain open data portals: Regina, London, Burlington, Ottawa, Montreal, Alberta, Greater Sudbury, British Columbia, Region of Waterloo, Toronto, Edmonton, Strathcona County, Winnipeg, Mississauga.

Yet in practice, the benefits of open data are not yet clear to all, certainly not to many members of the Toronto civil service. No wonder; it’s all quite new, and such a pervasive approach will inevitably encounter unexpected issues and surprise risks.

At budgetpedia.ca we have a clear policy:

• We want the City to publish, as open data, on an ongoing basis, annual detailed financial, staffing, and performance data for all cost centres of the City. We call this granular geocoded cost centre data.

(There are about 13,000 cost centres in the City). Even so, we anticipate encountering non-trivial practical and policy issues which will require careful work and deliberation. We hope to work with Toronto (and others) to iron out these kinks as time goes on.

In the meantime, here is a preliminary list of opportunities and challenges of open data.

Opportunities

1. Open Data supports informed debate about related issues

The most obvious benefit of open data is that people working on related issues can become informed with facts and analysis that can help ground discussions and debate.

2. Open Data supports public engagement through dialog

Sharing data implies exchanging views on the data. With a common start dialog between civil service members and neighbourhood activists are more likely to occur, with a constructive orientation

3. Open Data encourages learning

Open data often describes details that are a revelation to the reader. This encourages research into related subjects.

4. Open Data focuses minds on quality

As anyone who has published an article or some research knows, the best way to focus the mind on quality of underlying data is publish the data, or some analysis of the data. Put another way, one of the biggest benefits of open data is simply this: people look at it! Suddenly quality issues become clear.

5. Open Data focuses minds on priorities

A common occurrence with open data is that inconsistencies and deficiencies are found, often ones that have been present for a long time. This is not surprising. When data is kept in a bubble, operations on that data tend to be undertaken out of habit, or particularly within government, as a matter of compliance. When looked at with fresh eyes, many of these procedures turn out to be deficient. This provides an opportunity to drop unnecessary procedures, or fix broken ones.

6. Open Data promotes standards

For open data to be useful it must be generic, consistent, and understandable. Thus opening datasets is a great opportunity to improve metadata, such as field definitions, sources, authorities, cycles, and formats.

7. Open Data promotes system improvements

Open data requires consistency, accuracy, and timeliness. With any non-trivial dataset this requires strong system support, particularly in the area of automation. These requirements can lead to review and clarification of systems, benefiting everyone involved.

8. Open Data educates about systems

These improvements in systems requirements communicates the place of systems to consumers who may not have been aware of the requirements behind open data. This improves general knowledge about systems, and patience among consumers.

9. Open Data enables discovery of insights through analytics

The fundamental premise of open data, particularly when the datasets are deep and comprehensive, is that value can be mined when opportunities are provided outside of the host organization that may not have been discovered within. Fresh eyes, specific expertise, and additional resources are some of the reasons that attention brought to bear by outside resources can add value.

10. Open Data provides opportunities for after-markets

In some instances, alth0ugh this should be approached with care, open data can provide the basis for an aftermarket whereby a consumer can find a paying market for the value added to the data.

11. Open data promotes inclusiveness

The act of sharing itself should not be underestimated. A municipality is a collective enterprise, and sharing data reinforces the key experience of inclusiveness among participants.

Challenges

There are a number of risks of embarking on a program of open data. The worst fear is ‘gotcha’ moments. A culture of trust and constructive attention to inevitable discoveries of deficiencies must be brought to the process. Parallel data literacy efforts should be developed to accompany the data.

An open data process is by definition another work program, consuming resources. Benefits, and ideally savings, must be clearly identified.

Privacy, legal, and security issues should be vetted for all datasets.

Priorities need to be set.

In the end, in our belief, open data both promotes a culture of democracy, and creates opportunities for collective value.

Henrik Bechmann is the project lead of budgetpedia.ca. The opinions expressed here are his own.