Figure.nz
The twenty-four case studies in Made with CC were chosen from hundreds of nominations received from Kickstarter backers, Creative Commons staff, and the global Creative Commons community.
We did background research and conducted interviews for each case study, based on the same set of basic questions about the endeavor. The idea for each case study is to tell the story about the endeavor and the role sharing plays within it, largely the way in which it was told to us by those we interviewed.
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Figure.NZ is a nonprofit charity that makes an online data platform designed to make data reusable and easy to understand. Founded in 2012 in New Zealand.
figure.nz
Revenue model: platform providing paid services to creators, donations, sponsorships
Interview date: May 3, 2016
Interviewee: Lillian Grace, founder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
In the paper Harnessing the Economic and Social Power of Data presented at the New Zealand Data Futures Forum in 2014,1 Figure.NZ founder Lillian Grace said there are thousands of valuable and relevant data sets freely available to us right now, but most people don’t use them. She used to think this meant people didn’t care about being informed, but she’s come to see that she was wrong. Almost everyone wants to be informed about issues that matter — not only to them, but also to their families, their communities, their businesses, and their country. But there’s a big difference between availability and accessibility of information. Data is spread across thousands of sites and is held within databases and spreadsheets that require both time and skill to engage with. To use data when making a decision, you have to know what specific question to ask, identify a source that has collected the data, and manipulate complex tools to extract and visualize the information within the data set. Lillian established Figure.NZ to make data truly accessible to all, with a specific focus on New Zealand.
Lillian had the idea for Figure.NZ in February 2012 while working for the New Zealand Institute, a think tank concerned with improving economic prosperity, social well-being, environmental quality, and environmental productivity for New Zealand and New Zealanders. While giving talks to community and business groups, Lillian realized “every single issue we addressed would have been easier to deal with if more people understood the basic facts.” But understanding the basic facts sometimes requires data and research that you often have to pay for.
Lillian began to imagine a website that lifted data up to a visual form that could be easily understood and freely accessed. Initially launched as Wiki New Zealand, the original idea was that people could contribute their data and visuals via a wiki. However, few people had graphs that could be used and shared, and there were no standards or consistency around the data and the visuals. Realizing the wiki model wasn’t working, Lillian brought the process of data aggregation, curation, and visual presentation in-house, and invested in the technology to help automate some of it. Wiki New Zealand became Figure.NZ, and efforts were reoriented toward providing services to those wanting to open their data and present it visually.
Here’s how it works. Figure.NZ sources data from other organizations, including corporations, public repositories, government departments, and academics. Figure.NZ imports and extracts that data, and then validates and standardizes it — all with a strong eye on what will be best for users. They then make the data available in a series of standardized forms, both human- and machine-readable, with rich metadata about the sources, the licenses, and data types. Figure.NZ has a chart-designing tool that makes simple bar, line, and area graphs from any data source. The graphs are posted to the Figure.NZ website, and they can also be exported in a variety of formats for print or online use. Figure.NZ makes its data and graphs available using the Attribution (CC BY) license. This allows others to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute Figure.NZ data and graphs as long as they give attribution to the original source and to Figure.NZ.
Lillian characterizes the initial decision to use Creative Commons as naively fortunate. It was first recommended to her by a colleague. Lillian spent time looking at what Creative Commons offered and thought it looked good, was clear, and made common sense. It was easy to use and easy for others to understand. Over time, she’s come to realize just how fortunate and important that decision turned out to be. New Zealand’s government has an open-access and licensing framework called NZGOAL, which provides guidance for agencies when they release copyrighted and noncopyrighted work and material.2 It aims to standardize the licensing of works with government copyright and how they can be reused, and it does this with Creative Commons licenses. As a result, 98 percent of all government-agency data is Creative Commons licensed, fitting in nicely with Figure.NZ’s decision.
Lillian thinks current ideas of what a business is are relatively new, only a hundred years old or so. She’s convinced that twenty years from now, we will see new and different models for business. Figure.NZ is set up as a nonprofit charity. It is purpose-driven but also strives to pay people well and thinks like a business. Lillian sees the charity-nonprofit status as an essential element for the mission and purpose of Figure.NZ. She believes Wikipedia would not work if it were for profit, and similarly, Figure.NZ’s nonprofit status assures people who have data and people who want to use it that they can rely on Figure.NZ’s motives. People see them as a trusted wrangler and source.
Although Figure.NZ is a social enterprise that openly licenses their data and graphs for everyone to use for free, they have taken care not to be perceived as a free service all around the table. Lillian believes hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by the government and organizations to collect data. However, very little money is spent on taking that data and making it accessible, understandable, and useful for decision making. Government uses some of the data for policy, but Lillian believes that it is underutilized and the potential value is much larger. Figure.NZ is focused on solving that problem. They believe a portion of money allocated to collecting data should go into making sure that data is useful and generates value. If the government wants citizens to understand why certain decisions are being made and to be more aware about what the government is doing, why not transform the data it collects into easily understood visuals? It could even become a way for a government or any organization to differentiate, market, and brand itself.
Figure.NZ spends a lot of time seeking to understand the motivations of data collectors and to identify the channels where it can provide value. Every part of their business model has been focused on who is going to get value from the data and visuals.
Figure.NZ has multiple lines of business. They provide commercial services to organizations that want their data publicly available and want to use Figure.NZ as their publishing platform. People who want to publish open data appreciate Figure.NZ’s ability to do it faster, more easily, and better than they can. Customers are encouraged to help their users find, use, and make things from the data they make available on Figure.NZ’s website. Customers control what is released and the license terms (although Figure.NZ encourages Creative Commons licensing). Figure.NZ also serves customers who want a specific collection of charts created — for example, for their website or annual report. Charging the organizations that want to make their data available enables Figure.NZ to provide their site free to all users, to truly democratize data.
Lillian notes that the current state of most data is terrible and often not well understood by the people who have it. This sometimes makes it difficult for customers and Figure.NZ to figure out what it would cost to import, standardize, and display that data in a useful way. To deal with this, Figure.NZ uses “high-trust contracts,” where customers allocate a certain budget to the task that Figure.NZ is then free to draw from, as long as Figure.NZ frequently reports on what they’ve produced so the customer can determine the value for money. This strategy has helped build trust and transparency about the level of effort associated with doing work that has never been done before.
A second line of business is what Figure.NZ calls partners. ASB Bank and Statistics New Zealand are partners who back Figure.NZ’s efforts. As one example, with their support Figure.NZ has been able to create Business Figures, a special way for businesses to find useful data without having to know what questions to ask.3
Figure.NZ also has patrons.4 Patrons donate to topic areas they care about, directly enabling Figure.NZ to get data together to flesh out those areas. Patrons do not direct what data is included or excluded.
Figure.NZ also accepts philanthropic donations, which are used to provide more content, extend technology, and improve services, or are targeted to fund a specific effort or provide in-kind support. As a charity, donations are tax deductible.
Figure.NZ has morphed and grown over time. With data aggregation, curation, and visualizing services all in-house, Figure.NZ has developed a deep expertise in taking random styles of data, standardizing it, and making it useful. Lillian realized that Figure.NZ could easily become a warehouse of seventy people doing data. But for Lillian, growth isn’t always good. In her view, bigger often means less effective. Lillian set artificial constraints on growth, forcing the organization to think differently and be more efficient. Rather than in-house growth, they are growing and building external relationships.
Figure.NZ’s website displays visuals and data associated with a wide range of categories including crime, economy, education, employment, energy, environment, health, information and communications technology, industry, tourism, and many others. A search function helps users find tables and graphs. Figure.NZ does not provide analysis or interpretation of the data or visuals. Their goal is to teach people how to think, not think for them. Figure.NZ wants to create intuitive experiences, not user manuals.
Figure.NZ believes data and visuals should be useful. They provide their customers with a data collection template and teach them why it’s important and how to use it. They’ve begun putting more emphasis on tracking what users of their website want. They also get requests from social media and through email for them to share data for a specific topic — for example, can you share data for water quality? If they have the data, they respond quickly; if they don’t, they try and identify the organizations that would have that data and forge a relationship so they can be included on Figure.NZ’s site. Overall, Figure.NZ is seeking to provide a place for people to be curious about, access, and interpret data on topics they are interested in.
Lillian has a deep and profound vision for Figure.NZ that goes well beyond simply providing open-data services. She says things are different now. “We used to live in a world where it was really hard to share information widely. And in that world, the best future was created by having a few great leaders who essentially had access to the information and made decisions on behalf of others, whether it was on behalf of a country or companies.
“But now we live in a world where it’s really easy to share information widely and also to communicate widely. In the world we live in now, the best future is the one where everyone can make well-informed decisions.
“The use of numbers and data as a way of making well-informed decisions is one of the areas where there is the biggest gaps. We don’t really use numbers as a part of our thinking and part of our understanding yet.
“Part of the reason is the way data is spread across hundreds of sites. In addition, for the most part, deep thinking based on data is constrained to experts because most people don’t have data literacy. There once was a time when many citizens in society couldn’t read or write. However, as a society, we’ve now come to believe that reading and writing skills should be something all citizens have. We haven’t yet adopted a similar belief around numbers and data literacy. We largely still believe that only a few specially trained people can analyze and think with numbers.
“Figure.NZ may be the first organization to assert that everyone can use numbers in their thinking, and it’s built a technological platform along with trust and a network of relationships to make that possible. What you can see on Figure.NZ are tens of thousands of graphs, maps, and data.
“Figure.NZ sees this as a new kind of alphabet that can help people analyze what they see around them. A way to be thoughtful and informed about society. A means of engaging in conversation and shaping decision making that transcends personal experience. The long-term value and impact is almost impossible to measure, but the goal is to help citizens gain understanding and work together in more informed ways to shape the future.”
Lillian sees Figure.NZ’s model as having global potential. But for now, their focus is completely on making Figure.NZ work in New Zealand and to get the “network effect” —
users dramatically increasing value for themselves and for others through use of their service. Creative Commons is core to making the network effect possible.
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