How data openness can drive better outcomes for all
Transcript of a talk I gave for The Public Sector Network’s ‘Virtual Event: Big Data & Actionable Analytics New Zealand’ event in April 2021.
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As we all know, more data is available than ever before — from 2010 to 2020, the amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed increased almost 5,000%. The coming decade will only see this accelerate.
Data can provide huge value — from open smart cities to supply chain efficiencies to improved decision-making amongst policy-makers and other groups.
But our obsession with data — some called it dataism — also comes with increasing costs, some relatively hidden from public view. These range across the whole spectrum of human experience, including the social, environmental and economic.
For an environmental example, data centres consume vast amounts of energy, often sourced in countries in which energy is cheap, and dirty.
Social costs and negative externalities abound too — for example, many of you will be seeing the increasing public discourse and concern about the many harms that big data and AI / ML / algorithms can and do cause.
And economic? Again, there are a range, but a great example is some of the enormous monopolies (and their far-reaching effects) we’re seeing in technology: a number of the Silicon Valley tech giants spring to mind.
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I won’t be going into all of that here, though — it’s a huge and complex set of issues.
Instead, I’m going to talk about open data (and its related products). Open data is data that’s available to anyone, anywhere, anytime (presuming they have access to the internet, and firewalls that allow their access). It’s human- AND machine-readable. And, as a rule, it’s government data — data collected by or on behalf of government.1
This doesn’t mean we’re cowboys about it — it’s also vital that open data protects people’s privacy, sovereignty and security! The two are sides of the same coin, rather than being in conflict.
And, like many other things, open data release and use is a perfect example of the network effect, and how each additional node adds exponentially to the power of the whole.
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How can open data empower, enable and contribute to NZ Inc?
Open data can help provide social value.
- It enables ordinary citizens to understand better what’s going on in their societies, and make more informed choices about the decisions they, and their elected officials, make.
- It enables people to push for change — or the status quo — based on evidence, not anecdote, opinion or pure emotion.
- It builds higher levels of digital literacy — since people need to understand the basics (or know people who do) in order to use the data, they have a stronger incentive to learn about it.
- It builds more transparent government and power structures, enabling people to hold their governments to account (sometimes to the horror of said governments, which I think is great).
- And it gets people engaged. Fewer black boxes into which data disappears, never to reappear, means a less cynical and disengaged society. And the more people who’re engaged in their society, the better.
Eg: http://odimpact.org/case-new-zealands-christchurch-earthquake-clusters.html
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It can help enhance service delivery and decision-making.
- Open data means even more people can know what’s working well, what isn’t, and why.
- Open data — particularly interoperable open data — gives a wider pool of people the ability to model different potential outcomes, and test them.
- And it allows orgs to better use _their own_ data, as the data’s not lost in some internal space somewhere and, as a rule, has also been through some QA and documentation processes as well, enhancing its usability as well as its findability.
Eg http://odimpact.org/case-denmarks-open-address-data-set.html
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But, AND THIS IS IMPORTANT, data isn’t the be all and end-all. Data comes with _context_, and we need to remember that good, ONGOING _engagement_ — korero, not just static one-to-many engagement — is vital to good decision-making (and good open data work!). As I’ve said previously: people aren’t data, and cities aren’t computers.
I recommend looking up the concepts of “warm data” and “small data” 😊 [see links at end of this post]
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And open data can help drive innovation.
- Opening up and serving data gives you (some, admittedly) control of the narrative, whether you’re public, private or third sector. You may not necessarily have much say over how it’s used (although I have some thoughts on that too, for different conversations), but you can build powerful stories about why you’re giving back, and how. We live in a world where, increasingly, consumers are looking to organisations to be good actors in the system.
- In the decisions you make around the technology stack and language you use to serve that data, you can have a very direct effect on the state of art.
- And, of course, if we all take, but no one gives, then pretty soon there’s not much left to take… It’s only prudent to look after one’s ecology.
- There are plenty more reasons too — give me a shout if you’d like to know more.
http://odimpact.org/case-united-states-opening-gps-data-for-civilian-use. html
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Think of the open data ecosystem as a library. With books and magazines and graphic novels and music and art and community spaces and events and people from all walks of life interacting.
- Libraries — especially public libraries — are the original open data service.
- They present information in a range of formats. One isn’t tied to hardcover paper books. There are softcovers. There are picture books, and text-dense tomes. There are magazines. There are DVDs, and CDs. Increasingly, there are e-books. There’s fiction, and non-fiction.
- There’s a huge range of subject matter.
- They’re generally available. And, generally, one can be sure they’ll be there tomorrow, and the day after, and will still have lots of amazing information to share.
- They’re (generally) free, and they’re pretty easy to find.
- There are services on hand to help one find and digest the information.
- There’s a long tail of use — from people who use them heavily, to people who pop in occasionally.
- They’re a powerful connecting node for research, community, collaboration and creation. They bring together a wide range of people with different skills, interests, and backgrounds.
- And the point? All of this does one, simple thing: it drives innovation. Not because they pay for themselves directly, or because they benefit their owners and funders directly.
- Because they provide access to a vast, shared pool of knowledge. A much larger one than any one person could gather, or use. Their costs are shared between us all, but so are their (infinitely greater) benefits.
- We can’t know that having this set of books in them will lead to this advance. Or that this particular group of people will do something amazing with the books. We can be certain that they’ll bring together the people, and the knowledge, that act as fertile ground for small and great advances.
Just like open data.
Riding the third wave of open data
I want to mention one last thing. The third wave of open data.
Previous waves have built from a pull model (OIA requests) to a push model (open by default). But there’s only so much time and money, and we want to keep doing better too.
So, as our thinking and systems mature, it’s time to go one step further.
To a truly collaborative model — not push, not pull, but working together with our users to publish with purpose. And not just our users — open data in the third wave isn’t only about government open data. It includes the private sector, civil society organisations, scientific research organisations and other groups — not just as users but as data providers and partners.
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In conclusion
I believe that de-escalating scarcity as a source of power — encouraging open data, open government, open source, etc (openX) — can only be a good thing.
Collaboration is _powerful_.
Open — which is intrinsically collaborative — drives progress. It can build amazing things.
As we know with open source software, the power should be in what one DOES with it, not keeping it in the proverbial locked safe.
There are umpteen case studies throughout history of the enormous value generated when information is shared, remixed and built upon. Civilisation itself is one of them.
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Open data has a huge part to play in making more open societies.
More transparent. More free. More informed. More engaged. More truly powerful.
A kinder, stronger, more resilient Aotearoa. A more effective NZ Inc.
We can help build her.
And in doing so, we can help build a better world.
End
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Ending links:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2021/12/30/54-predictions-about-the-state-of-data-in-2021/
- https://datacollaboratives.org/
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90168426/big-data-is-a-sham
- https://batesoninstitute.org/warm-data-labs
- http://odimpact.org/
- https://opendatapolicylab.org/third-wave-of-open-data/
- https://opendatacharter.net/
