How can open data be harnessed to drive productivity and improve services?

by Sarah Binney

“Governments, on all levels and all over the world, are focused on the promise and potential of data to drive productivity and performance improvement in the delivery of services — and also, to catalyse innovation and the creation of knowledge intensive jobs and industries.” Professor Anne Tiernan, Griffith University.

Open data and digital disruption

One of the biggest challenges governments face in the global economy is digital disruption in a hyper-connected world. Mass connectivity is shaping the economic landscape — changing the nature of workplaces, enabling global supply chains and disrupting traditional business models with new ‘sharing’ interfaces like AirBnB and Uber.

Unsurprisingly, digital disruption is also impacting policy formulation and the delivery of government services — factors which ultimately affect economic productivity. Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain cohesion in the traditional business model of policy making against a background of continuous change.

As Business Council Australia President Catherine Livingstone argued in an address to the National Press Club, governments need new strategies to adapt to disruptive forces and “must not rely on simplistic exhortations to focus on productivity, participation and population as the route to growth”.

Livingstone proposed that to improve productivity in the age of disruption, governments must mobilise an entire information ecosystem through the building of knowledge infrastructure, facilitated by collaboration between government, universities and industry.

A knowledge sharing ecosystem can only be achieved through open access to government data, which will allow these sectors to harness the power of innovation and ultimately, drive productivity and create the knowledge based jobs of the future.

Government as a producer of data

Data is at the heart of knowledge creation and is an abundant resource that gains value the more it’s shared. Government is one of the biggest producers of data — collected through the course of doing business — and can “tap the power of vast networks of capable groups and individuals to create public value” by making such data public.

Pro Vice Chancellor of Information Services at Griffith University, Linda O’Brien argues by making government data open, it can inform and also, be turned into valuable products and services. Access to government data sets will empower citizens and business to increase return on investment with innovation and job creation, and it:

“will foster a contemporary economy, demonstrating transparency, accountability, engaged citizens and fostering research and innovation to lift productivity and build the knowledge-based jobs of the future”.

Government’s role as producer of data (a Deloitte Review proposes that governments play three principle roles in the data economy) allows collaborative efforts between government, industry, universities, not for profits and communities to deliver tangible outcomes in health, education and the environment.

Global initiatives

There has been a big global push in this space. Barack Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget improved access to Federal data through the Open Data initiative, which aims to increase transparency and distribution of information and, ultimately, deliver system reform.

This helped facilitate a number of successful ventures, notably the launch of the Police Data Initiative — as a follow up to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommendations — to improve policing and community trust in law enforcement agencies.

As part of this initiative, New Orleans police are working with a group of young coders to build apps powered by the release of three datasets on policing i.e. use of force, 911 calls and field interview cards. The public release of data is designed to improve community trust and therefore, transform society for the better.

But open data has applications beyond improving government services. In 2009, the UK government made data on the public sector available to its citizens, which allowed external organisations to innovate their business models.

The UK charity, Shelter — charged with helping the homeless — used data from the government’s open data portal on housing prices, occupancy rates and incidents of repossession to improve their business processes. The organisation saw value in creating a one page interface for all available UK housing data, which is now used extensively by journalists, academics, campaigners, town planners and government officials.

It is clear the UK’s open data initiative is helping organisations innovate, improve services and facilitate a knowledge sharing economy for improved social advocacy. With a UK study finding the UK government could save £6 billion a year by sharing citizen data across departments, the benefits of open data are economic as well as social.

Queensland well positioned to harness open data

Seven sectors of the global economy — education, transport, consumer products, electricity, oil and gas, healthcare and consumer finance — are expected to benefit immediately from open data. And with five of those sectors controlled by state and territory governments, open data is of critical importance to Queensland.

Recently, Griffith University brought together open data and public sector experts Professor Anne Tiernan, Pro Vice Chancellor (Information Services) Linda O’Brien, and Deputy Director-General of Transport and Main Roads Mike Stapleton to explore the possibilities and implications of open data for government productivity and services in Queensland.

Under discussion was Queensland’s position in the evolution of open data culture, specifically, the launch of the Open Data Institute (ODI). ODI is part of a global network designed to catalyse the evolution of open data culture to create economic, environmental and social value by bringing together business, industry, research, academia, not for profits and community members to work in partnership with government.

Indeed, Queensland government agencies have begun to make their data accessible (and notably, free of charge to commercial providers). Under the Labor government’s platform of fostering innovation and building the knowledge based jobs of the future, open data initiatives in Queensland can only be expected to improve.

Queensland’s Department of Transport is one agency making significant service and productivity improvements. That organisation was able to make investment decisions about the construction and maintenance of road networks based on traffic volume and crash data and influence policy development — like the graduated licensing system — through deep data analysis and research collaborations with universities.

The Department of Transport and Main Roads are also using openly available census data to develop customer insights, improve frontline services and drive efficiency. Census data and internal data sets allowed the organisation to shift resources, meet business demand and reduce customer call times from 20–40 minutes to 4–5 minutes.

Data is critical to understanding problems (and therefore, developing policy), improving government services and ushering in efficiency to drive economic productivity through innovation and cross sector collaboration.

The democratic imperative

Global initiatives demonstrate how governments have a democratic as well as a fiscal and economic imperative to consider the ways innovation is made possible by technological change.

In an environment of fiscal constraint, low growth and declining revenues, governments must improve the quality and effectiveness of the public service while recognising that the citizenry judges governments on results.

Citizens are both voters and clients — quick to make judgements about a government’s capacity on the delivery of services, even when those services have been outsourced. Data sets — and the ability to mine these effectively — will be imperative to delivering services that are relevant to citizens, enhancing democratic accountability and improving government performance.

As Professor Tiernan argued in an address to Griffith University’s Friends of the Library, productivity is a test of adaptability.

It means every day doing a thousand things better than what we did yesterday. Productivity improvements in the public sector as well as more effective and responsive services are likely to flow when innovation is unleashed.

These advances can only be made possible by using open data to participate in the global information ecosystem to meet the challenge of digital disruption head on.