Open Data Institute Summit 2022 — Threads from the conference
Learn subjectively the most interesting threads from the Data Decade Summit 2022, a conference on open data organized by the Open Data Institute (ODI) in November 2022. The panelists included open data specialists from around the world, including Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. During the summit, an attempt was made to answer the guiding question of the event: “What is the true value of data?”
A few words about the organizer of ODI Summit 2022, the Open Data Institute
The Open Data Institute (ODI) is a non-profit organization based in Great Britain, which for years has been at the forefront not only in Europe, but also in the world when it comes to open data. It promotes public data, conducts market research, develops guides and brings up relevant discussions.
Immediately awe-inspiring are the famous founders of ODI: Sir Nigel Shadbolt, one of the world’s leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence, who has been a member of the Public Sector Transparency Council in the UK (now the Data Steering Group) since 2010, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is known as the co-creator of the WWW and the originator of the 5 levels of data openness, about which we wrote more in the article HERE.
The Open Data Institute has been operating continuously since 2012 and once again decided to create a unique event that will encourage the active use of innovative technologies based on open data. Those who know the goal of the organization will not be surprised that the guiding question of the ODI Summit 2022 Conference was: “What is the true value of data?”.
Open Data — Quotes and Highlights from ODI Summit 2022
Genevieve Bell
“Transparency is not always what every community may want from its data.”
“10 years ago, listening to the introduction, I thought, yeah, 10 years ago we probably did not imagine that our smartphone statistics know as much about us as our partners, so what does it mean to have a Smart thermostat or meter, that has a degree of decision that is going on in your home, down to the application you have in your home and the temperatures that it is set at (…)”
“For me it is all of the pieces of the puzzle that are questions that we have to ask about what can be made into data, what are the consequences, what does it mean to talk about the data, what is the way of giving it back, texture and the messiness and the embodiness and asking the questions about who gets to say something on data and what are the consequences of that, all of the questions that the anthropologist rock up to ask and then are like: Too many questions! But they are important ones.”
Rohini Devasher
“(…) you could say that that is data that you’re hearing, but also listening to their feelings and listening to their memories, and you’re — and I think what it does, all of these kinds of things it points to the human aspect of data, right? The eye, the mind, the body, the hand, and that is I think something that we can use, or — it is something leek douze when we think of Data.” (…)
Sir Tim-Berners Lee
“I suppose in a way, the data spectrum filling out with the spectrum towards the private end. We used to think of it people used to worry about the person, the medical data being stolen, or abused, or made public. And about privacy, but the ability to have discussions, or for sharing medical data with your family, and your doctor in the same space, for example, where you can talk about diagnosis and things, the power to use data, powerful, it is I think one of the things that people are starting to realize.”
Kevin O’Neil (Fundacja Rockefellera)
“PETs allow us a more sophisticated set of choices between revealing information and who and what is exposed, and learned about.
Felicity Burch
“We produced our PETs adoption guide. (…) this was really designed to help people understand when PETs are likely to be useful but also the limitations and the considerations that organizations need to think about if they are adopting PETs. A PET is not just for Christmas! ”
Audrey Tang
“So this is good, it is through people-to-people tie partnership, it is altruism data connections which brings the best common, the best values from these indigenous and trans cultural different communities together as everyone understands that there are more people suffering from across the world and any place that is not New Zealand suffers more than in Taiwan, [sic] so we need to give out, so this donation, this international collection it is another addition to listening to the marginalised needs so the altruistic drive is also a part of providing solidarity.”
Report from the Open Data Institute Summit 2022 Conference
This open data conference attracted nearly 700 attendees from around the world, and you can find the detailed program of the event on the organizer’s website: https://summit2022.theodi.org/.
Later in the article we provide a summary of the following panels below:“Artificial Intelligence: Who is thinking for me?” — Sir Nigel Shadbolt i Genevieve Bell
- “What’s art got to do with it? Data as a cultural force” — Rohini Devasher, Dr Ross Parry, Joseph Wilk, Mr Gee
- “Food Security: Recipe for life (may contain data)” — Su Kahumbu, Dr. Ranjitha Puskur, Duccio Piovani
- “Privacy Enhancing Technologies: A global conversation” — Felicity Burch, Kevin O’Neil, Marcus Bartley Johns, Jack Hardinges
- “Experimentalism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Rewiring society with Digital Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tang” — Audrey Tang, Dr Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta
- “Invest in data to invest in nature: Data needs for environmental accounting” — Ece Ozdemiroglu, Louise Burke, Ian Pay, Matt Davies
- “State of the Data Nation with Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim-Berners Lee” — Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Sir Tim-Berners Lee, Navdip Dhariwal
The interdisciplinary future of artificial intelligence
Genevieve Bell and Nigel Shadbolt talk about AI
Artificial intelligence experts Sir Nigel Shadbolt (Chairman and co-founder of ODI) and Professor Genevieve Bell (Head of the Cybernetics Department of the Australian National University) discussed the latest major breakthroughs in AI research. Based on their research and current knowledge, experts tried to imagine what a society that uses AI might look like in the future.
During the panel, Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Genevieve Bell drew attention to an important problem related to the development of artificial intelligence. Namely, “machines”, understood as modern technology using AI, will not know what people want and expect if they are not taught how different people are. The environment in which people live should also be taken into consideration. Therefore, in their opinion, artificial intelligence must become interdisciplinary and draw data about humans from everywhere, including philosophy, ethnology and anthropology.
Art expressed through data or data expressed through art?
A brief summary of the panel by Rohini Devasher, Dr Ross Parry and Joseph Wilk
Can reality be expressed in art based on data? Would it then show the world we live in? If so, how does this kind of art enhance our understanding of data and affect our daily lives? Panelists Rohini Devasher, Dr Ross Parry and Joseph Wilk tried to answer these questions. The moderator of the discussion was Mr Gee, who as a Data Poet began the panel with a poem of his authorship:
“Art shoulders the bag of human imagination, filled with hopes and fears, it knocks on every door. Technology seeks to lighten the load, with the key that science holds. Knowing that this bag will be refilled and refilled, and refilled, with our fears, and our hopes ever more.”
Art, just like the universe, has no beginning or end. You can create art from anything. Artists are magicians who capture a moment or experience and allow their audience to immerse themselves in, live and interact with this world — they invite their art to inhabit it.
Rohini Devasher presented a film entitled One Hundred Thousand Suns — a sunny journey through reality and the generations that have documented this reality. Through art, she showed that data surrounds a person, which means that at some point the person becomes data. Art perceives data as a living organism that is not stable and undergoes constant changes.
The video shows the huge amount of data stored at the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory in India. The artist based her work on over 157,000 photos from the archives of the observatory and on her own data, e.g. on the solar eclipse she collected in 2009, 2019 and 2021.
Can data help tackle world hunger?
Su Kahumbu, Dr. Ranjithy Puskur and Duccio Piovani on how to use data in the fight against hunger in the world
Panelists Su Kahumbu (iCow), Duccio Piovani (UN World Food Programme) and Dr. Ranjith Puskur (International Rice Research Institute) talked about the lack of food safety and how there is still a glaring lack of data infrastructure to support the use of data already collected. Panellists indicated what, in their opinion, could be done to improve access to data on food poverty in the world and about people affected by it. You can read more about this in the ODI report on food safety and data infrastructure HERE.
According to Su Kahumbu (the founder of iCow that is an open data free application for farmers in Africa), access to open data on agriculture can be difficult for some African farmers due to the lack of access to the Internet and places to charge their phone.
In turn, Dr. Ranjithe Puskur from the International Rice Research Institute drew attention to the increasingly important role of data in realizing the ambitions of sustainable development. She noted that knowing who and where is hungry is crucial to fighting hunger and it is no secret. We have had this knowledge for a decade, but we still cannot deal with the problem of world hunger. It indicates that perhaps additional insight into the data is needed — she suggested using the stories and experiences of the people behind the data.
The third interviewee was Duccio Piovani from the UN World Food Programme, an organization that tracks hunger in the world and monitors how the situation changes over time. The collected data is presented by the organization on the Hunger Map. The website also provides downloadable PDF reports on the situation, e.g. on specific continents.
Technologies that enhance privacy: PET
Felicity Burch, Kevin O’Neil, Marcus Bartley Johns and Jack Hardinges talk about the future of data security
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) have an important role to play in maximizing data security, in particular personal data aggregated and processed through new technologies. Panelists Felicity Burch (Director at the Center for Data Ethics & Innovation), Kevin O’Neil (Rockefeller Foundation) and Marcus Bartley Johns (Microsoft) talked to host Jack Hardinges about how to convince people and companies that the data shared thanks to PET technology are safe.
Panelists considered what efforts are needed to realize the potential of PET while minimizing the risk of misuse. They came to the conclusion that it is worth starting by explaining to the public how companies use data. They also stressed that it should be remembered that this is not a magic solution, but only an option worth using.
The Rockefeller Foundation uses PET technologies to secure the data obtained by the foundation. In order to increase people’s trust and convince them that their data is safe, the foundation provides information about how data is used and to whom and how it helps. Such insight can increase people’s trust and encourage them to share data if they see that not only companies earn money from data, but also ordinary people get benefits.
The Taiwanese Revolution — A Short History of Ministry of Taiwan
Dr. Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta talks with Audrey Tang
Audrey Tang is the Minister of Digitization of Taiwan, who has started the practice of radical transparency. All her meetings are recorded, transcribed and posted on a public website for everyone to access. She is also the initiator of a grassroots non-profit movement whose greatest work is the g0v, a project concerning a rewrite of the Taiwanese government website “gov.tw” to make it more accessible and interactive. During the panel, Tang lso explained how the vTaiwan initiative works and how it uses social media to create digital petitions that collect 5,000 signatures and are sent to the government.
Investing in data = investing in nature
Ece Ozdemiroglu, Louise Burke, Ian Pay and Matt Davies talk
There are many companies on the market that use greenwashing, i.e. they sell products described as eco-friendly, but they are unable to prove how and why they are ecological, because in fact they simply are not. Louise Burke (ODI), Ece Ozdemiroglu (Eftec) and Ian Pay (ICAEW) discussed how consumers, investors and regulators increasingly expect companies to publish information about the environmental impact of their activities.
Ece Ozdemiroglu mentioned the important concept of nature related risk management, which companies should know. Ignoring this can sometimes disturb the financial stability of the company. According to the panelists, the private sector does not feel responsible for climate change — at least until companies are imposed specific environmental obligations in the form of regulations. Currently, there is an increase in the awareness of the society, which expects more transparency and care for the environment from companies.
Summary of 10 years of ODI — Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt
Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt shared with the attendees of the ODI Summit 2022 their thoughts on the last decade in ODI and what they believe lies ahead in an increasingly data-driven world.
Experts revealed that in their 10 years at ODI, they’ve learned one important thing: that data is a spectrum that ranges from closed and private to shared and open. The data ecosystem is a mixture of private data that mixes with open data and vice versa, thus giving each other additional meanings.
Sir Tim and Sir Nigel noticed that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the biggest changes in society took place in thinking about what open data is and in terms of sharing private (e.g. medical) data. It was then that people realized how valuable data is. They understood that thanks to data it is possible to diagnose a disease faster, devise a treatment plan or invent a vaccine. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that sharing a person’s location data can contribute to the common good and help reduce the spread of the disease.
