Is this the answer?
Source: The Economist, USA – news alert via tweet from Fredrik Sand, Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Sweden
English-speaking governments are ahead of others
Washington: 4 February 2010
The Economist has published an article titled: Data and transparency - Of governments and geeks with the strap line - In several countries more official data are being issued in raw form so that anybody can use them. This forces bureaucrats and creative types to interact in new ways
The article comments on recent moves towards transparent Government and how this impacts the way the public sector bodies interact with society. The article refers to the following countries amongst others:
- The USA
- The UK
- Australia
- New Zealand
The article also suggests the reason why English-speaking governments are ahead of others and states:
“But even as politicians start seeing the light, the pace and methods used by governments to free up facts are much influenced by independent, open-source software designers. (One reason that English-speaking governments are ahead of others is that there are a lot of activist anglophone open-source programmers.) Most of the data sets offered by governments bear the stamp “beta”, suggesting that they are open to improvement. With unusual humility, bureaucrats are borrowing jargon from open-source developers.”
“In the past, governments have asked large companies, like LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters, to help them handle data better. But when free, machine-readable data become available, pretty much anyone can have a go. In America, Britain and Australia, government agencies have held competitions to encourage small designers or non-profit outfits to find ingenious things to do with the stuff.
In 2008 the city of Washington, DC, a trailblazer in the field of open data, sponsored a contest called “Apps for Democracy”—with $50,000 in costs and prize money—which produced 47 applications. A competition called “MashupAustralia” has been run by the Government 2.0 Taskforce, a body set up by Mr Rudd to make administration more open. Results include a map of crime in New South Wales, and a tool for sharing data about needed road repairs called “It’s Buggered, Mate”.
All these exercises—in which anybody with a bright idea can use government data—seek to merge two cultures: the risk-averse ethos of the civil service, and the free-wheeling spirit of open-source developers, who seek continuous incremental change and see failure as a step to improvement. In a way that would baffle most old-time bureaucrats, independent developers like to collaborate over long distances and make their exchanges public.”
“Sometimes people in government do some unlikely things—and they have a stake in making sure their work does not go to waste. (Witness the person at Australia’s Department of Health and Ageing who collected a data set on the location of public toilets.) Over time, civil servants are becoming more open-minded, and developers more attuned to the needs of government. But they struggle to agree on the main question: which data have value?
Tom Steinberg, a British pioneer of data use, believes that what is valuable is what the market already pays for. He runs mySociety, a non-profit organisation founded in 2003 that builds simple web-based tools with self-descriptive names like “faxyourmp” and “fixmystreet”. Location is crucial to detecting patterns in public information; a map of crimes is more valuable than a list. Britain’s Ordnance Survey owns the country’s geographic data and, through an arrangement known as a “trading fund” sells them to, among others, mySociety. In 2008 economic analysis commissioned by Britain’s Treasury argued that the public value of the trading-fund information was greater than its revenue value to the crown; mapping data will be released free of charge from April.
But more British bulk data have been wholly or partially privatised. The Royal Mail sells postcode information, and transport timetables are sold by private rail carriers. MySociety has access to the boundary lines of voting districts through what Mr Steinberg calls “a bizarre restrictive licence”. He is pleased by the data collection that has just been posted in Britain. But he notes that much of what he really needs, and now pays for, is not included.
Some special factors were at work in Britain. Dazzled, perhaps, by the magic of the Berners-Lee name, government ministers moved fast in 2009 to release whatever non-controversial information they had to hand. It is true, moreover, that Sir Tim never turns up his nose at any data, believing that even the most arcane may be handy for someone. Under his benign aegis, data.gov.uk was developed by a small group of programmers using open-source methods. The result is a geek’s dream: plenty for creative types to work on, but a bit baffling to the lay person.
Some American open-data initiatives have a more user-friendly face. For example, Recovery.gov offers charts, maps and search fields. It displays some of the data on state spending that Britons lack. Local newspapers are using the site to determine how much stimulus spending has landed in their own back yards. The name “recovery” suggests an interpretation of spending that suits the president. The underlying data may be neutral, but there is always some spin in a website’s presentation.”
Related news topics
Danish winner re-uses Building Register PSI!