PSI Re-use – a pure money machine!
Source: Computerworld
Reflections on Danish PSI re-use conference: Reuse of government data is a pure money machine
Copenhagen: 5 February 2010
ComputerWorld has published a article about the recent Danish Competition and Award conference on the re-use of public sector information that took place in Copenhagen on the 4th February 2010.
The article titled: Genbrug af offentlige data er en ren pengemaskine - Offentlige data kan skabe grobund for milliardindtægter og et hav af webapplikationer, hvis de bliver frigivet og genbrugt. Læs om tre danske succeshistorier. (Reuse of government data is a pure money machine - Public data can provide fertile ground for one billion revenue and a myriad of web applications if they are released and recycled. Read about three Danish successes.) states: (an approximate English translation of the Danish article)
"The best thing you can do for the Internet, is to release public information online."
"Ok, let's do it."
The above took place last year between the World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, during a lunch between the two, where there was discussion about how Gordon Brown could use the Internet in the most sensible way.
The purpose of the data release is that the public, non-personal data can be reused in a myriad of applications developed by citizens and especially businesses.
And also in Denmark abounds government servers with data that can be used, reused and sent out to citizens and private companies as raw material for innovation of digital services.
Therefore, the IT and Telecom Agency yesterday drummed up some 150 representatives from the public and private sectors together in a conference in Copenhagen to discuss how public data can be reused in a proper and not least, profitable manner in the private sector.
200 billion potential
EU Commission estimates that within the EU borders is a potential of an annual turnover of just over 200 billion dollars by reusing already existing public data in relevant digital applications on mobile phones and / or on the Internet.
Head of the EU working group on information access Javier Hernandez-Ros highlighted at the conference that in addition to economic growth are cash prizes in the form of more jobs, people get closer to power and vice versa, which in turn is good for democracy.
He did not address how the staggering one billion potential has been calculated.
Javier Hernandez-Ros highlighted instead especially the search engine giant Google as the great role model for how a private company can reuse the publicly available data on its web applications like Google Earth and Google Maps.
But Google also uses public data in its translation services Translate into line with other translation companies, where the search company, according to Javier Hernandez-Ros largely draws down in the EU's huge translation databases where there is a massive reference data from existing translations in the EU context.
He emphasizes, however, that there is a long way to go before, especially for the various public sectors the entire one billion-potential can be redeemed.
Especially lacking political commitment, willingness to change, financing of public sector data delivery and no minimum action plan for solving the practical problems of standardizing publicly available data.
Denmark is a pioneer
"The EU has so the task that we must press our members," said Javier Hernandez-Ros, but stressed Denmark as one of the pioneering countries with among others the United Kingdom, Spain, Finland and Holland.
"However, there are a limited number of success stories in the country," acknowledged Javier Hernandez-Ros, who sees hope when the new EU Commission comes into effect on the 9th February.
"The new Commission has declared a digital agenda, and it gives hope. But there is no doubt that Denmark will be one of our frontrunners," concluded Mr Javier Hernandez-Ros in his speech.
Singing from Helge Sander
The Danish Science Minister Helge Sander (V) also participated in the conference and he had despite the fine words, of the EU stated that the public sector must be improved to support digital services by handing over the non-personal data that slumbers in databases and on servers throughout the country.
"I am not quite satisfied with how public data is supplied and used at this time. We can do better, and maybe we should be happy that others do worse than Denmark," was among other comments from Helge Sander .
As a strong spice of the conference was IT and Telecom Agency in autumn print competition "public data in games," and the three winners in the competition were selected at the conference itself with Science Minister Helge Sander (V) as a premium-over rows.
Winning projects spoke "Husetsweb", "Political Data API" and "Find the nearest toilet."
Husetsweb is very much about green IT by energy optimization of a detached house, economic analysis of energy and not least a logbook of how the electrical wires, water pipes, and improvements have been put into the house.
"The kind of information is largely borne by the owner of the house, but instead should follow the information house, not the owner," explained the winner Rudi Kragh including in his acceptance speech.
Political Data API has been developed by the ITU-student Michael Friis, and is an infrastructure for building applications for political surveillance and to increase transparency in political decision-making. He has self-built websites people with things that might be described as a debating web watchdog for the citizens.
"It is perhaps a little nerdy, but it gives a good transparency and a very good tool for guard dogs," was the reasoning of Judge Representative Christian Schwarz Lausten.
Last - but not least - had been receiving retirement Tina Müller built project "Find the nearest toilet" together where pee piercing can find all public toilets in Denmark through a map that has been built through Google Maps Apps.
Tina Muller has himself HTML and CSC-knowledge, but it has been necessary to make himself thoroughly into the open source Drupal CMS'et, and she has been helped to PHP'en, so you via a mobile phone or a traditional browser get a list of the nearest public WCs.
"It's been a tough fight to obtain data, but the project is meant to be a great help to people with incontinence or parents who have to change their baby," said prize winner Tina Müller worked on with the "Find the nearest toilet."
Battle for relatives business model
Leif Lodahl from open-source company Magenta also participated in the competition at data conference with a project where the University of Copenhagen has given access to words, words, classifications, and not least permission to document the program OpenOffice may use those words in a thesaurus.
He did not win, but despite the defeat he took he by no means empty-handed from the conference.
"The potential is huge with open content, and I am very inspired. But we still need many public authorities to open up their data. It seems that many places to get used to the idea that we should distribute data, "explained Leif Lodahl to Computerworld.
He also pointed out that in the coming years will be a battle about how the business model must be screwed together. This is because there are currently two main models, which consists of public data are available for tax money or by the fact that customers pay for them.
In the country that Britain they are beginning to open more and more of that data must be free. For example, the British 1st April release maps down to 1:10,000 from the English national mapping agency, which can be re-licensed under the 'Creative Commons license.
In contrast, more detailed data still cost money to have in your hands.”
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