Why Open Data Matters for Local Authorities
Source: LGC (Local Government Chronicle)
It’s our data and we should be able to freely access, use, and re-use it
London: 7 January 2010
Chris Taggart, the founder and developer of OpenlyLocal.com, shares his views on why Open Data matters at the local level in a news item published by the online Local Government Chronicle.
Recently, Chris Taggart has been appointed to the UK government’s new Local Public Data Panel, chaired by Professor Nigel Shadbolt.
The text of news item entitled: “Why Open Data Matters for local authorities” states:
“Why should it matter whether local authorities make their data available - not just as pretty web pages and inaccessible PDFs, but as actual data open for reuse?
It matters for local authorities for the same reason that it matters for central government. First, it’s our data and we should be able to freely access, use, and reuse it. Second, it gives people the ability to transform their lives for the better, for government to reduce duplication.
We are rapidly moving away from a world where being online involves passively browsing the web for information. Increasingly, we are using iPhone-type smart phones, widgets, social networking, twitter, and desktop applications that rely on online data or web pages that look like desktop applications.
Councils can’t keep up with all of this and may, like Birmingham City Council, waste huge sums of money if they try. But they can make their data available and thus reusable in all sorts of ways that you and I can’t even imagine yet.
Putting raw data (CSV files, database dumps, data feeds) online allows it to be repurposed not just for shiny new gadgets, where loading a whole web page is slow and problematic, but for a thriving ecosystem of applications making data useful and relevant to the user’s location.
It also allows it to be used in innovative visualisations (such as the BBC’s latest one on Road Traffic Deaths or WhereDoesMyMoneyGo) that make sense of complicated data, and in real-world projects such as the Postcode Paper, which takes publicly available data about a local area and turns it into a newspaper.
This isn’t just for geeks, for wealthy early adopters. Mobile phone usage is pervasive among the young and in all social classes. Web pages are often inaccessible or badly formatted for those with accessibility issues or who use screenreaders.
My own project, OpenlyLocal.com, extracts (mainly democratic) data from council and government websites and then makes it available to be reused by ‘hyperlocal’ communities, on google gadgets, and even other council websites.
If councils were to provide the raw data, we could concentrate on these applications rather than the extraction - a tricky and imperfect task at the best of times.
Lastly,data must be reusable without restriction. As David Eaves put it in his ‘three laws of open government data’: If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist; if it isn’t available in open and machine-readable format, it can’t engage; and if a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower.”
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