Through a series of various types of meetings over the last couple of years I’ve been arguing the need to include notions of “inclusion” when discussing “open government data” and “openness” in general. My interventions along those lines are often greeted either with the dull stare of incomprehension; or with a quick nod of the head indicating agreement but with an equally quick averting of the eyes to indicate that the subject has no interest in this context and we should move on.
These results for my well-intentioned attempts to broaden and deepen the significance and audience for open data has generally left me feeling either frustrated or irritated or both.
And then I began to step back from the discussion and to examine it (and the overall ways in which open data is analysed and presented) in a broader and somewhat more philosophical light.
What is open data and is there more than one way to approach it?
Thus we have the definition of open data in “Open Definition”: “A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.”
Or that :
Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.
The full Open Definition gives precise details as to what this means. To summarize the most important:
- Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
- Reuse and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit reuse and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
- Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.
Or we have the definition (taken at random) in this case from the City of Toronto: The City of Toronto makes data it collects available to the public via toronto.ca/open. By offering data sets for others to use, the City supports unfiltered access to its information.
If you go further down in the standard definition of “open data” this begins to become a bit clearer:
Interoperability is important because it allows for different components to work together. This ability to componentize and to ‘plug together’ components is essential to building large, complex systems. Without interoperability this becomes near impossible — as evidenced in the most famous myth of the Tower of Babel where the (in)ability to communicate (to interoperate) resulted in the complete breakdown of the tower-building effort.
We face a similar situation with regard to data. The core of a “commons” of data (or code) is that one piece of “open” material contained therein can be freely intermixed with other “open” material. This interoperability is absolutely key to realizing the main practical benefits of “openness”… (my emphasis).
That is, “open data” is a “piece of x (content, data, etc.)”, with the attributes and capabilities of rendering of a “thing” or “object” or “product” (a data set) that in turn can be “used”, “re-used”, “distributed” etc. Or, in other words it can be seen as a “component”, as a lego like building block which can be stacked one piece on another to create further and bigger objects. Thus it is to be seen as a “products” where “products” are “bought as raw materials and sold as finished goods” in this instance, where the raw data is the input and the “open data” is the output.
As an object or thing the attributes and characteristics of the open data are more or less fixed once made available to the end user/consumer. As well, the determination of the attributes or characteristics of the data (what the open data “is”) as seen/obtained by the end user is solely at the discretion of the producer and are uniform and stable as between end users.
But why shouldn’t we think of “open data” as a “service” where the open data rather than being characterized by its “thingness” or its unchangeable quality as a “product”, can be understood as an on-going interactive and iterative process of co-creation between the data supplier and the end-user; where the outcome is as much determined by the needs and interests of the user as by the resources and pre-existing expectations of the data provider.
We can define “service” as:
…a set of one time consumable and perishable benefits
- delivered from the accountable service provider, mostly in close coaction with his internal and external service suppliers,
- effectuated by distinct functions of technical systems and by distinct activities of individuals, respectively,
- commissioned according to the needs of his service consumers by the service customer from the accountable service provider,
- rendered individually to an authorized service consumer at his/her dedicated trigger
That is, redefining and re-conceptualizing open data as a “service” rather than as a “product” puts the emphasis on the “open” (and opening) as a transitive and interactive “process”, rather than as an “object”, and as an interaction and a relationship between the supplier and the end user; rather than the data (and its virtual “thingness”) as a once and for all discrete set of production and consumption activities.
Treating open data as a service rather than as a product implies a quite different approach to how open data is managed, in what form it is made available, how it is funded and what expectations are placed upon it by governments as suppliers and by end users.
Thus Open Government Data as a service:
- includes a concern for the end user and end uses in the overall planning and development
- includes those with an interest in end users and end uses in the project team
- recognizes the potential diversity and special needs of end users and their requirements for “effective use” including naive and inexperienced users–thus for example including the possibility of indigenous people, women, grassroots users, citizens and the public interest as possible end users and working interactively with these groups to make suitable provision
- applies a range of metrics to evaluation of the “success” of open government data including contributions to the public good
Why does this matter?
This matters because if one treats open data simply or exclusively as a thing or commodity then it is available solely as a product for purchase and use through the market place–where of course, market principles dominate and where for example, those with the most resources are able to command and control and thus precipitate the supply of the product i.e. the open data. This of course, fits quite neatly into the current neo-liberal agenda of certain governments of marketizing public services by first packaging them as discrete bundles of consumer oriented “products” and then opening up the processes of producing those bundles to competitive tender (as per the links that Jo Bates makes between Open Government Data and neo-liberal developments in the UK). However, whether such an approach is in the public interest is of course currently being severely criticized by those critical of what has been termed “market fundamentalism“.
Further, in this context the criteria of success or “value” of open data is exclusively based on its success in the marketplace as determined by market value, consumer demand, return on investment and so on. If however, one looks at open data as a service then the potential value of open data can be equally measured in terms of the benefits (including or particularly non-monetary) that the service is providing to the end user and to citizens as a whole.
As well, there is the possibility, even the requirement that open data as a service is directed towards the specific requirements of a diverse group of end users (and not simply anonymous interchangeable consumers) including for example, not-for-profits, community organizations, women’s groups, trade unions, and citizens working for the public interest amongst others and also would include the variety of adaptations, supports, training and so on which would maximize the opportunities for the various types of end users to benefit from the data service.
This of course, is particularly significant if one is concerned with ensuring that open government data is not simply “open” but also “inclusive”–that data that is provided by citizens is not simply privatized and sold off to the highest bidder but is made available in a form and a context where the broadest base of benefit may be derived from the data through its effective use by marginalized groups and citizens at large along with those who may be able to take a commercial advantage from making the data more generally available.
Gerry Tychon
February 3, 2013
Yes, I agree that open data should be a process but I often think “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”. My experience, anyway.
Value of open data has to thought of in a broad context and not just marketplace (which is probably what you are saying).
Michael Gurstein
February 3, 2013
Hi Gerry, that’s pretty close although I’m also trying to work through some alternatives. Open Government Data is very important I think, Too important to be left just to market forces.
Luke Closs
February 3, 2013
Hello,
I’d like to learn more about what differences an external observer would see between an organization that operated under a product mindset vs one that operated as a service.
“Treating open data as a service rather than as a product implies a quite different approach to how open data is managed, in what form it is made available, how it is funded and what expectations are placed upon it by governments as suppliers and by end users.”
Can you expand on this – with examples for both product and service organizations?
Best,
Luke
Michael Gurstein
February 3, 2013
Hi Luke, that would be a very long but useful discussion. Maybe the subject for another blogpost :). It’s also something I think would be a good thing to do some crowdsourcing around.
Luke Closs
February 3, 2013
I don’t understand why market forces would not apply to Open Data as a Service. Perhaps it’s not clear to me how these ideas would be implemented differently.
Perhaps I’m associating this product/aaService language with that of actual product development and delivery. In that context, the as a Service is very strongly controlled by market forces…
I agree there are different mental models about how to deliver open data, but it’s not clear to me how they manifest differently.
Michael Gurstein
February 4, 2013
Hi Luke, the argument is I think, necessarily a two step one. First there is the need to open up the possibility of Open Government Data (OGD) as a “service” since at the moment conceptually the situation seems to be uniformly OGD as a marketized “product”. Then once that argument is made the question of designing, developing and implementing an OGD service can be addressed. In the latter case the contrast is between public services and those formerly public services which, through the process of marketization have been recast into a form which is capable of being contracted out. My argument is not that an OGD service could not be contracted out (marketized) but that it would be more generally beneficial if such a service were maintained as a public (non-market) service such as for example, (in most instances) supplying water or maintaining public order (police forces). The passage that you quote above “Treating open data as a service rather than as a product implies a quite different approach to how open data is managed, in what form it is made available, how it is funded and what expectations are placed upon it by governments as suppliers and by end users” refers to the latter part of the argument and probably should have been expanded to make that point clearer. So, the specific answer to your question is to contrast a publicly run (say municipal) service with the way in which a contracted out service is structured, managed, financed and what expectations are placed upon it. For an expansion of that take a look at the various critiques of contracted out services or the kinds of problems that have arisen through the marketization (privatization) of water services in various parts of the world. The intent of my overall argument is to make the case for “open” AND “inclusive” OGD which to my mind is best advanced through OGD as a public service rather than one that is privatized.
Andy Turner
February 4, 2013
In open source software development and perhaps increasingly in open data development, there is a distinction between opening the source (pull and fork) and opening the development (pull and push). Open development will tend to demand more project management and checks and safeguards. I know of openly developed open data like Open Street Map and wikipedia. I wonder what examples of openly developed administrative/government data there are… I want to help develop Linked Open Data and focus to some extent on my local environment. I’m based in Leeds, England and I am employed by a university. These are interesting times. Peace be with you.
Nagarajan M
February 5, 2013
Hello,
Open Data could be better than just making data available in interoperable, open licence format. The future of open data is could be to provide them in an api. Then open data could be visualized as a “service”.
Can we say that the future of open data is not about data but about APIs.
Michael Gurstein
February 5, 2013
Hi, yes we probably could, although this would be placing the emphasis on the delivery mode and the reception device which is again exclusionary.
writerruns
May 7, 2013
Have you thought about what kind of communities and systems can enable openness as a service?
Michael Gurstein
May 7, 2013
I’m not sure it is the “kind of community” that is at issue but rather the relationship of the community with its data… If the community “owns” and “operates” its data then it is (or could) be a continuing inter-connection/service where the community is informed by and in turn informs its data.