Open Data for Economic and Social Development: Why Government Should Care

Open Data for Economic and

Social Development:

Why Government Should Care

Andrew Stott

UK Transparency Board

Senior Consultant,

World Bank

Istanbul

17 Sep 2014

@dirdigeng

andrew.stott@dirdigeng.com

Policy Objectives of Open Data

2

New Economic and Social Value

Improved public services

More Transparent Government

More Efficient Government

Clarity about objectives

3

More Efficient Government

More Transparent Government

Improved public services

New Economic and Social Value

Policy Objectives of Open Data

4

New Economic and Social Value

Improved public services

More Transparent Government

More Efficient Government

McKinsey Global Institute

5

European Union

6

Evidence base for EU Open Data Directive

Open Gov Data in EU would

‒ increase business activity by up to €40 Bn/yr

‒ have total benefits up to €140 Bn/yr

Open Data was reused 10x-100x more than

charged-for data

Lowering charges may attract new types of re-

users, in particular SMEs.

Costs appear to increase very little: in fact, they

may eventually decrease

7

All economic analysis and case studies

point the same way

Case Study: Statistics Germany

8

Users: +1800% Downloads: +800%

Omidyar/Lateral Economics

9

What are the Open Data

Businesses

10

Aggregators

11

Developers

12

Enrichers

13

$930m business from Open Data

14

Weather for 1m

points

60 years of crop

yield data

14 TB of soil

data

Company

formed in 2006

Sold to

Monsanto

October 2013 for

$930m cash

Enablers

15

Why is this not conclusive?

16

Economic Benefits? Not our agency’s job!

17

Set new objectives for data owning agencies

18

Set new objectives for data owning agencies

19

Economic Benefits? We want some of it!

Charging economically

sub-optimal

Licensing inhibits

innovation

Hidden Costs –

marketing, payment

collection, enforcement

Barriers to entry suit

existing customers

No real pressure for

efficiency 20

Open Data would cannibalise our income

21

However Open Data can stimulate demand too

22

Data Imperialism?

23

Data Imperialism?

~80% of the benefit goes to a country’s data

end-users – citizens, businesses, visitors,

investors

~½ of the business value chain is intrinsically

local (10% of total benefit)

Therefore only 10% of total benefit is

internationally contestable

Worst case: country get 90% of the potential

benefit from their data

Best case: early-movers get to steal

neighbours’ lunch as well 24

Policy Objectives of Open Data

25

New Economic and Social Value

Improved public services

More Transparent Government

More Efficient Government

Performance of individual hospitals

26

12+ Weeks

MRSA-free

Good C-Diff

record Low

Mortality

2 recent

MRSA

Blood

clots

Patient

ratings

1000 less heart surgery deaths each year

27

Uganda: Open Data and Community Health

Monitoring

28

33% reduction in

under-5 mortality

20% extra utilisation

of out-patient

services

Significant

improvements in:

Immunization

Waiting times

Absenteeism

Police

29

Open Data used to drive Citizen Engagement

30

Local team

Telephone, website, Facebook and YouTube

….

Local police

Twitter feed

How YOU

can get

involved

It’s very local

Accessible data on crime

Attract Inform Engage Action

Why are Ministers taking blame for local

variation?

31

Push-back from professions

32 http://bma.org.uk/news-views-analysis/news/2013/june/consultants-face-online-rating

“We welcome this in principle but ….” (1)

‘Some consultants may take on higher risk

cases that would lead to raised mortality

rates’

‘Some patients could have multiple health

problems’

‘Most consultants work in teams.’

‘Patients’ experiences are obviously highly

subjective’

‘A range of factors can affect the feedback

they provide’

33

“We welcome this in principle but ….” (2)

‘Different ways of working make it harder to

gather meaningful data for patients’

‘It is critical that any information provided is

accurate and in context.’

Whereas there are ways of comparing

performance in some specialties, such as

cardiothoracic surgery, in other areas it is

much harder.

‘It will be misleading and cause unnecessary

anxiety to patients.’

34

Policy Objectives of Open Data

35

New Economic and Social Value

Improved public services

More Transparent Government

More Efficient Government

36

Politicians start to get nervous ….

37

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It’s hard to uncover major issues

38

Input

• 285,000 records

• 1.17m rows of

data

• PDF documents

Findings

• $34bn spent in 8

years

• Aid increased

1,965%

• 20 companies

benefited most

Transparency is about what officials do too

39

Civil Service pay and expenses

40

Holding officials to account

41

Pressure to justify and restrain costs

42

Make officials’ responsibilities clearer

43

Where the person

is in the structure

Pay Responsibilities

Contact details

International Corporate Transparency

44

Policy Objectives of Open Data

45

New Economic and Social Value

Improved public services

More Transparent Government

More Efficient Government

Government can be an Open Data user too

46

Greater Manchester estimated £6.5m

savings from finding and using its own

data more easily

EU Inspire Directive on Geospatial Data

47

One Government reported fiscal ROI 8:1

in first 4 years, plus wider benefits

British Columbia Open Data

48

Government

itself is #1

user of its

data

33% of

downloads

come from

within BC

Government

Data Quality

49

Release of data will

reveal issues of data

quality

Surprisingly little

criticism

Celebrate greater

checking of data!

Use as stimulus to

Measure

Prioritise

Improve

Citizens helping improve government data

50

Other Considerations

51

It’s not just about new data

Opening new data is hard.

So includes data previously “published” but

in non-reusable format

with restricted licence

only aimed at specialist groups

only for payment

only in response to requests

difficult to find

52

data.gov.uk contains a lot of data which

nobody knew was already published

Handling the concerns of data owners

“People hug their database, they don't want to

let it go. You have no idea the number of

excuses people come up with to hang onto

their data and not give it to you, even though

you've paid for it as a taxpayer.”

– Tim Berners-Lee

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html 53

Still everyone thought that they were an

exception

It’s held separately by n different organisations, and we can’t join it up

It will make people angry and scared without helping them

It is technically impossible

We do not own the data

The data is just too large to be published and used

Our website cannot hold files this large

We know the data is wrong

We know the data is wrong, and people will tell us where it is wrong

We know the data is wrong, and we will waste valuable resources

inputting the corrections people send us

People will draw superficial conclusions from the data without

understanding the wider picture

People will construct league tables from it

It will generate more Freedom of Information requests

It will cost too much to put it into a standard format

It will distort the market

Our IT suppliers will charge us a fortune to do an ad hoc extract

54

Handling reasons for exceptions

Most reasons are valid in some contexts

The reasons quoted are not necessarily the

real ones, just plausible-sounding ones

No-one likes to be told that they are wrong

Disproving one reason may just provoke a

different reason

No-one likes to be told that they are wrong

again and again

55

Better to work with the data owner

What are the risks?

How could they be mitigated?

How could remaining risks be managed?

Would it be less risky if

‒ Some records were removed?

‒ Some fields were removed?

Let’s focus on what can be opened

56

Thank You

57

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