Talk given at the South Tyrol Innovation conference on open data, mainly focused on government open data. Open data doesn’t mean free data and other maunderings about public data, public goods, and networked data as a resource. The hidden costs of open data (and how to pay for them). Beyond transparency (which is where a lot of this started).

1. Free Data Isn’t
the Same as
Freeing Data
September, 2013
Mark Madsen
www.ThirdNature.net
@markmadsen

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A Quick Intro
One of my past jobs…
In some ways it was
similar to how people
view open data: get
free puppies and sell
grown dogs.
But selling data like a
data syndicator is a bad
model for public data.

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Some of the secrets in this session
Open data does
not always mean
free data.
Open data = better
government
When you open
data you unlock
value in the
market that is
more important
than gaining
revenue directly.

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Some open data examples
These projects fall into a few different types:
▪ Make data available
▪ Make data pretty
▪ Make data actionable

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When you first give people access to information
that was unavailable…
OH GOD
I can see into forever

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After a while the response is more measured

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Publicdata.eu
Sample app showing statistical data. Attractive, but how useful?

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Open data app <> “make data pretty”
There’s more to data
than simply showing
numbers.
e.g. many
“data+map”
applications
If your data looks like
the population, you
haven’t found the
relevant parts yet.

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What’s wrong with the
City of Oakland
CrimeWatch web site?
Figuring out what to do
Doing it once you figure
out how
Many problems with:
Navigation
Control
Display
Exceptions
City of Oakland Crimewatch
And the reported price was over a quarter of a
million dollars for the city, plus annual maintenance.

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Oakland Crimespotting: Let Your Data Go

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A Standard Municipal Web Site

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Honolulu Answers
Data that you think is worthless may be useful

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Fighting Fraud and Corruption in Education

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Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA)
Actionable, immediate

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MBTA: Why not sell the data?
Does the government know how to be in the business of
selling data? What data is valuable and what isn’t? How
to price it? How to negotiate the contracts?
Privatizing data is almost always bad:
▪ Translink in Vancouver sold their transit data to Google. Now
they have no transit applications and can’t make any.
▪ Admin Office of the US Courts, spent $30M to get digital
access to its own records, that it sold for less
▪ Same office paying $156M to publish the same material online
▪ The US GAO and Thomson West legislative history, similar tale
▪ Amazon and the US national archives videos, similar tale
▪ WestLaw and LexisNexis make ~$2B annually from this data

17. Crisis Commons Oil Reporter

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Street Bump

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Value from open data:
Private is a cost
Available is good
Relevant is better
Actionable is best

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The benefits of open data fit into a few categories:
Tangible, direct:
▪ Save money – less work, lowered cost of service
▪ Make money – direct revenue (unlikely)
Intangible, indirect:
▪ Improved services
▪ Civil / Social
▪ Indirect revenue and benefits through market growth
or market efficiencies

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Open data doesn’t mean “data you don’t have to pay for”

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Data isn’t really “exhaust”
The data exhaust assumption

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Open data means “free data” in a different way

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Delivering data consistently isn’t always simple
Most IT organizations have the skills and tools to extract
and publish data.
Most do not have the skills and tools to create applications
on the data.
Anthony David Giordano

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Who bears the cost?
Supplier Producer Consumer
The cost question is a red herring: different parties benefit
based on their participation, and costs vary by party.

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The Economics of Scarcity is About Rivalry for Resources
Rivalry: the more I use the
less you have. Data is not a
finite resource.
Exclusion: intellectual
property law is exclusion;
you can’t use it unless you
pay me first

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The Economics of Networked Data Require New Principles
Anti‐rivalry: there is no
consumption, only use. Open
licensing is a way of addressing
the change in this dynamic.
Inclusivity: the network effects of
inclusion mean more use = more
value; and as cost goes down,
usage and value go up.
Open data value is driven by network effects

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Anti‐rivalry + Inclusivity = Collaboration & Co‐creation

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Which would you rather have?
Open data can make the pie larger, particularly for
markets with many participants, like regional tourism.
The rationale for sharing and collaborating:
open data is not a zero‐sum game

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For most public data, public domain
Open data licensing creates a network resource
rather than an artificially limited resource.
Citizens know more about how to apply data to
their problems than you do. Open public data
creates the possibility for many people to explore
and innovate, more quickly, resulting in more
chances to find the value in data.

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How do you get a fancy open data app?
You build it yourself.
▪ After training or hiring
the staff and acquiring
the technology to do it
repeatably and at scale.

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How do we get a fancy open data app?
You hire a vendor to
build it for you.
▪ Oakland showed how
well that usually works.
▪ If you don’t have the
skills to do something,
you may not have the
skills to evaluate the
vendor doing it either.

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How do we get a fancy open data app?
You open the data and
someone else writes it for
you. And then someone
else builds a better one.

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The government’s job isn’t to be a for‐profit business. It’s to
maintain the infrastructure of a society. Open data can
make government more effective, creating a public good.

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Some references
Sharing data on the open web ‐
https://bmark.us/bmark/readable/88ce9a65bebc38
Extracting, Linking and Integrating Data from Public Sources: A
Financial Case Study, IEEE Data Engineering, September, 2011
Business Models for PSI Re‐Use: A Multidimensional Framework,
Enrico Ferro, Michele Osella, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Via
Boggio, 61 – 10138 Torino, Italy
Opendefinition.org

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CC Image Attributions
Thanks to the people who supplied the creative commons licensed images used in this presentation:
dog_peek_fence_bw.jpg ‐ http://www.flickr.com/photos/roome/3031410585/
shady_puppy_sales.jpg ‐ http://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/5001120150
child_whisper.jpg ‐ http://www.flickr.com/photos/cannonball_jane/120325556/
XKCD Heatmap ‐ http://xkcd.com/1138/
school small world bank http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/2765585037/sizes/o/
beer_free_beer2.jpg ‐ http://flickr.com/photos/fzero/173386050
laptop face.jpg ‐ http://flickr.com/photos/sd/7746599/
child_alone.jpg ‐ http://flickr.com/photos/beija‐flor/129669668/
children playing.jpg ‐ http://www.flickr.com/photos/beija‐flor/52292046/