OPEN DATA


The open data movement in the area of access to public (and other) information is a relatively new but very significant, and potentially powerful, emerging force.  It has now been widely endorsed by among others Tim Berners-Lee generally acknowledged as the Father of the World Wide Web. The overall intention is to make local, regional and national data (and particularly publicly acquired data) available in a form that allows for direct manipulation using software tools as for example, for the purposes of cross-tabulation, visualization, mapping and so on.

The underlying idea is that public (and other) data, whether collected directly as part of census collection or indirectly as a secondary output of other activities (crime or accident statistics for example) should be available in electronic form and accessible via the web. There are significant initiatives in this area underway in the US , the UK and Canada among many many other jurisdictions.

This drive towards increased public transparency and allowing for enhanced data enriched citizen/public engagement in policy and other analysis and assessment is certainly a very positive outcome of public computing and online tools for data management and manipulation. However, as with the earlier discussion concerning the “digital divide” there would, in this context, appear to be some confusion as between movements to enhance citizen “access” to data and the related issues concerning enhancing citizen “use” of this data as part, for example, of interventions concerning public policies and programs.





The suggestion implicit in most of the discussions on “open data” (and explicit in Berners-Lee’s above quoted talk) is that “everyone” has the potential to make use of the data. However, as we know from experience elsewhere, not “everyone” has access to the digital infrastructure, to the hardware or software, or to the financial or educational resources/skills which would allow for the effective use of data or any other digital resource.  Thus rather than the entire range of potential users being able to translate their access into meaningful applications and uses, the lack of these foundational requirements means that the exciting new outcomes available from open data are available only to those who are already reasonably well provided for technologically and with other resources.


Certainly the newly digitized information was “accessible” to all on an equal basis but the availability of resources to translate that “access” into a beneficial “effective use” was directly proportional to the already existing resources available to those to whom the access was being provided.  The old story about the pauper and the millionaire having equal opportunity to purchase a printing press as a means to promote their interests can be seen as holding equally here as in the 19th century.