In only three years, Open Data has become a movement that is global, fast moving and transformative for governments, businesses and individuals.  Open Data could be data released by anyone – a government agency, a company or even a civil society organization.  So why focus on government-held data for empowering people?  There are two main reasons:  First, governments are by far the largest creator and collector of data – they hold more than data than any other company or organization could ever hope to possess; and the public creates more data every day.  The second reason is that most data held by governments is never used for anything, or at most used for the one limited purpose it was collected.  By releasing its data, governments create the possibility for others—a business, a researcher, a developer or even a single citizen—to discover new uses for that data, uses never dreamed of by the agency that “owned” that data.

 

And yet, data alone has little value.  By itself, the release of data is useless.  Data is only useful if it is applied to solve a real problem for a real person.  Empowering people with data means focusing on the use of data and the problems that it can help solve.  

Put another way, Open Data cannot be a technology-centered effort, or even a data-centered effort.  It must be people centered.

 

Making Open Data work requires people putting their hands on it, and this often requires partnerships of people – developers and others – engaging with data as “infomediaries” for the general public.  Working with data requires some skills.  Infomediaries refers to people or entities that help translate data into more usable formats – such as a newspaper using Open Data to write a story about wasteful government spending or disparities in spending among schools, or a developer turning Open Data into a mobile application to tell people when the next bus will arrive.

 

Creating these opportunities for partnerships in Open Data is something that anyone—an NGO or a group of civic hackers—can do.  But governments also need to invest in the reuse of their data.  Open Data must be a public-private-civic partnership.

 

This is where events like a TechCamp can be powerful catalysts enabling infomediaries, agencies and developers to come together, brainstorm about problems and how data, if “opened” by government, could be used to help address those problems.   Or it could be a local meet-up by developers to do some basic coding of applications, or an “Apps Challenge” organized by a agency to promote innovative uses of its data, or a training for journalists on how to better leverage data in their reporting.  In all cases, the collective insights, passion and skills of a group of people engaging with data are a very powerful thing.  This is an important step in empowering citizens with Open Data.

 

But what can citizens do to help empower themselves with Open Data?  The first and most important thing any person can do is simple:  Ask for data.  Request it.  Demand it.  The data released by a government that is most likely to be useful and used is the data that has been specifically requested.  Creating a “data feedback loop” in which data is requested and government responds by releasing Open Data is invaluable. 

 

Governments must begin to offer “Open Data as a Service” – an on-demand service by which public agencies respond to data requests with Open Data releases.

 

This requires both government and citizens (and businesses, civil society and the media) to act.  To have a service on demand, there must be demand.  That is where citizens come in.  Governments have two roles in this:  releasing requested data while also actively opening data that has not yet been requested. 

 

Armed with Open Data in a usable format, citizens can have direct, immediate impact on how well government delivers services, how smartly it spends the public’s money and what kind of policies it pursues.  Open Data can also enable people to make better decisions in their own lives – from which hospital or clinic to choose, where to get better prices for the products they buy (or sell), or which restaurant has fewer health code violations.

 

The picture of the library of the Musée McCord Museum used in this post has been taken from FLICKR and has not known copyright restrictions.