The day started, well with an enormous headache actually. The late night drinking white wine with Jeremy, our new friend from geocaching.com was a bit too much for my tired old body. But after paracetamol and more than 2 coffees I was conscious enough to listen to the presentation from various people doing, yes actually doing, open data stuff.
Rufus Pollack of wheredoesmymoneygo.org concentrated on the trials of extracting financial spending data from public sector bodies in the UK. He recommended the approach of separating the data being opened from the mechanism that is used for discovering it. So the registering of data with catalogs like data.gov.uk and ckan are as important as putting the data somewhere that it can be downloaded. This reinforced Rufus' primary message, that open data is a means not an end. Open data has no value, no benefit, until someone actually makes use of it. The objective is to get data to be used not just to set it free.
Jarmo Eskelinen provided us with a great mnemonic for remembering the important aspects of opening government data:
- Mandate
- Mindset
- Method
He pointed out that while mandate is hugely desirable; it is when civil servants adopt the right mindset, it is the mindset shift that will cause action. To illustrate he repeated an anecdote about a senior civil servant receiving rapturous applause when stating ‘we make all of our data open unless we have a really good reason not to’, what was amusing was that in fact that was only complying to his country’s laws that had been in place for 30 years.
Julian Tait of FutureEverything.org gave a fascinating insight into the painful process of getting the local government data of Manchester to open. As a region Manchester contains 10 different local authorities, each with different attitudes toward open data, his task to get them to the position of opening as much data as they now do is testament to FurtureEverything’s determination and dedication.
There were a couple of real prize gems in his presentation. The first was the potential savings that open data can deliver on the cost of servicing Freedom of Information (FOI) Act requests. Julian estimated that the Manchester authorities spend around £4-5 million per year on requests that might be self-serviced through open data.
The second gem was more advice than information and was echoed by other speakers, that developing and engaging with a community, people who can make use of the data that is opened is critical in it having any impact.
Daniel Kaplan was a dissenting voice among the chorus of optimistic views of open data. He cautioned us to consider the possible negative impact of open data and open data legislation. While most views that he expressed have been aired frequently, one that he did mention struck me as new. If legislation states that all government data be made freely available (as in cost), then some data that is expensive to maintain or has great commercial value may simply be privatized therefore taking it further from the public domain. While this sounds ludicrous, after it has been gathered at tax payer expense, it is not outside the envelope of stupidity that governments actually do. Daniel's parting message was for us to watch the areas of friction, of reluctance to opening data, as those are where the interesting problem will lie.
My afternoon was a real eye opener, not in its content but in the format. Andreas Weigend lead a workshop to predict what the future of data would be in 2010. He did this by brilliantly framing the question within other questions (what was different in the world 20, 10 and 3 years ago, what will it be like in 3, 10 and 20 years). We discussed the framing questions in small groups and were encouraged to be outlandish in our long term predictions.
After each group talked about their initial predictions, Andreas condensed, filtered and reflected them back at them. Each group was then asked to make a prediction for the year 2020. I won’t share our group’s prediction with you. You will instead have to watch weigend.com from January 2011 to see them revealed.
And so, PICNIC ‘10 closed for me, with a quick look at the Fablab workshop, the Instructables.com stand and a woman showing her handcrafted cheeses, I went for a meal and an early night in order to digest the many things I had learnt and to try and remember the many things I promised myself I would do.
