The ‘London Datastore’ web site, which is the same in principle to the Apps for Democracy initiative launched in Washington DC in 2008, gives London’s software developers the opportunity to unlock the commercial value of data and create applications that are useful for citizens, government and society as a whole.
London Mayor Boris Johnson (pictured) told reporters at the CES electronics show in Las Vegas last week (January 7th 2010) that the London Datastore initiative would unleash information that has “been languishing for far too long in the deepest recesses of City Hall.”
“I firmly believe that access to information should not just be the preserve of institutions and a limited elite,” he said. “Data belongs to the people, particularly that held by the public sector. Getting hold of it should not involve a complex routine of jumping through a series of ever decreasing hoops.”
Johnson added that the initiative would boost transparency and accountability in government, and help trust between the authorities and Londoners.
Daniel Scott, who heads up ICT Strategy & Architecture for Landgate, the Western Australian Land Information Authority, called the London Datastore (to see a prototype go to data.london.gov.uk), a “bold move” that governments in Asia are likely to embrace.
“It is a familiar scenario in government - lots of data languishing in paper format for decades, its value unrealised. Too often we don’t how useful this data could be, or even if this data exists,” he told FutureGov. “But the more information goes online, the closer we will move towards citizen-centric government.”
Landgate has a familial link with Ordnance Survey, the UK government’s national mapping agency, which recently announced that it would make map data available to the public as part of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Data.gov.uk open government information policy announced late last year.
The Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP) is one way the Western Australian government has been using and sharing public data, noted Scott. “Government, developers and business users now have online access to over 350 datasets that were previously only available directly through the individual agencies, if at all.” Landgate is now looking into new ways of making public spatial data more accessible.
Meanwhile, the federal initiative Government 2.0, launched by the Australian Government Information Management Office’s (AGIMO) last year, echoes the British data.uk.gov policy by focusing on improved access, collaboration and governance rather than technology per se, Scott added.
But how can governments make use of open data sources?
“Though the London Datastore will house archival data, which perhaps does not have the more obvious commercial value of live data, it is of huge value for research purposes,” Scott said. “Western Australia’s hub of advanced computing, known as iVEC, has a petabyte storage array and hosts shared research data from a number of organisations.”
As one of the oldest agencies in Western Australia, Landgate has acted as a repository for regional location knowledge for over 170 years. In the modern era, this includes a wide range of aerial photography and satellite imagers that can now be used to spot geographical trends such as changes to vegetation cover. “Some types of information only become valuable with time. With an issue like climate change, archival data comes into its own,” said Scott.
The government of Hong Kong is also looking at ways to benefit from more open public data. Building on pioneering initiatives that saw local TV companies use data from the Transport Department’s video cameras for traffic reports, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) is working with the Lands Department and the TD on a pilot scheme to open up transport and geospatial data for wider public dissemination and re-use.
“We recognise the potential economic benefits to be gained from the opening up of public sector information (PSI) for public access,” Bassanio So, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer (Policy and Customer Service), told FutureGov. “We hope that the pilot program will assure us that opening up PSI will spur creativity and innovation.”
It is still early days for open public data in Hong Kong, as it is for most governments in Asia. The Digital 21 Strategy Advisory Committee, the highest-level government advisory body on IT matters in the territory, met last month to discuss how demographic, economic, geographical, meteorological and historical data could be effectively accessed and re-used (click here for more).
In Korea, Dr Jeongwon Yoon, Director of the country’s IT Policy Division at the National Information Society Agency, told FutureGov that while he is all for open government data in principle, it is important that governments decide what type of data they feasibly – and legally - make available.
“Government data consists of statistics, practices and processes, to name a few examples. Personal data cannot be a consideration due to privacy issues, I would assume. But some of this data might be hugely useful, if made publically available. Whether or not this information is organised enough to be useful is another matter,” he said.
Weather information may translate into lucrative revenue streams for software developers and service providers that are in the business of customised weather services, Dr Yoon suggested.
But the concept is not without challenges. Scott cautioned that users in rural areas may run into bandwidth issues. A bigger issue is cost. “When government says it will make information available for free, it may be free for the end user - but government needs to work out how to pay for it,” Scott said, listing storage, equipment, additional staff and licensing as budget-draining overheads.
A solution to high costs could be new technology, including cloud computing, Scott suggested. “We have started to say that if we have a new service, we’ll put it into the cloud. The same could apply to how we set public data free.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Robin Hicks
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 13.01.2010
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