The UK Government’s competition Show Us a Better Way is living up to its name. The competition is run by the Power of Information Taskforce.
The page About This Competition describes it eloquently:
“The government produces masses of information on what is happening around the UK. Information on crime, on health, on education. However, this information is often hidden away in obscure publications or odd corners of websites. Data tucked away like this isn’t of use to the ultimate owner of that information YOU.”
Refreshingly, the government goes on to say, “We’re confident that you’ll have more and better ideas than we ever will.”
The Guardian newspaper, which has been campaigning for freeing up government data since 2006, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the competition. With a decent prize pool of £80,000, there has been plenty of interest with over 450 people entering the contest.
In addition to five ideas that need further work and four prototypes that are already running, the judges have announced the five ideas that will be built:
• Can I Recycle It? : recycling information based on post code
• UK Cycling : planning cycling routes
• Catchment Areas : boundaries of school catchment areas
• Location of Postboxes : nearest one to wherever you are
• LooFinder : a mobile texting or website for the nearest public toilet
The first of these, Can I Recycle It, was the overall winner.
A US-equivalent competition, Apps for Democracy, run by the District of Columbia has pulled in 47 submissions over the 30 days it ran.
Clearly, the idea has international appeal for governments. For New Zealand, there are some key messages:
1. While there are already some very good examples of government agencies freeing up their data, such as Statistics NZ’s, Making More Information Freely Available, doing more can unleash much greater creativity. People will themselves work out what problems to solve, where the opportunities are, and ways to add social and/or economic value.
2. The five ideas that emerged winners are all based on geospatial data. Perhaps this reflects the attractiveness of visualisation and the growing popularity of Google Maps. Geospatial data should therefore get priority attention.
3. Governments aren’t typically associated with competitions and cash prizes but, handled right, they could potentially be a viable way to stimulate interest. And, it’s a great way for people to know what data (including formats) the government already makes available.
4. However, even the success of Show Us a Better Way doesn’t imply that all the underlying issues have been resolved. For example, about the time the winners were announced, the Ordinance Survey (which owns all of UK’s mapping data) sent a reminder that its data was free for non-commercial use only. Worse, it ruled out letting people use its data with Google Maps due to licensing issues. This may stall all the five winning ideas. It’s a reminder that licensing, copyright, and pricing all need to be addressed before data is truly free.
5. Also, there is a need to figure out what ‘free’ actually is. Is it the UK-style freely available or the US-style free of cost?
6. This is also a reminder of the non-rival nature of data and information, i.e. one person’s use doesn’t stop others from also using the same data and information for the same or different purpose. Freeing up data can therefore have a multiplier effect since the marginal benefit of providing an extra unit is the sum of the marginal benefits received by each of the individual users.
To go back to the beginning, the Power of Information review highlighted how “The cost-benefit calculations that historically underpinned what information is collected, who can use it, and how it is paid for are rapidly becoming outdated.”
And that raises some opportunities and challenges that New Zealand needs to seize.
11 Comments
Vikram,
Thank you for the thoughtful writeup. We structured Apps for Democracy in such a way that we would avoid some of the stumbling blocks you’ve highlighted that Show Us a Better Way has seen.
Here are the core features that let us produce 47 live, working, applications in 30 days:
1) The DC government was a “sponsor” rather than creator/producer of the contest - that meant my company (iStrategyLabs) would shoulder any of the legal burden associated with the contest, and dc.gov provide the necessary funds to make it happen. It also mean that iStrategyLabs could set the rules (certainly this was a collaboration between us and dc.gov), but we therefore didn’t have any issues with licensing, etc. Public-private sector collaboration is what let us produce the great results we did (4000% ROI!).
2) We made sure any and all submissions were open source - but we allowed them to be build on propriety platforms like Google Maps. We just required that layer added to that platform be open.
3) We wanted live applications as submissions rather than ideas. Show Us a Better Way is a terrific program and they deserve great praise for what they’ve achieved, but I’m not sure what the benefit for paying for anything but live, working solutions to problems is. I’d love to hear more on that.
Peter Corbett
CEO
iStrategyLabs
+1-202-683-9980
Great post and reply. Huge fan of the various initiatives to open up and use public data in highly creative ways.
I was wondering through how accessibility issues have been factored into the Apps for Democracy competition, especially around mouse- and scripting-dependent technologies. Nothing is inaccessible like inaccessible ajax. Is it accessibility considered a necessary requirement?
Barak Obama, the embodiment of Web2.0-supported change, has recently underlined his commitment to both open government and to disabled accessibility.
Hopefully these key agenda points aren’t mutually exclusive …
Cheers
Thanks Peter, Anthony.
Peter, congratulations on the excellent work. Are there any lessons you can share with us on any issues you’ve faced and how you got over them? Also, any specific reason for the name “Apps for Democracy”?
Thanks…
Great post Vikram.
As much spatial data is used, if not created, by Local Government, funded by rate payers in NZ (compared to tax payers in the UK) it is interesting to think what the implications of the UK initiative / experience might be for NZ and the local cost-benefit calculations.
I also draw your attention to the work getting traction under the NZ Geospatial Strategy. There is possibly an opportunity for exploring some spatial mash-ups under the tentative “Geospatial Web-service Sandbox” that has been suggested.
Something else to consider is that surprisingly its ‘Ordnance’ Survey (as in ammunition) and not ‘Ordinance’ (a law made by a colony, or a municipality or other local authority)! Perhaps an opportunity for the NZDF or an expanded KiwiImage Programme.
Regards
Thanks Jim. Will keep the ‘Ordnance’ vs. ‘Ordinance’ in mind!
You’ve raised an interesting point about economic models for local government. It’s not quite as straightforward as central government where free (no cost) data leads to greater economic activity and tax inflows in a virtuous cycle.
Still, there is economic and social value for local government- it’s just harder to uncover the linkages.
For example, take train and bus timetables as well as real-time positioning data. Making that available in a properly marked-up feed allows people to develop many services on top of that. This was well illustrated in Tara Hunt’s presentation. That presentation is more than two years old but still true today.
Linking the positive economic impact of more people commuting on trains and buses to freeing up data is essential to demonstrate otherwise local government is unlikely to free up the data.
Another angle is enriching local communities, such as FixMyStreet or iLive.at or LooFinder.
Yes, the cost-benefit is the challenge. (With an additional complication that Regional rate-payers are different to District or City rate-payers!) Increased economic activity doesn’t directly or immediately ease the load on existing rate-payers (who pay in proportion to the value of their land). In fact it is likely rate demands will go up with increased demand for infrastructure. (Yes, more data sloshing around requires more bandwidth and better QoS, that requires a better telecoms infrastructure, that impacts on other infrastructure and on rates.)
You mention train & bus timetables, however I understand that transport services are delivered by only 3 or 4 of the 85 NZ Councils. So the example is hardly relevant to most Councils.
Perhaps where the big gains might be is in the standardised electronic lodgement and processing of consents data and information (resource consents as well as building consents) (and not just the e-mailing of a scanned image), lodging of monitoring/compliance data and the publishing of this data. Such standardised data streams (stripped of privacy information or with privacy appropriately encrypted) would provide opportunity for all kinds of increases in effectiveness, efficiencies and innovative products.
However, standardisation itself has costs either in collaboration or coercion and this has to be funded.
It is a challenging opportunity!
Commenting on “standardisation itself has costs either in collaboration or coercion and this has to be funded”
Local and central government can make immediate gains, by appropriately marking up their existing webpages, to make their information more accessible for people first and machines second. This simple step will change the nature of government web pages from brochureware, to well-assembled data structures for information exchange.
The standard for this markup was outlined in July 2008, http://research.elabs.govt.nz/nz-govt-feed-standard/
Organisations using this standard will increase the publicity of their available services, events and activities on sites such as nzlive.com, business.govt.nz and newzealand.govt.nz
I don’t think we need more funding to make this happen, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, standards should be adopted because they make good sense, not because of coercion. If enough people think something’s a good idea, it becomes a defacto standard. The Internet is built on that basis (IETF RFC process).
Secondly, I dont think funding increases uptake rate of standards. It is not common practice for organisations to change a working system. Rather they wait until the system is past its use-by date, and then add new requirements, when planning the replacement system. On that basis, the change is already “budgeted” for.
Ending on a rah, rah note … in local and central government we occupy important roles as regulators, collectors, producers, providers, and users of information. its our responsibility to maximise our public value, based on the successful e-government characteristics of: Integration and efficiency, convenience and satisfaction, participation.
An interesting a highly relevant discussion about what is termed: the tragedy of the anti commons. The waste of things not being used due to over-ownership.
Could bring some different perspectives on cost/benefit in terms of the information generation and use within government:
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2008/11/18/berkman-michael-heller/
Thanks Hugh.
In the post you linked to, I particularly liked one of the comments:
“If I drop a $50 bill on the sidewalk and somebody picks it up, then I am $50 down on the deal and he is $50 up. If I drop an idea on the sidewalk and somebody picks it up, then he has it, I still have it, and it’s still on the sidewalk for someone else to pick up, ad infinitum.”
Replace “idea” with “information” and the multiplier effect of opening up data is neatly explained.
I think you’ve raised a good point about the licensing issues that need to be resolved for any real progress to be made. NZ On Screen (http://www.nzonscreen.com/) use the CC license, but none of their clips are actually available due to copyright issues with the original copyright holders, so the whole exercise is rather pointless.
Standardising the copyright rights and responsibilities of Government data would help and I’m very much in favour of a free-of-cost AND free-to-use environment. The Show Us A Better Way competition recognises that the larger community has a huge range of ideas, but then people were hobbled with licensing restrictions.
It’s all a step in the right direction though…
Marking up webpages, like completing metadata is not costless, even though it may be simple to say.
Standards do need enforcement even if they are a good idea which is why we have building inspectors and traffic officers.
Most (all?) projects I have worked on a pretty tightly controlled, so “new requirements” or “bright ideas” that don’t support business critical needs with a clearly defined sponsor are soon trimmed out of any specs.
Yes, I certainly agree it is our responsibility to maximise public value but not at any cost.
I don’t like to pick the detail but, comparing “the $50 bill on the side walk” to an “idea on the side walk” doesn’t “ring true”. There is a powerful lot of “overhead” in the successful use of an idea and someone pays for that “overhead”, where as “anyone” can “use” $50.
I remember in the 70s(?) one option for protecting a West Coast beech forest was to buy the forest and to distribute (sell?) the $1 shares to a large number of people thereby preventing (or at least raising the cost for) anyone attempting to gather the number of shares needed to get logging rights.