In Development

I went to the Open Government Data barcamp in the weekend, where I starting a discussion on how to measure the value of reusing government held data.

I shared the ways that I had found it had being done overseas:

• The District of Columbia estimated the cost developing the software that won their reuse of data competition.
• The European Union estimated the value of the market created through making data available for reuse through a number of estimates:
  • crowdsourcing: data reusers are asked to estimate the market size;
  • turnover: various forms of turnover, less the cost of accessing the data;
  • income: income received by the data reusers;
  • staff: the number of staff employed by the data reusers.

There was a discussion thread around the difficulty of measuring the value of reuse:

• The secondary and subsequent reusers of data also add value; the total of which may exceed the primary reuser.
• It is hard to value public good.
• It is hard to value democratic value - yet democracy requires transparency.
• Downloads or access are a proxy for demand and hence of value.
• The cost of collection is relatively easy to calculate and so could be a lower bound of value.

There was another thread of discussion around charging for data:

• Charging can be a barrier:
  • The cost deters potential reusers.
  • The reuse unit at the agency may impose a minimum quantum of charge to manage its work load and ensure return on effort - thereby creating another barrier. (UK experience)
• Charging may increase the data quality, as the agency gets rewarded for better quality data

Technorati Tags: barcamp, Data re-use, Government Held Information, open data, opengovt, Value of data