1 00:00:19,880 --> 00:00:24,600 Tom Steinberg: Open Government Data is any information the Government collects, by and large for its own purposes, 2 00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:28,240 that it then makes available for other people to use for their purposes. 3 00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:30,080 Rufus Pollock: It’s government data that’s Open 4 00:00:30,080 --> 00:00:34,440 and Open means free for anyone to use, re-use and redistribute. 5 00:00:34,440 --> 00:00:40,101 Aine McGuire: The Open Data Movement is a way of transforming the relationship between the citizen and government 6 00:00:40,101 --> 00:00:42,080 such that everyone knows what’s going on 7 00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:43,746 and if everyone knows what’s going on 8 00:00:43,746 --> 00:00:48,160 then it will become much more easy for both parties to participate more fairly in society. 9 00:00:48,160 --> 00:00:53,058 Chris Taggart: Our lives are increasingly governed by data, in fact our lives increasingly are data. 10 00:00:53,058 --> 00:00:57,520 Given that, not to be able to look at the information about us, 11 00:00:57,520 --> 00:01:00,320 where we live, who represents us, 12 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:04,760 companies that do business with the government and so on 13 00:01:04,760 --> 00:01:07,560 starts to undermine democracy. 14 00:01:07,560 --> 00:01:10,264 Rob McKinnon: It is much broader than just government. 15 00:01:10,264 --> 00:01:13,720 Government is actually just one participant in our society. 16 00:01:13,720 --> 00:01:19,761 What we are seeing happening is actually the cusp of a major social change, a global social change. 17 00:01:19,761 --> 00:01:24,200 Together, we have the ability to transform the way society works. 18 00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:30,960 Globally, we are bringing together, through sites such as Wikipedia or collections of structured data, 19 00:01:30,960 --> 00:01:36,160 a big global overview of how society works and how we organise ourselves. 20 00:01:36,160 --> 00:01:41,727 So, we’re just at the beginning of a major change in the way we operate... 21 00:01:41,727 --> 00:01:45,920 Rufus Pollock: There are three ways in which Open Government Data can make the world a better place. 22 00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:52,720 Number one: it enables companies, individuals, not-for-profits 23 00:01:52,720 --> 00:01:57,480 to go and build interesting, useful, valuable applications and services. 24 00:01:57,480 --> 00:02:02,080 Number two, I think it’s about democracy, it’s about the participating in government, it’s about transparency, 25 00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:05,620 allowing us to see what our government is doing. 26 00:02:05,620 --> 00:02:08,592 And number three: I guess is why not? 27 00:02:08,592 --> 00:02:12,120 It is basically costless to open up government data, 28 00:02:12,120 --> 00:02:19,095 so why not open up the data that is already there and is already being collected. 29 00:02:27,880 --> 00:02:31,301 Tom Steinberg: Open Data is important for several different reasons 30 00:02:31,301 --> 00:02:34,200 and none of them is more important than the other. 31 00:02:34,200 --> 00:02:38,221 We have the possibility of generating economic value, 32 00:02:38,221 --> 00:02:42,865 which is at the forefront of many people’s minds in hard times like these. 33 00:02:42,865 --> 00:02:45,256 The creation of more jobs and more companies, 34 00:02:45,256 --> 00:02:47,960 and more profitable companies to generate more tax revenue. 35 00:02:48,137 --> 00:02:52,862 That's obviously a big thing about the potential power of open data. 36 00:02:52,924 --> 00:03:00,349 There is also the classic old fashioned issue of making data open and available so that we can see potential corruption 37 00:03:00,349 --> 00:03:07,357 and misuse of public money and practices that are unfair or illegal and nothing to do with money but are hidden in some way. 38 00:03:07,387 --> 00:03:11,277 Ton Zijlstra: You can expect people to start businesses by adding value to data, 39 00:03:11,277 --> 00:03:14,746 taking that data and using it for a certain application. 40 00:03:14,746 --> 00:03:16,800 It’s also about transparency 41 00:03:16,800 --> 00:03:21,944 but it’s also about people empowering themselves to be better able to make decisions about their own lives 42 00:03:21,944 --> 00:03:26,320 based on information that wasn’t available before. 43 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:32,280 And it’s also about making the organisations which create this data more efficient and effective themselves. 44 00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:36,058 Rufus Pollock: For example we do a project called wheredoesmymoneygo.org 45 00:03:36,105 --> 00:03:39,440 to help show you where your tax money goes, which I think is a really important part. 46 00:03:39,440 --> 00:03:47,000 I think it would be interesting to know, ‘this is the biggest contribution I make to the state - where is this money going?’ 47 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:52,480 Without open data in government, I can’t answer that question. 48 00:04:02,680 --> 00:04:07,873 David Eaves: We use Federal Pollution data and we mash it up into a map with electoral data 49 00:04:07,873 --> 00:04:12,099 to show you near your postal code or in any area you care about 50 00:04:12,099 --> 00:04:16,957 what facilities are near you and how they pollute and what they pollute and whose riding they are in. 51 00:04:16,957 --> 00:04:20,368 So you can begin to examine what the pollution levels around you are like. 52 00:04:20,368 --> 00:04:27,285 Tom Steinberg: MySociety builds various different civic and social websites and look after them. 53 00:04:27,285 --> 00:04:32,520 And by civic and social website I mean services that do things like tell you: 54 00:04:32,520 --> 00:04:38,960 ‘who is my politician?’ ‘how do I write to them?’ ‘what do they say in parliament?’, ‘how do they vote?’, ‘what do they do with the money they get?’ 55 00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:41,147 - that’s on the democratic side. 56 00:04:41,147 --> 00:04:45,745 On the civic side we build services that say: ‘how do I get problems on my street fixed?’ 57 00:04:45,745 --> 00:04:48,600 ‘how do i get information that I need to out of the government?’ 58 00:04:48,600 --> 00:04:55,440 And soon ‘how do I get my transport problems fixed?’, which is forthcoming... 59 00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:57,982 David Eaves: In Vancouver the garbage schedule is very dynamic... 60 00:04:57,982 --> 00:05:02,240 it changes on a regular basis and people always forget when to take their garbage out. 61 00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:04,530 And so now they can just go to a site and they can register 62 00:05:04,530 --> 00:05:08,106 and we’ll send them an email that says “Tomorrow is your garbage day”. 63 00:05:08,106 --> 00:05:12,982 It’s the type of application that the ordinary citizen wraps their head around very quickly, 64 00:05:12,982 --> 00:05:14,700 it delivers immediate use to them. 65 00:05:14,700 --> 00:05:19,530 And so when people see VanTrash, they say, "so is this part of what Open Data is about?" 66 00:05:19,530 --> 00:05:23,474 And we say, “Yes” and they say, “I want more of this in my life” 67 00:05:30,120 --> 00:05:31,800 Richard Cyganiak: On the level of the European Union, 68 00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:37,160 it would be really interesting if we could actually get all of this data into a single place 69 00:05:37,160 --> 00:05:42,517 so that we can search across the countries and actually start to compare things across countries. 70 00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:56,360 Jack Thurston: What we are trying to do with Farmsubsidy.org 71 00:05:56,360 --> 00:06:02,115 is connect all the different government disclosures into one single data centre. 72 00:06:02,115 --> 00:06:06,527 So that citizens can go online and find out what is going on not only in their country 73 00:06:06,527 --> 00:06:13,725 but in other countries and they can make comparisons about how much farms get in one part of the EU compared to another, 74 00:06:13,725 --> 00:06:15,880 how much citizens put in to the policy, 75 00:06:15,880 --> 00:06:20,080 how much it costs them if they are in one country as opposed to another country. 76 00:06:20,080 --> 00:06:27,355 This is the seeds of a pan-European debate that ought to be there, 77 00:06:27,355 --> 00:06:31,065 seeing as we have a pan-European policy. 78 00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:43,080 Erik Swanson: One of my favourite examples of how World Bank Data has been reused occurred very soon after we opened up the database. 79 00:06:43,080 --> 00:06:48,600 We got a message back from a group that had simply taken our entire database 80 00:06:48,600 --> 00:06:51,992 and analysed where all the gaps were in the data 81 00:06:51,992 --> 00:06:58,424 and then produced maps showing country by country, indicator by indicator, year by year 82 00:06:58,424 --> 00:07:01,744 where the gaps were in the data. 83 00:07:01,744 --> 00:07:05,480 It didn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know 84 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:09,920 but it told it to us in a way we hadn’t seen before 85 00:07:09,920 --> 00:07:13,656 and of course it made it public for everyone else to look at as well. 86 00:07:13,656 --> 00:07:15,440 Karin Christiansen: We are at the point where we need the data released 87 00:07:15,440 --> 00:07:20,240 and we need a standard for that data to come out so that we can map it and compare it. 88 00:07:20,240 --> 00:07:23,240 Because what’s needed in Uganda, in Afganistan 89 00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:27,033 is not just knowing what DFID is doing with UK money, 90 00:07:27,033 --> 00:07:30,815 what American money is doing, but about how this all fits together. 91 00:07:30,815 --> 00:07:35,120 Simon Parrish: We are working on an initiative called the International Aid Transparency Initiative 92 00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:44,680 which is about developing standards for how donors involved in government should be transparent about the aid that they give. 93 00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:48,695 Both to be accountable to the citizens and taxpayers in their own countries 94 00:07:48,695 --> 00:07:52,294 but also to a variety of stakeholders in the developing countries 95 00:07:52,294 --> 00:07:57,425 from governments of those countries, to civil society organisations, to parliamentarians 96 00:07:57,425 --> 00:08:02,209 who all want better information about the money that is coming into their country. 97 00:08:02,209 --> 00:08:07,920 The openness and availability of this information has the potential to radically change 98 00:08:07,920 --> 00:08:12,640 the way in which AID money is spent and the effectiveness with which aid money is spent. 99 00:08:12,640 --> 00:08:18,138 The importance is on the openness of that data so that it could be reused by different groups in different ways 100 00:08:18,138 --> 00:08:22,120 to make it accessible for different groups in a way that meets their own specific needs. 101 00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:26,440 Erik Swanson: Some of Hans Rosling’s bubble charts, 102 00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:33,280 the Gapminder software in which he illustrates the progress of countries over time, 103 00:08:33,280 --> 00:08:37,628 using charts that are animated and move... 104 00:08:48,520 --> 00:08:53,548 Even before our data became available, Hans was using it in his Gapminder charts 105 00:08:53,548 --> 00:09:03,080 and it has been terribly effective in raising awareness of development issues. 106 00:09:03,080 --> 00:09:07,280 Tom Steinberg: How can you persuade governments that maybe aren’t interested in Open Data 107 00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:12,040 that it is worth spending their time and money and effort to pay any attention? 108 00:09:12,040 --> 00:09:16,095 I think that demonstration is really the key here. 109 00:09:16,095 --> 00:09:20,600 Demonstration of services that are good, that are useful... 110 00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:28,440 and in particular services that are easy to explain, that offer very obvious value and general benefit as opposed to very niche benefit... 111 00:09:28,440 --> 00:09:29,469 David Eaves: We have three goals. 112 00:09:29,469 --> 00:09:35,680 The first is: let’s help build community around open data in as many cities as want it all around the world. 113 00:09:35,680 --> 00:09:41,660 Second, let’s give a place where local politicians and government officials can come meet people that care about this, 114 00:09:41,660 --> 00:09:47,047 meet people who are engaging on it and also see all of the cool things that are going on around the world 115 00:09:47,047 --> 00:09:50,042 and see how much is actually going on and that others are doing it and that they can do it too. 116 00:09:50,042 --> 00:09:56,040 Then the third is, let’s actually build something. 117 00:09:56,040 --> 00:09:58,560 Let’s try and get each community to build something 118 00:09:58,560 --> 00:10:05,000 because nothing gets people understanding why open data matters more than when they see a really profound visualisation 119 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:07,960 that allows them to understand their community in a way they never had before. 120 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:11,440 Jack Thurston: Our job is to remind people how important it is 121 00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:15,240 that they have access to data about what it is their government does, 122 00:10:15,240 --> 00:10:22,720 whether that is getting journalists to write stories, helping NGOs to build their campaigns around data 123 00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:28,750 or just creating web apps for ordinary citizens to go online and find out about what’s going on. 124 00:10:28,750 --> 00:10:35,120 We need to be able to demonstrate that a world in which government data is open is better than a world in which it is closed. 125 00:10:35,120 --> 00:10:40,389 Rufus Pollock: Normally the best things to come out of a new technology are ones that are not thought of. 126 00:10:40,389 --> 00:10:49,720 Imagine electricity, in the 1820’s when Faraday was demonstrating electricity to Gladstone at the Royal Society. 127 00:10:49,720 --> 00:10:52,160 Gladstone says to Faraday, 128 00:10:52,160 --> 00:10:55,708 “Yeah it’s very neat, you can make frogs’ legs twitch but what’s the point of electricity?” 129 00:10:55,708 --> 00:10:57,891 Faraday says back to Gladstone, 130 00:10:57,891 --> 00:10:59,320 “Well what’s the point of a baby? ... 131 00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:01,304 It’s going to grow into something...” 132 00:11:01,304 --> 00:11:05,000 And I think the point here about open data is that we are living in an information age, 133 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:11,637 an information society - data and information are the key infrastructure of that world. 134 00:11:11,637 --> 00:11:16,800 Ton Zijlstra: If you look at the way that humans solve problems we usually try to jump to easy solutions 135 00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:18,975 even if they are hard and complex problems. 136 00:11:18,975 --> 00:11:26,960 So I think we need to use the data that we hold about our lives and our environment as a way to find 137 00:11:26,960 --> 00:11:31,917 less easy but workable answers to the hard questions that we face.