Open Data and the G20 | Club Troppo

"Earlier this year our Treasurer, Joe Hockey, led the G20 Finance Ministers to pledge lifting GDP by 2 percent over ‘business as usual’ over the next five years. It’s a big win for the Treasurer, but how can it be delivered? There aren’t many easy options for reform on that scale that don’t create swathes of losers around whom the media then swarm, thus amplifying the inevitable campaigns against change. But one opportunity is sitting under our noses. In a knowledge economy, data is the new infrastructure. The more open it is, the more it can be reused repurposed. The more it attracts value adding as business and civil society find clever new ways of making it ever more useful. Most data Google Maps delivers has existed for decades. But government open data policies – and Google – convey open data seamlessly to your mobile as you search out your target. That’s why, Australia’s Government implemented the recommendations of the 2009 Government 2.0 Taskforce which I chaired. But in Australia as elsewhere, high-level commitments have achieved less than they could have if they’d been seamlessly translated down to the delivery coalface as Google has with geospatial data. Omidyar Network today releases a Lateral Economics report that estimates that a more vigorous open data commitment could grow Australia’s economy by around $16 billion per year. That’s half Joe Hockey’s G20 growth target. To deliver it we must not just break through the red-tape and inertia that’s obstructed open data implementation but also embrace a fresh agenda sketched in our report in which governments craft conditions in which private organizations open more of their data to benefit themselves, their business eco-system, and the wider public. The G20 would also address international dimensions including cross-national standardisation and harmonisation. Our report’s six case studies show how open data can power innovation and productivity growth ..."