Open Data & My Data | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog

"The Open Knowledge Foundation believes in open knowledge: not just that some data is open and freely usable, but that it is useful – accessible, understandable, meaningful, and able to help someone solve a real problem. A lot of the data which could help me improve my life is data about me – 'MyData' if you like. Many of the most interesting questions and problems we have involve personal data of some kind. This data might be gathered directly by me (using my own equipment or commercial services), or it could be harvested by corporations from what I do online, or assembled by public sector services I use, or voluntarily contributed to scientific and other research studies.  This data isn’t just interesting in the context of our daily lives: it bears on many global challenges in the 21st century, such as supporting an aging population, food consumption and energy use.  Today, we rarely have access to these types of data, let alone the ability to reuse and share it, even when it’s my data, about just me. Who owns data about me, who controls it, who has access to it? Can I see data about me, can I get a copy of it in a form I could reuse or share, can I get value out of it? Would I even be allowed to publish openly some of the data about me, if I wanted to?  But how does this relate to open data? After all, a key tenet of our work at the Open Knowledge Foundation is that personal data should not be made open (for obvious privacy reasons)!  However there are, in fact, obvious points where 'Open Data' and 'My Data' connect ..."