Open data as anti-poverty tool must get smarter

" ... But solid evidence of the revolutionary promise that open data is making governments more efficient and responsive is surprisingly hard to find. Ironically, there is just no data yet to prove it. One problem, said Stefaan Verhulst who is co-founder of the Governance Lab at New York University, is that while there has been a whole lot of time and money spent on the technology to digitise, standardise and publish data, less time has been spent on identifying what problems open data can solve. The result is that open data is not used in a smart way and supply has outstripped demand. Without clear objectives, it is difficult to measure results, he said at a World Bank conference last week to chart the impact of open data. 'You first need to identify the value you want to create,' Verhulst said. One way to do that is to gather stakeholders together to discuss what gems might be buried in government data and then share innovative ideas on how to mine it, said Joel Gurin, president of Open Data Enterprise and former head of a White House group on smart disclosure. In fact, Gurin thinks only 20 percent of government data may be really valuable ..."