Opening up government data: a practical guide | Public Leaders Network SAS partner zone | Guardian Professional

“No government can afford to become isolated from the society it serves, otherwise it risks becoming distant and clumsy, trapped by its own, self-referential routines. That was the clear message in last September's report, entitled The civic long tail by UK thinktank Demos. This report on the the willingness of  governments to communicate more openly with their citizens, is part of an emerging trend that shows governments all over the world are starting to open up their data vaults for access by all interested parties... ‘as the Demos report states "relationships between government and its citizens (as voters, service users and taxpayers) should become more open, transparent and so more accountable. Government should be able to share much more information with citizens, who should be able to see in much finer detail what decisions government is taking and why. Citizens should in turn be able to contribute their views, ideas and feedback’. Things got moving in the right direction when the US government launched its Data.gov initiative in May 2009 as part of president Barack Obama's Open Government Directive [http://www.whitehouse.gov/open] , which instructs all federal agencies to use technology that makes their activities more transparent and enables them to engage more actively with citizens.  Data.gov has become a collective data repository for government data from all agencies with the primary goal of improving access to federal data and expanding the creative use of those data beyond the walls of government. It enables the public to participate in government by providing downloadable federal datasets to build applications, conduct analyses, and perform research. The site provides access to more than 390,000 datasets, over 1,100 government applications and close to 240 citizen-developed apps... Twenty-eight other countries have followed the US example... We feel open data can really have a long tail effect on our society, instigating a shift from a relatively small number of ‘hits’ at the top of the demand curve towards a huge number of niches ‘in the tail’ as the cost of production and distribution continues to drop... I believe an innovation strategy for open data in the public domain should meet five requirements ... “