Opening up government data for public benefit | The Governance Lab @ NYU

" ... This post explains the open data movement and considers the benefits and risks of releasing government data as open data. It then outlines the steps taken by the Labor and Liberal governments in accordance with this trend. It argues that the Prime Minister’stask, while admirably intentioned, is likely to prove difficult due to ongoing challenges surrounding the requirements of privacy law and a public service culture that remains reluctant to release government data into the public domain…. A key purpose of releasing government data is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of services delivered by the government. For example, data on crops, weather and geography might be analysed to improve current approaches to farming and industry, or data on hospital admissions might be analysed alongside demographic and census data to improve the efficiency of health services in areas of need. It has been estimated that such innovation based on open data could benefit the Australian economy by up to $16 billion per year ..."