FOSTERING OPEN DATA CULTURE - finglive

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-07-04

Summary:

"Data – especially open or personal data – has become quite a hot topic in the media. This is the third annual ODW here in France; each year more and more local governments are opening up their data; while, across France, citizen data collectives continue to emerge; and the number of hackathons, data scrapathons, coding lunches, mapping weekends, coding weekends and open DIY workshops continues to grow.   Despite this momentum, data remains ‘geek-specific’. What does this imply? ... 1) Wrangling data is still challenging.  Data wrangling requires a specific technical skill set, and a certain degree of data-related knowledge:  [a] IT development skills (for database manipulation) [b] Some understanding of statistics (the rules for large-scale data analysis) [c] A basic familiarity with algorithms [d] even some graphic design skills ... 2) Solutions ... The simplest solution would be for us all to become “geeks” as soon as possible.  This could be achieved by adding coding, maths, algorithm and statistics courses to school curricula: an idea that is gaining some traction. In fact, French Minister Fleur Pellerin actually mentioned this very notion recently.  Realistically, this level of implementation would take 1-2 generations to bear fruit.  Another solution would be to facilitate public access to the necessary tools and resources, and especially 'human resources'. There are already many freely available, online tools (have a look at the overview published during our Infolab campaign), but these are all relatively difficult to use. Apart from a few big data startups, and collective efforts like hackathons, no actual human expertise is currently available. There are only maybe 3 public digital centres in France that have begun to offer training of this nature – but that is all.    3) The Infolab Campaign ... In April, FING initiated an Infolab action research campaign, in partnership with a number of local authorities (Region Paca agglomerations, Rennes and Bordeaux, the department of Gironde, the City of Paris), the State (Etalab), the INRIA - research organization, the University of Paris 13, Alcatel-Lucent, the French National Post office, and OKFN.  The term Infolab intentionally adopts the FabLab metaphor: is it possible and is it 'useful' to develop publicly accessible 'DIY data' spaces?What other forms of mediation/intermediation should be developed to educate and support the data manipulation efforts of the general public? ... companies, civil society organisations, government agencies, citizens ...  We are investigating these questions within an inter-territorial workgroup, and through field experiments.  At this stage, we have yet to identify the organisational structure that could best support the emergence of Infolabs (nor how they might be financed), but we have already identified several tasks they should perform:  [a] Develop 'technical' training for existing tools, and (why not?) teach the fundamentals of algorithms and statistics; [b] Develop France’s 'popular education' (popular here means 'of the people', a notion that implies the education of the general population via social and cultural community centres): which means awareness-raising and dialogue with citizens about the political and economic issues surrounding data and its manipulation; [c] Develop platforms for the incubation and support of data-based projects led by smaller organisations–small businesses, civil society organisations– or small collectives; [d] Stimulate the development and use of co-produced data: especially the collective production of data, as public open data has its limitations. This approach has been adopted in the field of sustainable development, for example; [e] Offer free, open 'hack' spaces, equipped with adequate tools and staffed with individuals holding the right sets of skills; [f] Infolabs could even act as vectors for public consultations (urban development), and a participatory democracy ..."

Link:

http://fing.tumblr.com/post/54509036013/fostering-open-data-culture

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.psi oa.comment oa.events oa.crowd oa.france oa.lay oa.recommendations oa.fing oa.infolab os.france oa.data

Date tagged:

07/04/2013, 10:07

Date published:

07/04/2013, 06:07