The Open Data Cart and Twin Horses of Accountability and Innovation | Many Possibilities

"Let me start by saying that the ideals of the Open Data movement: transparency; accountability; and, citizen innovation, are ones that I hold near to my heart.  Further, I admire and respect many of the leaders of the Open Data movement.  However, and it may simply be my own myopia, I have yet to see many voices for caution with respect to Open Data.  In particular, what concerns me most at the moment is the air of euphoria in which Open Government Data in particular is being pitched to the public.  The recent series of articles around the proposed G8 Open Data Charter such as this one by Martin Tisné and this by Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt create an expectation about data that will, at best, be very hard to fulfil and, at worst, actually shift the attention from where it ought to be.  Here are some of the things I worry about. Data as Fetish Children’s charity organiser Benita Refson is recently quoted in the Guardian as saying: 'If you’re not using data, you’re just another person with an opinion'. Somehow this quotation sums up all of my pent up apprehension about the Open Data movement. Implicit in the above is the assumption that 'data', 'facts', and 'truth' are roughly equivalent ... This amounts to a kind of fetishisation of data as having some mystical, immutable truth quality, a quality which of course does not exist.  Data is collected by people.  Even when it is collected by machines, it is collected by machines designed by people.  And this means that data is vulnerable to all of the vagaries that humans are prey to, bias, laziness, hidden purpose, myopia, etc.  We choose what data to collect and how often and where.  We choose what level of quality we would like.  We choose how to represent that data and what story we think the data is backing up ... As more data accumulates our ability to see whatever we want to see increases.  Researcher Kate Crawford and author Nassim Taleb have both eloquently pointed out that with larger amounts of data the ease of coming to a false conclusion only increases ... Also a key issue for me are the privacy implications of Open Government Data policies.  If the new default for all government data is to be open, then it is inevitable that at some point the Mosaic Effect will come into play ... A recent US Government policy memo instructed agencies to they must  account for the 'mosaic effect' of data aggregation.  This can be quite hard to do and there is concern among the Open Government Data community that such a requirement could be used as an excuse to block the publication of data. A better strategy would be for the Open Government Data community to move towards a more demand-driven approach.  Indeed this is the recommendation of UK researcher Kieran O’Hara in his paper, Transparent Government, Not Transparent Citizens: A Report on Privacy and Transparency for the Cabinet Office ... Yet another concern for me is the danger of looking a complex systems in an overly simplistic way.  The fact that we can measure one aspect of a complex system may give us the temptation to intervene without fully understanding the systemic role of the thing we measure.  It may give us a false sense of understanding.  If we have complete scrutiny of government, will that affect the way civil servants and politicians behave in an entirely positive way?  Or will it simply move existing bad behaviour into areas beyond scrutiny.

A top-down, data-driven, supply-side approach to Open Government is also likely to mean a focus on what is available as opposed to what is needed ... Finally, real Open Government is a cultural issue not a data issue.  I worry that the disproportionate focus on datasets will distract from the harder challenge of building a culture of openness.  I can’t help but wonder whether Open Government Data is a symptom of Open Government and not the other way around.  Of course it is a bidirectional relationship but perhaps it only becomes bidirectional when there is a sufficient level of cultural openness in government ..."