How to turn open data into better government | Helen Margetts | Public Leaders Network | Guardian Professional

"The UK open data initiative – through which departments open up data by default for public use - is universally acknowledged as a force for democratic good. There is a tendency to see the initiative as the 'little white bunny' of public management reform – impossible to criticise, unequivocally positive, and capable of fulfilling multiple objectives, including improved governance, greater transparency and innovation. But where is the evidence? The first thing to say is that we need more data about open data to be able to make a real judgement. On 7th October, I spoke to the Public Administration Select Committee inquiry on statistics and open data, examining the progress of the UK open data initiative, providing some evidence collected by the Oxford Internet Institute through examination of the data.gov.uk website. The initiative has opened up a lot of data. A total of 797 government bodies (including central government departments, agencies, non-departmental public bodies and local governments) have submitted 14,080 datasets to data.gov.uk. And open data is being looked at. In total these datasets have been viewed 1.4 million times, an average of almost 100 views per dataset. But the portal only gives data at the level of government department, while data at the level of each dataset would give us a much better idea of how it was being used. We don't know how many times a 'view' resulted in someone downloading a dataset, or actually using it for something. The open data portal should provide each department with a lot of nuanced, comparable information about which datasets are well used (and hence should be well maintained), and which ones are not worth spending too much effort on. Open data is released to fulfil three principles: innovation (trade statistics, for example); greater transparency and public scrutiny (such as spending data); and improved governance and services (such as data on benefits and tax administration). But not all data will do all those things – and, given the obligation for departments to open up data, it is likely that some of it will do none of those things. For innovation, there is clear hope that the release of data into the ether is having beneficial effects, but it is impossible to measure what these might be. Most importantly, there are no incentives for companies using open data to state that they have done so, making it very difficult to assess the extent to which it is being used for innovation ... Second, open data will only increase transparency if citizens use it– and at present we do not know how much they do ... Third, the data can only be useful for improving government if there are feedback loops ..."