Do We Have a Right To Open Public Data? - Open Enterprise

“The progress made by the open data movement is pretty extraordinary. A few years ago, data was something that only statisticians cared about, but today it is one of the most vibrant areas of exploration and innovation. I think that's in part because of open source's example of how opening things up allows people to experiment and make progress faster than keeping everything locked down. But have we reached the stage where we can assert a right to open public data? That's the central claim of an interesting new report from Policy Exchange, entitled ‘A Right to Data: Fulfilling the promise of open public data in the UK...’ It makes three recommendations: that the UK government should enshrine a right to public data in legislation; that responsibility for open data rest at board level in every public sector body; and that every public sector body define its public task and associated data requirements. The report is refreshingly short - just 28 pages - which makes it easy to digest. Along the way, it has some thoughtful analysis of the underlying dynamics of the open data world. Here, for instance, is a good summary of the economics of abundant public data: ‘Data has many interesting economic characteristics. Two factors are especially important for thisdiscussion. First, public data typically involves high fixed costs - so high, in fact, that it would not normally make sense for multiple bodies to collect or create the same data. Second, digital data can typically be duplicated at very low cost - so low, in fact, that in many cases zero is a good approximation for the marginal cost of data provision. Taken together, these two factors have significant implications for any government that is considering reselling public data...’ Similarly, this is a good explanation of why opening up data is the best way of improving both government departments and businesses: ‘Many of the applications of public data will deliver incremental improvements to existing business processes, products and services. Some applications will be truly disruptive, where the firm in question brings an entirely new proposition to market. Successful, radical innovations may be one in 100 (or maybe even fewer). The best way to promote them is to roll the dice as many times as possible. In any economy where information is increasingly important, free public data is an important precondition for this to happen.’ As for the main recommendation, it's good to see the report come out in favour of truly open data - no restrictions on commercial use, but allowing for attribution and share-alike licences (that is, those closest to the GNU GPL): ‘This should require that all non-personal data collected or created to support the day-to-day business of government be made open: easy to access and free at the point of delivery, without restriction on use or reuse. Important protections for personal data, national security and Ministerial advice should be incorporated into this legislation, to provide clarity on where open data ends.’ That's an important point, since the boundaries of open data are crucially important, and need to be agreed from the start, rather than defined on an ad-hoc basis, which will inevitably lead to hoarding... The report makes the following concrete suggestion for how that might be done in the case of the Ordnance Survey: ‘One potential candidate that merits attention is registration charges, i.e. applying a (statutory) charge every time the master data set needs to be updated due to building or land use changes. One estimate suggests this might level out at an average data charge of around £50 to £100 on each planning application made...’ I think that's the best idea I've seen so far in terms of finding ways to make the core Ordnance Survey data freely available for use by all under a minimal licence, and yet bring in as much revenue as possible to offset the costs of producing that high-quality data. That's symptomatic of the insightful yet practical nature of the report, and I recommend that anyone interested in open data - which ought to be anyone in business - to read it.”