Hard times for open data
Despite a flurry of open data projects, declarations and commitments, real open data progress is slow, and the prospects for genuine openness do not look so bright.
The G8 countries at their Summit in Northern Ireland (June 17-18 2013) passed an Open Data Declaration, the European Union is just finalising additions to the 2003 Public Sector Information Directive and more and more national and regional open data portals are put online. Still, open data experts have pointed to the many shortcomings of concepts, and much more of political commitment to real openness on the side of governments. Amidst continued revelations about secret government spying on - among other - EU citizens, it seems important to introduce clear distinctions when looking at what open data means.
At the end of June 2013, open data was presented as a done deal when the powerful G8 countries (US, UK, Canada, Russia, France, Germany, Italy and Japan) signed a Charter on Open Data, thereby committing themselves to adopting and further implementing open data policies at home and, regularly checking on progress. The much publicised Charter contains five basic principles, namely “open data by default, quality and quantity, usable by all, releasing data for improved governance, releasing data for innovation.”
Commitments and problems in their application
Until 2015, so the declaration, activities about standardised metadata, open formats and the opening up of government collected information shall be complete. Sounds good, say the expert non-governmental organisations, including the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.
At the same time, they who push for the development of standard tools are wary. Experiences with a series of open data policies suggest “some likely challenges“ were the “limits of a head of state's voluntary commitment in affecting civil servants”, but also the “the difficulty in articulating 'high value' data (in even a single country context)”.
Similarly, research associate Christian Heise warned in his Open Knowledge Foundation blog comment, that beyond the first euphoria one had to wait and see if the declaration was more than lip service. When Germany announced the start of govdata.de a coalition of open data organisations and activists published stern warnings on not-your-govdata.de. They warned about building in shortcomings into the web platform from the start by, for example, using special licences instead of standardised licences that support “open“ in a broadly accepted definition. Also civil law standards licensing is much more useful than granting usage rights based on administrative law procedures, the activists say.
Data census reveals some shortcomings
According to the open data census by the Open Knowledge Foundation, Germany is in good company when it comes to a slow pace with regard to the “open data“-revolution. The data census, which is still in an early stadium, ranks the UK high up in the list, behind just Norway, the US and Denmark. Norway did receive 54 of 60 possible points (with shortcomings noted in the access to government budget, national maps, legislation and the company register), the same number as the US (shortcomings with election results, legislation, the company register and postal codes). Norway's leading role might result not the least from its interest in integrating developers more closely, reflected in its use of Californian developer platform Github to create open data tools.
While Denmark and Sweden are in the upper echelon of the census, some additions to the class of black sheep with less than forty points are unexpected: the Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovenia and, way down, Finland (15 of 60 points only, with several categories where no data was available for the ranking).
Right time for open data projects?
That the US and the UK - major targets of the recent anger over secret surveillance programmes - rank so high with thousands of data catalogues available and, in the case of the UK, a warmly welcomed licence (the OGLv2.0) clearly illustrates the disconnect between open data push and transparency. In their University of California paper, US researchers Harlan Yu and David Robinson call it “the new ambiguity of 'open government'' and write that “open data technologies can also enhance service delivery in any regime, even an opaque one.” Governments might be able to take credit for increased public accountability “simply be delivering open data technology,” they write.
While the academic debate on this (see also Transparent Citizens, Invisible Government) is in full swing, The Guardian’s currently much quoted journalist Glenn Greenwald is much more blunt: “The way things are supposed to work,” Greenwald wrote, “is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that's why they're called 'public' servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called 'private' individuals.”
So is it the right time to talk open data and open government projects anyway? Or is it the worst time? The closing panel at the Berlin Open Data Day (24 June 2013) argued strongly in favour of pushing ahead. The time is always right, said the panelists... even in times where leaks provide for a big information feed, one should add.
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