Intro 🚪
Governments use public data to serve the needs of citizens, creating a shared understanding of information that is accessible to everyone.
Why it matters 🚨
Transparent and accessible information:
- builds trust and understanding in communities
- increases public accountability
- improves efficiency and effectiveness
- inspires collaboration and empowers innovation
More from the California Open Data Publishers Handbook on the why of open data.
Use cases ☀️
- Mexico City: Care Indicators helps the government inform and collaborate with the nonprofit sector to understand what people need, where.
- Moldova: Transportation datasets help find patterns and better understand how to reduce traffic accidents.
- Tulsa: Eviction Dashboard lets the city government and nonprofits implement proactive solutions to keep families securely housed.
- Denver: Plow Tracker shows residents the service routes & travel history of snow plows responding to winter weather.
Principles 🧭
In 2007, open data leaders created eight principles of open government data.
Data should be:
- Complete: as detailed as possible while ensuring privacy and security
- Primary: not in aggregate or modified forms
- Timely: published and updated consistently
- Accessible: available to anyone
- Machine processable: able to be used by software tools
- Non-discriminatory: anyone can use and share the information
- Non-proprietary: exclusively controlled by a single entity
- License-free: not subject to copyright, patent, or trademark
Data.gov adds that open data should be:
- Described: meta data describes the source content, context of data
- Managed post-release: maintained to ensure relevance
Open Data Charter says data should be used:
- For Improved Governance and Citizen Engagement
- For Inclusive Development and Innovation
Formats 🗂️
The Open Data Handbook provides a guide to using the right data format for the right kind of information.
Formats:
- Unstructured: Information can be a text file, an image or an audio file
- Tabular: (as in the table of a spreadsheet) such as CSV or XML
- Hierarchical: Showing relationships between different types of information) such as JSON, or SQL
- Geospatial (map data) such as GeoTIFF for map images, and GEOJSON for points on a map.
What isn’t open data? 🚫
Too often, government information is published in the form of PDF reports, images, and powerpoint presentations; formats where the data has already been processed. The What and Why of Open Data says:
- “Data in visuals like ‘report cards,’ ‘dashboards,’ and PDF reports help share information, but don’t help stakeholders understand and act.”
- “Think: if this data was published in a design tool or publishing app, it’s probably not an open format.”
Policies ⚖️
Probably the most important thing to get right about open data is how all this information is governed.
Starting points to creating an open data policy:
- Federal Executive Order 13642: “To promote continued job growth, Government efficiency, and the social good that can be gained from opening Government data to the public, the default state of new and modernized Government information resources shall be open and machine readable.” and outlines best practices for creating and implementing good data policy.
- Joshua Tauberer: Open Government Data
Examples:
When you’re ready to create your own policy, the Sunlight Foundation has this step-by-step guide.
Decision-making 🔀
The Data to Policy Navigator helps government executives and policymakers grasp the fundamentals of data-driven decision-making.
- “Data-informed policies are more effective, inclusive and sustainable.”
- “They enable governments and societies to be more agile and better prepared for different crises.”
Portals 📓
Governments host public data on portals — centralized catalogs of datasets, maps, and visualizations — for everything from traffic accidents, police reports, and counting squirrels in the park.
One of the largest is Data.gov, the U.S. government’s open data portal.
Others:
Datasets 📋
City and county governments make datasets available for the public.
- Baton Rouge publishes the city’s budgets, payments, and finances.
- Austin lists the datasets published by city departments, including 311 calls, traffic camera locations, building permits and lost pets.
- Sioux Falls makes sales tax data available, showing growth over time.
- Philadelphia lets residents find data about any building in the city, including property deeds, historic photos and polling places for the next election date.
- More
A few ideas for data that makes government work for the people: \
- A structured data source about town halls and city council meetings could increase citizen participation at city hall.
- A map showing water quality by neighborhood could help local businesses and residents understand their part in keeping watersheds clean.
- A public data portal of zoning and land use data could help speed up building & permitting processes, improving economic development.
Platforms
There are software platforms that governments use to publish open datasets. A few to consider:
Guidelines 🗺️
Start with good frameworks and policies, and build from there. The Open Data Policy Hub covers how to make data public in a set of Open Data Policy Guidelines.
A model provided in Open Government Data: The Book prioritizes:
- Understanding the values. Start with what must be published by law, and then move to improving efficiency, effectiveness, and maximizing benefits to the public.
- Leveraging technology. Start with publishing to increase transparency (think: freedom of information) and build toward structured services and linked data.
AI and open data 🤖
Governments that publish well-structured, machine-readable open data are more prepared to leverage artificial intelligence for public good.
GovFresh has two resources to learn more:
Go deeper ⛏️
- Beyond Transparency
- California Open Data Publishers Handbook
- Open Government Data: The Book
- The Data Quality Campaign
Get started 👟
- Learn and discuss open data principles with community leaders and stakeholders
- Use the Data to Policy Navigator and create an open public data policy
- Collect feedback about what data city leaders, nonprofits, journalists would want to use to make communities better
- Increase community engagement: A great first public dataset is an organized list of public meetings, easy for residents to subscribe to via email or RSS
- Focus on outcomes. Pick a policy area your government would like to improve. Measure and track that data, and schedule regular updates with stakeholders
