Awareness of Open Data within governments has gained considerable traction in the last few years. Arguably, Open Data has been successful partly because it is fairly easy to understand. It focuses on making freely available to the public an asset, data, that has already paid for through taxes. This government data can then be reused by programmers, web developers and others to build new services and applications. It also has the support of an active and engaged community of advocates inside and outside of government.
A related concept, Open Government, has been gaining attention recently. The idea is more abstract than Open Data, and also at an earlier stage of development. I was happy to read about these three pillars of Open Government proposed by an Australian Senator, Kate Lundy.
1) Citizen-Centric Services
Emphasis is on government services that are personalized and integrated. Government agencies should encourage more interoperability and collaboration among themselves to deliver better services. Lundy uses the example of a single sign-in, with citizens providing more or less information about themselves, depending on the degree of service personalization they want.
2) Democratizing Data
Reading Lundy's argument (government data is a public resource that should be reusable and machine-readable to encourage innovation), this pillar is essentially the same as Open Data. Great to see it embedded as a key component of Open Government.
3) Participatory Democracy
This might be the most difficult of the three pillars to achieve in practice. Yes, the City conducts public engagement through community meetings, education and other methods. However, do residents have real power to influence the shape of public policy or decisions through these processes or are they simply carried out as a statutory requirement? What more could be done to improve participatory democracy?
Reading these pillars, I was reminded of a UK report, from the Centre for Technology Policy Research (CTPR), titled Open Government, some next steps for the UK (May 2010).
Kate Lundy's model could take a huge step forward by incorporating approaches from this report. A crucial transformative step would be applying the spirit of the second pillar (democratizing data) to her first pillar (citizen-centric services). Lundy's current concept of citizen-centric services focuses on building a centralized, government IT solution, including better integration of systems and services, single sign-on, user profile and access to services. This is arguably a flawed model for a truly innovative open government. Her model is very similar to an earlier UK approach that was roundly criticized by the CTPR as "imposed command and control, enabled by large central databases" (CTPR, pg 3). The CTPR instead advocates an approach based on the overwhelming technology trend towards "more localised, autonomous, distributed and consumer-responsive services built around common technical standards." (pg 3). In practical terms, this allows developers using open data to build new, targeted or localized services. This could mean competing with or complementing government in service delivery. There is huge potential for creativity and new business development here.
Open approaches are being used by many in the private sector with great success already. Think of the incredible success of Google's open source Android mobile OS, in just a few short years. In Canada, Open Data advocate David Eaves is a cofounder of a business built on creating a new service using publicly available government data. His Recollect garbage reminder service is a modest beginning but could be the first of many services transforming how citizens interact with government.
Opening up government services and applications, as well as data, creates the conditions in which an ecosystem of innovation and competition in service delivery can prosper. We should not have to rely on governments to develop every web application that provides access to government services, information and data. This approach could also be described as a form of social innovation or social entrepreneurship.
Kate Lundy should be applauded for encouraging conversation around Open Government. I would delighted to see Canadian politicians discussing such considered, yet easy to understand ideas in the public.
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