Open Governments, Open Data: Getting the Technological Toolkits Right

Around the world, governments and local authorities are beginning to release their data for public consumption and reuse. As Joel Gurin writes in his article, “Open Governments, Open Data,” open data promises to be a “global force” that has the potential “to shape economic development, international investment decisions, and international relations.” However, as anyone who has worked with data knows, simply releasing or having open data is not enough. The challenge comes in formatting the data to be workable and computable, which allows the data to deliver insights. With constant advances in computing and mobile technology, open data offers even more promise in the hands of average end-users when combined with the right tools.

On one end of the spectrum, some authorities have made great strides in pushing for open data, but have developed limited means to visualize or drive home the impact of their data. For example, NGOs like China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which developed the China Pollution Map Database, have pushed Chinese government departments at all levels and regions throughout China to release 97,000 environmental supervision records of polluting enterprises in China. However, a perusal of the website demonstrates its limitations: visualization is only possible within the website’s limited platform, and individual records can only be searched and accessed on a one-by-one basis. These limitations become frustrating when trying to gather aggregate data to tell a story about a particular region or company.

Likewise, IPaidABribe.com, an Indian NGO that collects corruption data, provides aggregated, summary-level data on corruption nationally and provincially, but offers only anecdotal evidence on the individual-level. The end-user cannot plot the anecdotal evidence of corruption on a map, link the data to specific offices or individuals, or research specific ministries or individual public officials to monitor trends or patterns of corruption at the micro-level. IPaidABribe.com has a wealth of information on corruption, with over 25,000 reports covering 659 cities throughout India and totaling over 71 crore rupees ($11.8 million) in bribes. Designing a tool or equipping users with methods to compute or utilize the data more effectively would make IPaidABribe.com’s platform even more powerful and impactful.

On the other end of the spectrum are entities such as the United States Census Bureau, which balances the limitations of its “in-house” interactive data visualization tools with the provision of raw, granular data that links to geographic information system (GIS) shapefiles and other survey processing software. Census data is a powerful resource when it is expertly visualized via GIS, offering clear insights from colored overlays on maps. However, for the average end-user, the process of visualizing this data—joining shapefiles on GIS, carefully pruning immense datasets, learning functions such as pivot tables, or software such as Microsoft Excel—requires a tremendous time commitment and technical expertise not readily accessible. These tools are useful for researchers, but for the average citizen, there is almost no desire to manipulate complex data.

Some authorities have tried for a middle ground approach to data availability and accessibility. For example, the World Bank’s World Databank allows for the creation of simple reports directly on their website, with options to quickly access, download, and interact with the raw data (in various formats) within minutes. This approach strikes a healthy balance between the average end-user who may wish to generate simple charts and trends, and the needs of researchers, who may wish to run more complicated regressions using the detailed datasets. Promoters of open data should strive for this middle ground, providing both ease of use for the average end-user and more meaningful data for researchers.

However, the true potential of open data reaches beyond visualization or accessibility. It rests with execution—when real problems are made solvable for real people through the use of open data. Imagine a world where entire domains of knowledge, from arts to engineering to medicine, are connected on the cloud, curated, and can be accessed on a mobile device. Imagine an illiterate, poor farmer in sub Saharan Africa switching on...