No government can afford to become isolated from the society it serves, otherwise it risks becoming distant and clumsy, trapped by its own, self-referential routines.
That was the clear message in last September's report, entitled The civiclong tail by UK thinktank Demos. This report on the the willingness of governments to communicate more openly with their citizens, is part of an emerging trend that shows governments all over the world are starting to open up their data vaults for access by all interested parties.
The call for open data is not an entirely new phenomenon. There have been many previous efforts and initiatives in the western world to make governments more accessible for business and public alike, but most of them have been buried under administrative bureaucracy and very seldom really caught the attention of the general public, let alone become successful.
Yet, as the Demos report states "relationships between government and its citizens (as voters, service users and taxpayers) should become more open, transparent and so more accountable. Government should be able to share much more information with citizens, who should be able to see in much finer detail what decisions government is taking and why. Citizens should in turn be able to contribute their views, ideas and feedback".
Is this a utopian view?
Not really.
Tthings got moving in the right direction when the US government launched its Data.gov initiative in May 2009 as part of president Barack Obama's Open Government Directive [http://www.whitehouse.gov/open] , which instructs all federal agencies to use technology that makes their activities more transparent and enables them to engage more actively with citizens.
Data.gov has become a collective data repository for government data from all agencies with the primary goal of improving access to federal data and expanding the creative use of those data beyond the walls of government. It enables the public to participate in government by providing downloadable federal datasets to build applications, conduct analyses, and perform research. The site provides access to more than 390,000 datasets, over 1,100 government applications and close to 240 citizen-developed apps.
Twenty-eight other countries have followed the US example, including Belgium. At data.gov.be, you can already find a list of some 80 datasets with topics ranging from air quality to real estate sales and population by municipality. The site is managed by Fedict, the Federal Public Service for Information and Communication Technology, responsible for defining and implementing the federal e-government strategy. A number of applications have been uploaded as well, and there is also a considerable list of various ideas and requests for opening up specific data sets. In short: still fairly modest in size but it's a promising start.
In Europe lots of work is done by Europeana , a digital platform that rolls multimedia library, museum and archives into one digital website combined with Web 2.0 features. It offers direct access to digitised books, audio and film material, photos, paintings, maps, manuscripts, newspapers and archival documents that are Europe's cultural heritage. Visitors to www.europeana.eu can search and explore different collections in Europe's cultural institutions in their own language in virtual form, without having to visit multiple sites or countries. Europeana was launched by the European Commission and the EU's culture ministers in Brussels on 20 November 2008. There is also the Europeana Foundation that promotes collaboration between museums, archives, audiovisual collections and libraries so that users can have integrated access to their content through Europeana and other services. Currently, Europeana gives access to over 20 million objects from more than 1,500 institutions in 32 countries. In September 2011, it had 3 million direct visitors but the actual number of users goes far beyond that because the content from Europeana is available on various Websites and applications through API services.
SAS BeLux absolutely applauds this trend. While the US and the UK have been leading examples in putting government data online, Belgium and Flanders are now really following suit.
Take, for example, the Federal Public Service Economy. For a number of years now, it has been leading the way by giving citizens access to its publications and the underlying datasets. We applaud the fact that in this department, data is not just dumped online in bulk, but is supplemented with documentation and metadata.
We feel open data can really have a long tail effect on our society, instigating a shift from a relatively small number of "hits" at the top of the demand curve towards a huge number of niches "in the tail" as the cost of production and distribution continues to drop.
In this context, big data is a major resource of knowledge. When you are able to correctly understand, mine and exploit big data using efficient analytics, you can turn data into knowledge that brings huge value.
Moving data out of its historic vaults and relate it to other sources of information from the connected world like social media, blogs or web content, can bring completely new insights and breakthroughs - and just remember that analytics is no longer the exclusive domain of some wizards with a PHD in statistics. SAS solutions can be used by anyone nowadays.
I believe an innovation strategy for open data in the public domain should meet five requirements:
• Simplicity: Processes tend to be tedious, and we need ways to cut through all the red tape;
• Risk: Being too risk averse will kill innovation; is launching a beta really that risky?
• Speed: the crisis is a valid argument for more urgency and the "open data" long tail effect can be one of the engines to energise society;
• Low cost: many of the building blocks already exist: good people, technology, data, etc. By prioritising based on impact and creating the right organisational environment, one can achieve strong results through shifting budgets rather than being hampered by big budget hurdles;
• Openness: innovation strategies are often closed and producer driven, while great examples emerge through a consumer/citizen-driven approach like crowd sourcing or open innovation
However, all this would would require a totally different mindset. First of all, you will have to focus on issues that matter. People don't care about open data or the web. All they are interested in is whether their neighbourhood is safe, their school is good, and their grandparents are well cared for.
You would also have to embrace open innovation, to solicit ideas from citizens and application developers, and make prototypes available so that people can add to them.
Then you literally need to create a new space for innovation where people with needs and people with potential solutions can meet. The US City Camp and the UK Social Innovation Camp are promising models, as they bring together seb developers and civic entrepreneurs.
And we need to learn how to disinvest from older, less effective services while investing in new, cost effective, distributed self-service solutions.
I am convinced that SAS can play a major role here as it is committed to assist the different governments in making their open data ambitions come true. In many countries there are concerns that releasing such a deluge of data to the public at large would not really lead to a meaningful use. But every day, public services all over the world are already using SAS software to recognise patterns and discover trends in their structured and unstructured data in order to understand the past and predict what is likely to happen next.
Belgium is particularly lucky to have so many Federal Public Services that are littered with innovative people, including social security, finance, the Flemish government (Vlaamse Overheid), public health, and economy. All of them use SAS analytics to open that treasure chest of data. Let's continue to facilitate this for the general public in the years to come.
Jeroen Van Godtsenhoven is head of business development & pre-sales at SAS Belgium and Luxembourg.
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