Results tagged “opendata”

I hope you'll excuse the self-publicity, but I just wanted to let people know I've been lucky enough to be invited to speak at two great events coming up in the next few weeks.

The first is the South West edition of Local by Social. The theme of the event is "Apps for Communities", exploring how Apps and Widgets can be used to bring real benefits to citizens. I'm going to be talking about the use of location-based social media in social care, drawing on a post I wrote here a few weeks ago.

The second is a workshop at NCVO's 2011 Annual Conference on Civil Society 2.0. This draws on some Open Data stuff we've been doing at ecdp over the last few months, plus a few posts here on Open Data and the voluntary sector.

For both, I'm hoping to post and share a few thoughts here to shape what to cover at the events, and hope anyone with an interest in these areas will also share their thoughts/ideas in the comments. It goes without saying I'll share any slides/copies of the talks.

(I'm afraid this is a bit rambling and incoherent, but (a) it's not quite the end of a long day, and (b) I wanted to get this down. Please allow for both (a) and (b) when reading...)

I've been interested in Open Data for the past few months, and have hosted (what I think is) an interesting discussion on the topic and how it applies to the Voluntary & Community Sector (VCS) here and here. There's also a really interesting discussion on charities, public services and releasing data on the excellent Open Local Data Blog.

Because I happen to be pretty senior in my role in a disability organisation in the VCS, I'm in the fortunate position that I actually got to do something about it. Thus, today my organisation (ecdp) shared its Open Data work. There you can find an overview of what it is, our Performance Dashboard since July 2009, copies of our Management Board papers stretching back to August 2007 and our Annual Reports going back to 2004/05.

I've also written an overview paper on Transparency and Open data, which is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Talking over the last few weeks and today with friends and people who actually know what they're on about (e.g. @karlwilding, @kanedr, @citizensheep, @loulouk, @Paul_Clarke), there are numerous interesting questions and debates around Open Data and the VCS that remained undefined and unanswered. Below, based on my/ecdp's experience of this work to day, I've tried to capture some of them.

• Is it really Open Data, or is it just open / transparent working? If it's the latter, are there already good examples of VCS organisations doing this sort of thing (like publishing their Management Board papers and exposing their decision-making process) or not?
• If it's not Open Data but it's still data, what is it? Does it hold value to other people? (This is a version of a question I've posed before. I think the answer is yes, but it still seems to be something to be explored.)
• I'm working on the assumption that VCS organisations, as deliverers of public services under contract to public bodies, will need to publish the relevant data. Is this actually true? If so, will the same hold for non-VCS organisations such as private businesses, social enterprises and employee-owned organisations? If not, on what basis do the exemptions work?
• In line with the above, can a VCS organisation publish its contract monitoring arrangements and reports with a public body? I'd argue yes, but what if there's a clash between the culture of a public body and a VCS organisation?
• Is a VCS organisation that publishes its data openly now essentially committing competitive suicide (assuming the data is that sort of data)?

On a very practical level, who else out there in the VCS has shared any of their data - no matter how little, or how not-quite-open-data it may be - that they'd be happy to tell us about?

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, here are a few lessons or thoughts I had along the way of getting to the point where we've published what we have at ecdp today.

• Strategic and operational context is vital in understanding and explaining why a VCS organisation needs to engage with the Open Data and transparency agenda
• Open Data and transparency has been as much a useful driver internally as it has externally
• It's important to ensure all staff have the opportunity to see what's being published externally before it is done so. This is just a motivation/belonging point rather than anything sinister about not revealing too much. Expecting staff to get the data at the same time as anyone externally risks undervaluing their role in the organisation
• I think some public bodies can be thought of as intransigent or unwilling when it comes to things like Open Data and Transparency. The same can equally hold for VCS organisations
• Expect colleagues to raise issues of risk, credibility and accuracy as a reason for not doing this, and have your arguments lined up. This said, as with anything else, engage your key decision makers (including relevant Trustees) to make sure they know the benefits, risks and reasons for doing this
• Embed the process for creating the data in your day-to-day processes. Having this as an additional piece of work, especially in a VCS organisation, does not and will not go down well
• There are several unintended benefits of driving Open Data and transparency in a (VCS) organisation, including strengthening governance arrangements, increasing cross-team collaboration, focusing on what matters rather than just measuring, and lifting everyone's heads up to think about the outside world as well as just the immediacy of day-to-day work.

There are probably loads more, but hope that gives a flavour of the types of thoughts and issues going round my head over the last few days (on Open Data, at least).

Would be really interested in people's views on this generally, the specifics of what ecdp has done and whether it's any good (and how it can be improved).

Thanks to everyone - including those mentioned above - who have inspired or shaped this work. Let's just hope a few other people from the VCS follow in this direction...

Transparency and Open Data at ecdp -- FINAL

The Association of Chief Police Officers should be congratulated for publishing data on hate crime across England in 2009. A copy of the data, broken down by constabulary area, is included as a Scribd document at the end of this post.

The data shows the following number of hate crimes, by type:

• Race - 43,426
• Religion/Faith - 2,083
• Sexual Orientation - 4,805
• Transgender - 312
• Disability - 1,402
• Total - 52,028
• Antisemitic (included in previous total) - 703

My professional interest is in the number of disability hate crimes. In the two years ending March 2009, the Crown Prosecution Service recorded 576 defendants being prosecuted for disability hate crime, so the rise to 1,402 is, on one level, disturbing.However, underneath this figure, and quite counter-intuitively, there should be reason for optimism, because I suspect the increase in the figure can be attributed to disability hate crime being understood and reported more. Though it's obviously deplorable it happens at all, it's better that the times when it does happen - and not just murders, but all types of hate crime (including, for example, repeated verbal abuse) - are recorded.

This also points, however, to the fact that disability hate crime is still hugely under-reported in general. For example, take Essex: in 2008/09 there were 4 reported disability hate crimes.

4.

In 2009, there were 16.

Within a population of approximately 1.4m people that's a preposterously low number, and I don't believe for a second it's correct.

So whilst I say there is reason for optimism - because at least the increase in reported disability hate crimes shows that the police and other responsible bodies are starting to get to grips with the issue - there is still a long way to go.

Transparently and openly publishing the data on types of hate crime is a very good start.

(For those interested in this topic, a briefing paper on disability hate crime was produced by the organisation I work for (ecdp).)

Recorded Hate Crime, January to December 2009

A few weeks ago, I wrote two posts on the topic of Open Data and the voluntary sector: post 1 and post 2. They were a couple of my favourite recent posts, because they were unashamed streams of consciousness, and they gave rise to some really interesting comments and debate from some people's whose thoughts on topics like these I really admire and respect.

A couple of those folks happen to work for NCVO, and that organisation now has a site/blog/respository dedicated to the topic of Open Data: Voluntary Sector Datastore. The purpose of that side is

to bring together - or should that be curate? - data collected held and collected by voluntary and community organisations.

and aims to encourage the voluntary sector to match the developments in the public sector on Open Data.

For anyone with even a passing interesting in Open Data, Web2.0, Gov2.0, public sector or voluntary sector reform, the Voluntary Sector Datastore is a site I commend to you.

I posted on the topic of Open Data and the voluntary sector earlier today, and I'm very grateful for the time people have taken to respond. I thought I'd jot down a response to their response in the hope of continuing the conversation.

My original post boiled down to 4 propositions:

1. Given the novelty of Open Data in the public sector, I didn't think people would be that interested in voluntary sector Open Data.
2. The motivation for public sector organisations to publish their data (transparency) doesn't necessarily hold for why a voluntary sector organisation would publish their data.
3. The power dynamic between voluntary sector organisations and their funders means that Open Data could be used as a resource for undermining the voluntary sector.
4. Voluntary sector organisations are extremely well placed to benefit from the publication of Open Data by public agencies.

On point 1, my commenters rightly note that I'm plain wrong: there are plenty of people out there who are interested in voluntary sector data! This is reassuring, and hints to me of the seriousness with which the voluntary sector quite rightly should be taken (even if it's work isn't always valued as it should be).

On point 2, my implication is that voluntary sector organisations may not wish to supply their data. My commenters are entirely right to summarise that, actually, some do and most want to, and that the motivations for this are in building open and honest relationships with key stakeholders, including other voluntary organisations, with funders, and with donors.

I think this is right to a point, but there's still a note of caution here. The caution stems from two points: (1) the vast majority of local authorities are publishing Open Data; the same isn't true of voluntary sector organisations; and (2) if a local authority publishes its data, it loses no competitive advantage; again, this isn't necessarily true of voluntary sector organisations.

As such, my solution is to say there's safety in numbers. If all voluntary sector organisations published their data openly, then everyone starts from the same point and one organisation isn't at a disadvantage for doing what is obviously the right thing (i.e. publishing their data). This would solve the second point.

But being realistic about this, moving to every voluntary sector organisation publishing their data inevitably means a few leading the way. In this situation, I suspect it's the case that it's precisely those organisations who see the value in publishing their data and go ahead and do it that are the ones that do well anyway. Thus, the reality of them publishing their data is that any impact on their competitiveness is minimised since their forward-thinking nature more than compensates for any advantage other organisations gain from the data. (I'm not sure if this holds as much when private sector organisations are competing against voluntary sector organisations.)

The argument against point 3 is persuasive: any organisation should be good at understanding where things go wrong, communicate that with the relevant stakeholders, and then do something about it. Open Data is simply the messenger. And anyway, relevant data is probably doing back to the funder through monitoring arrangements - the question here is more one of whether the data goes wider. There's also the public benefit argument that says charities in particular should be transparent in order to maintain their relative positions of trust as charities.

Point 4 is straightforward, since everyone agreed.

It led, though, to the suggestion that I think Open Data is only for the public sector. I don't - I think it's for anyone involved in the business of public service.

But it was interesting to read back my post and notice just how skeptical it was about Open Data for the voluntary sector, and it was quite right that my commenters picked me up on it.

Given that I am in complete support of Open Data for the voluntary sector and beyond, any thoughts people have on why I was skeptical would therefore be appreciated...

Apropos of nothing, I tweeted a series of thoughts late last week on Open Data and the voluntary sector and thought I'd expand slightly on those thoughts here.

I'm not hopeful at this point in time as to whether the voluntary sector is well-placed to contribute towards the drive to Open Data. It's well known that generating management information or evidence - of output, of outcome, of impact - is not the strongest trait of the voluntary sector, so the jump to publishing it in an open format feels like running before walking.

Even then, if a voluntary sector organisation can publish its data, various questions arise.

1. Would anyone be interested in a voluntary sector organsiation's data? Given the fun and games - as well as the novelty - of having public sector data, it seems more likely to me that people will want to play with the public sector data being made available before looking at anything the voluntary sector produces.

2. Would voluntary sector organisations want to provide their data for others to look at? By others, I mean fellow voluntary sector organisations and private sector organisations, both of which represent potential competitors. The drive for public sector organsations to publish their data is transparency: does the same motivation hold for voluntary sector organisations? I'm not sure it does.

3. Similar to the point above, the power relationship between local authorities and voluntary sector organisations could mean that the latter may not be willing to publish their "real" data, since it could reveal either (a) things aren't going as well as they say, or (b) things are going better than they say when it comes to spend versus grant / service level agreement / contract value, which creates problems in itself.

On the other hand, there's the potential benefit that voluntary sector organisations can gain from using Open Data made available by public organisations. I think the voluntary sector is ideally placed - as agile, responsive and nimble organisations - to make the most of Open Data provided by the public sector. Sure, there are questions of technical know-how, but these seem relatively easy to overcome given the benefits that could accrue.

(As ever, others got to this far quicker, far better and with far more articulation than me - see, for example, this excellent post from David Kane at NCVO. Some of my points hopefully complement those David makes. Please do leave any comments / thoughts etc. below.)