Bevil Wood­ing

"A piece of con­tent or da­ta is open if any­one is free to use, reuse and re­dis­trib­ute it; sub­ject on­ly, at most, to the re­quire­ment to at­tribute and share-alike"

open­de­f­i­n­i­tion.org

Trinidad-based soft­ware de­vel­op­ment firm Teleios Sys­tems Lim­it­ed re­cent­ly held its largest and most suc­cess­ful "Code Jam" com­pe­ti­tion. The con­test show­cased the re­mark­able tal­ent and cre­ativ­i­ty in­her­ent in peo­ple, when giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty. Com­ing in the af­ter­math of the Caribbean Open Da­ta Con­fer­ence held ear­li­er this year, the Teleios Code Jam al­so high­light­ed the po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits that could be de­rived if more open da­ta were avail­able to de­vel­op­ers and in­no­va­tors.

Open da­ta is the term used to de­scribe the no­tion or ide­al that cer­tain datasets should be freely avail­able to every­one to use and re­pub­lish as they wish, with­out re­stric­tions from copy­right, patents or oth­er mech­a­nisms of con­trol. The goals of the open da­ta move­ment are sim­i­lar to those of oth­er "open" move­ments such as open source and open stan­dards.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, recog­ni­tion of the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits de­rived when ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion is fa­cil­i­tat­ed, that has led to the emer­gence of the "open da­ta" move­ment. In coun­tries as var­ied as In­dia Kenya, the Unit­ed King­dom and Moldo­va, the po­ten­tial val­ue bound up in open gov­ern­ment da­ta sets is be­ing un­locked by cre­ative de­vel­op­ers. The move­ment is not lim­it­ed to gov­ern­ments and soft­ware de­vel­op­ers, how­ev­er. Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, char­i­ties, NGOs, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er de­pos­i­to­ries of in­for­ma­tion are al­so open­ing their da­ta sets to the gen­er­al pub­lic. New laws and plat­forms to fa­cil­i­tate open da­ta ini­tia­tives are al­so pro­vide cit­i­zens with new means to ask for, de­mand or sim­ply cre­ate greater gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy.

Sad­ly, coun­tries in the Caribbean have been slow to join the grow­ing glob­al open da­ta rev­o­lu­tion. Some of the main fac­tors hin­der­ing greater adop­tion in the re­gion in­clude: lack of fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the mod­el; lack of ev­i­dence of ben­e­fits; per­ceived chal­lenges to own­er­ship, con­trol, and mon­eti­sa­tion of da­ta; un­cer­tain­ty on how to lever­age and the re­al­i­ty that there is not yet a crit­i­cal mass of in­ter­est­ed de­vel­op­ers.

In ad­di­tion, as with many gov­ern­ments around the world, the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges of da­ta col­lec­tion, struc­tur­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion are com­pound­ed by an­oth­er is­sue: pub­lic sec­tor bu­reau­cra­cy.

Kenya's Paul Kukobo, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Kenya ICT Board, in re­lat­ing the Kenyan ex­pe­ri­ence with open da­ta, summed up the chal­lenge well, stat­ing:

"The whole cul­ture of gov­ern­ment is that they are the da­ta orig­i­na­tors and da­ta col­lec­tors. Shar­ing in­ter­nal­ly was a prob­lem in the first place... Tech­ni­cal chal­lenges were not where the headache was-we have plen­ty of skill and part­ners here to do that-it was in get­ting the da­ta in the first place, in the form that we need­ed it. Plen­ty of da­ta wasn't in dig­i­tal form or us­able, and was trapped in agen­cies."

In­cen­tive to In­no­vate

Still there is much room for hope. Open da­ta ini­tia­tives have the po­ten­tial to change the dy­nam­ic be­tween cit­i­zens and their gov­ern­ments. If gov­ern­ments pub­lish pu­bic datasets in open, easy to ac­cess for­mats, peo­ple can lever­age the datasets to cre­ate the ap­pli­ca­tions and ser­vices that they want. A no­tably ex­am­ple is in the health­care apps gen­er­at­ed by the re­lease of open da­ta by the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices.

This dy­nam­ic process al­so brings new syn­er­gies to the re­la­tion­ship be­tween gov­ern­ments, pri­vate sec­tor, acad­e­mia and civ­il so­ci­ety as part­ners in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Open da­ta can be the feed­stock for cre­at­ing so­cial­ly, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly use­ful ap­pli­ca­tions and ser­vices.

For ex­am­ple, the op­por­tu­ni­ty for mo­bile apps dri­ven by open gov­ern­ment and broad­band In­ter­net ac­cess on mo­bile de­vices is now with­in reach. Such ini­tia­tives de­pend not just on gov­ern­ment's will­ing­ness to re­lease da­ta, but on the ca­pac­i­ty of busi­ness­es, stu­dents, schools, civ­il so­ci­ety and in­di­vid­u­als to ef­fec­tive­ly use it. The biggest con­tri­bu­tion that gov­ern­ments can make to re­alise these op­por­tu­ni­ties is to en­cour­age and fa­cil­i­tate ini­tia­tives in the pub­lic sec­tor to make open gov­ern­ment datasets avail­able.

Of course, this will re­quire lead­er­ship fore­sight. It will al­so re­quire cor­rect val­ue to be placed on trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Pub­lic sec­tors lead­ers will have to be ed­u­cat­ed as to the broad­er eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits that de­rive when pub­lic da­ta is open to scruti­ny, analy­sis and de­bate. The good news is that sev­er­al coun­tries and ad­vo­ca­cy groups have al­ready de­vel­oped use­ful guid­ing prin­ci­ples to di­rect open da­ta ini­tia­tives. Such guide­lines can be ap­plied to sup­port­ing prac­ti­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion here at home.

Da­ta is the new cap­i­tal of the glob­al econ­o­my, and as busi­ness­es and na­tions seek in­creased com­pet­i­tive­ness, and sus­tain­able growth, the pres­sure to in­tel­li­gent­ly ex­ploit da­ta re­sources will on­ly in­crease.

Open da­ta pro­vides re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for stim­u­lat­ing growth of the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor. More im­por­tant­ly, open da­ta pro­vides the fu­el for in­no­va­tion, eco­nom­ic growth and so­cial em­pow­er­ment for the greater good.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-fo­cused not-for-prof­it de­liv­er­ing val­ues-based tech­nol­o­gy train­ing pro­grams in­clud­ing dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and eBook cre­ation work­shops. He is al­so Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing