Government’s open-data portal at risk of becoming a data dump by Jj Worrall.
From the post:
The Government’s new open-data portal is not yet where it would like it to be, Minister Brendan Howlin said in a Department of Public Expenditure and Reform meeting room earlier this week.
In case expectations are too high, the word “pilot” is in italics when you visit the site in question – data.gov.ie.
Meanwhile the words “start” and “beginning” pepper the conversation with the Minister and a variety of data experts from the Insight Centre in NUI Galway who have helped create the site.
Data.gov.ie allows those in the Government, as well as interested businesses and citizens, to examine data from a variety of public bodies, opening opportunities for Government efficiencies and commercial possibilities along the way.
The main problem is that there is not much of it, and a lot of what is there can’t be utilised in a particularly useful fashion.
As director of the US Open Data Institute Waldo Jaquith told The Irish Times, with “almost no data” available in a format that’s genuinely usable by app developers, businesses or interested parties, for the moment data.gov.ie represents “a haphazard collection of data”.
…
It is important to realize that governments and their staffs have very little experience at being open and/or sharing data. Among the reasons for being reluctant to post open-data are:
- Less power over you since requests for data cannot be delayed or denied
- Less power in general because others will have the data
- Less power to confer on others by exclusive access to the data
- Less security since data may show poor results or performance
- Less security since data may show favoritism or fraud
- Less prestige as the source of answers on the data
Not an exhaustive list but it is a reminder that changing the attitudes about open-data probably beyond your reach.
What you can do with a site such as data.gov.ie, is to find a dataset of interest to you and make concrete suggestions for improvements.
There are a number of government staffers who I didn’t capture in my list of reasons to not share data. Side with them and facilitate their work.
For example:
Met Éireann Climate Products. A polite note to Evelyn.O’Connor@per.gov.ie should point out that an order form and price list doesn’t really constitute “open-data” in the sense citizens and developers expect. Should take the “resource” off the listing and make it available elsewhere. “Data products to order” for example.
or,
Weather Buoy Network Real Time Data, where if you dig long enough, you will find that you can download csv formatted data by blindly guessing at bouy names. A map of bouy locations would greatly assist at that point, not to mention having an RSS feed for bouy data as it is received. Downloading a file tells me I am not getting “Real Time Data.” Yes?
Not major improvements but would improve those two items at any rate.
It will take time but ultimately sharing staff will prevail. You can hasten that day’s arrival or you can retard it. Your choice.
I first saw this in a tweet by Deirdre Lee.