Brett Goldstein and Lauren Dyson (editors)
4.0 out of 5 stars Superb on Open Data, Missing Important Context And Index, July 6, 2014
This is a superb collection of individual very short contributions. Absolutely worth reading and strongly recommended for purchase and sharing.
Some take-aways:
80% of government purchasing falls below the bidding / documentation threshold
Academic and Non-Profit organizations are not rushing toward Open Data
Algorithmic regulation is needed (I agree, computational mathematics is out of control)
Antiquated data perpetuates antiquated cultures
Big Data is not really understood by the Open Data crowd
Boundaries created by legacy software are dirty dirty dirty
Citizen-centered design is the opposite of how we do data generally
Citizen engagement is the ultimate value delivered by Open Data
Citizen engagement requires education, outreach, and reinforcement
Community development is a frontier waiting for Open Data to work its magic
Constituent Relationship Management is now in its third generation
Crowd sourcing could be the next big thing in Open Data
Data conversion is a MONSTER — especially from analog
Data co-ops are emergent and inspiring
Data definiton matters — confusion does arise
Data-driven government is a great meme, in its infancy
Data owners fight you at first, later they become your customers
Data science seven stages: acquire, parse, filter, mine, represent, refine, interact
Data visualization helps avoid “lost in translation” issues
Education and training in Open Data are in short supply for the mass of potential government employees
Enlightened government officials can be found…but not easily
Feed speeds suck and excess processing capacity is hard to find
FOIA is a very powerful tool (I would add — and EPIC knows how to do this)
Google is grossly over-valued by these folks (Google does the surface web (2% of the deep web))
“Government as a platform” is cute but disconnected from reality — 90% of the data is outside government
Humans matter — get to the humans behind the data if you really want to get it right
Inclusive engagement has not made the leap to inclusive capitalism
Intelligence (as decision-support) is not fully understood by the “data-driven” crowd
Investments still powered by elites and institutions instead of people or their ecosystems
IT professionals (old guard) consider citizens to be alien creatures
Journalists still do not have a means of sharing information across all boundaries
Legacy data comes with very big warts
Local ecosystems can be magical
Local scale is not to be ignored — seize the opportunity
Mobile applications take Open Data up an order of magnitude
Open Data analytics are in their infancy (to which I would add, lacking 360 degree factoring and true cost economics)
Open Data can potentially overturn decades of burdensome regulations many of which make no sense at all
Open Data can save tons of taxpayer money — if government agencies would share with one another
Open Data changes the narrative on all fronts (citizen, employees, media, small business)
Open Data collaboration across boundaries (e.g. inter-city) has a muliplier effect
Open Data creates economic value
Open Data inspires innovation — its greatest value is in savings not necessarily in transparency
Open Data is (or at least should be) a public good, a common good
Open Data leads to continuous improvement
Open Data saves tons of government employee time and taxpayer dollars
Open Data usually means open records — capturing open data points on the fly is in its infancy
Open Data without Open Geospatial is not working at its fullest potential
Open Design is essential to the future of Open Data
Open Government is nowhere near synonymous with Open Democracy
Organizational changes wreak havoc on data bases
Performance management demands that you measure the right things (to which I would add, add true costs)
Philanthropy is main funding source now — ROI for Open Data not yet understood by Capital
Privacy matters — this impacts on level of detail and visualization
Scaling requires standards
Shared data does not automatically come with shared knowledge
Transparency builds trust — trust is rapidly declining in the Internet era
True costs are hard to find and scattered among analog, digital, and undisclosed records
Total costs due not include true costs (ecologicial, social) unless you plan for same
Updating can be a nightmare
As I finish reading the book I am even more annoyed by the lack of an index — I would go so far as to say that in addition to the index there should be a special listing of key personalities (pioneers), companies, and softwares cited throughout the book. Lazy makes me crazy. The book should be redone to include an index, the guide, and a consolidated bibliography.
Excellent concluding quote from Alec J. Ross: “The principle binary struggle of the 21st century is not left or right but open societies versus closed.” This quote could be adapted to change open to open/horizontal versus closed/hierarchical.
I have taken away one star for two reasons: there is no index (for example, I cannot look up every reference to geospatial or visualization) and there is no consolidated bibliography — the team publishing this book has been lazy; and there is no larger understanding communicated with respect to the fact that Open Data alone whithers outside an open source ecology that must include at a minimum OpenCloud, Open Hardware, Open Software, and Open Spectrum.
Put another way, the authors are enthralled–and rightly so–with what happens when Open Data leads to startling efficiencies, insights, new collaboration relationships, and so on. What they do not get is what the governments of China, India, and Norway, among others, have gotten: citizens should not have to buy proprietary software (e.g. Microsoft) in order to read public data.
See my graphic on a selection of opens comprising the open source ecology we need — opens that do not hang together will hang separately — and see also the tiny url /OSE-2014 for the lastest on the Open Source Everything meme.
Open Space Technology: A User's Guide
The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy
Open Source Intelligence in a Networked World (Continuum Intelligence Studies)
No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International)
Open Source Intelligence Techniques: Resources for Searching and Analyzing Online Information
Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence (Lecture Notes in Social Networks)
The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies
The Crisis Of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered
Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws 2006
Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust
