Government not closing the loop on open data
This week I attended a panel session on open data and mobile government. In simple terms, open data is about governments making public data available in a way that lets clever people do useful things with it, such as an iPhone app that tells you when your bus will arrive.
A good panel had been pulled together. Chaired by Daniel Appelquist of Vodafone R&D and Mobile Monday London, it comprised David Mann from the DirectGov innovation team, Phil Archer of Talis, and Kenton Price of Little Fluffy Toys (makers of a Boris Bikes app). Broadly speaking they represented the owners, providers and developers of open data respectively.
Now, open data is á la mode in government circles, so much so that it is explicitly supported in the Coalition programme for government. Having started under the Brown administration, the agenda has survived a general election and the Comprehensive Spending Review.
And it's easy to see why. Open data is a potential panacea to government problems: it addresses lack of trust, the austerity era need to do more with less, and the need for growth in creative and high tech industries. Ideally open data enables a closed loop to occur, where countless small interactions between public services and citizens can be aggregated and fed back for improvement.
For this to work the sub-loop between government and developers needs to be working. But the panel revealed some serious gaps in this loop:
No service guarantees
Kenton Price had clearly been frustrated by the unreliability and unresponsive of TfL, who provide the data his app relies on. And he's not alone in this as app developer Malcolm Barclay discovered recently. Until government can provide some basic service level agreements (SLAs) for its data services the app market will not grow as the investment will carry this risk. If there are no SLAs how will we know when it's failing?
No-one responsible at a low enough level
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude is ultimately responsible for government open data, but I don't imagine he's taking many calls from irate app developers. Below that it all seems pretty opaque within individual organisations. If no-one's responsible who will hear the small screeches of failure?
Compared to the developer outreach work of companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter the UK government has a lot of catching up to do (the current marketing freeze perhaps not helping here). From the look of surprise on Kenton Price's face it was clear that the outreach work being done (such as Rewired State) was not yet known of widely enough.
Some data held by private companies
Not all public data is produced by public organisations, and with more private companies and social enterprises coming into public service provision this trend is only going to increase. David Mann said that this was already a problem in some cases. Phil Archer suggested open data provisions be written into outsourcing contracts; a good idea but wishful thinking I expect. How can private companies be compelled to use the same loop as everyone else?
Culture still not right
David Mann was at pains to point out that he couldn't speak for all of government, and to be fair his innovation team within DirectGov "get it". He was honest enough to say that in much of government the culture to support open data entrepreneurs with the right service just doesn't exist yet. So, who cares if the loop isn't closed when it isn't their loop to worry about?
Related to this was some brief but interesting discussion about the economics of app development and what, if any, pricing model might be the right one to properly support the mobile government market.
David Mann and Phil Archer both alluded to forthcoming projects that would improve the situation, although they both said they "can't really talk about it just yet", which kind of proves the point about the cultural problems.
In summary
For me this area is a really interesting microcosm of the problems government faces today. Some of the principles are good (open data, Big Society, lower welfare bills), but can government be small and responsive enough for the rapid, Internet-speed 21st century, without shrinking so far that it effectively removes itself from a loop that then quickly becomes chaotic?
