WHY OPEN DATA?
OPEN DATA, ESPECIALLY OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA, IS A TREMENDOUS RESOURCE THAT IS AS YET LARGELY UNTAPPED.
Many individuals and organisations collect a broad range of different types of data in order to perform their tasks. Government is particularly significant in this respect, both because of the quantity and centrality of the data it collects, but also because most of that government data is public data by law, and therefore could be made open and made available for others to use.
There are many areas where we can expect open data to be of value, and where examples of how it has been used already exist. There are also many different groups of people and organisations who can benefit from the availability of open data, including government itself. At the same time it is impossible to predict precisely how and where value will be created in the future. The nature of innovation is that developments often comes from unlikely places.
It is already possible to use as reference areas where open government data has created value. Some of them are:
- Transparency and democratic control
- Enhancing participation and participatory democracy
- Self-reinforcement through better understanding
- Improved or new private products and services
- Improved performance of public – government services
- Improved effectiveness of public – government services
- Measure the impact of policies
- New knowledge by combining different sources of large volumes of data
