Put open data at the disposal of communities

As we have already mentioned on more than one occasion, the information opening projects are, in short, change management projects in terms of how to work and understand data in organizations. However, as mere managers of this change, the leading organizations do not usually have all the necessary resources to give rise to the expected results in terms of the use of the data by themselves.

Therefore, being able to count on the support of a broad community of users with different motivations and profiles that can help to obtain the maximum benefit from these data, while at the same time nurturing them, is key. These communities are very beneficial when it comes to obtaining practical results, since their participants are usually more motivated to share similar objectives and generally provide more specialized knowledge.

Let's see some examples:

Justice and criminality

• Measures for Justice is a civil society initiative launched in 2011 that has developed a set of indicators - using data extracted from management systems of administrative case - with the aim of evaluating and comparing different aspects of the criminal justice process in some jurisdictions of the United States.
• OpenGiustizia was an organizational optimization and innovation project for the Naples public prosecutor's office developed by three Italian universities and financed by European funds. The objectives of the project included the provision of tools for accountability and the evaluation of the system.
• Justice Data Lab is a service managed by the Ministry of Justice of the United Kingdom that is aimed at organizations that provide services for criminals’ rehabilitation. It uses administrative recidivism data to carry out impact evaluations of these organizations.

Environment

• The Air Quality Historical Data Platform (WAQI), created in 2007 by a multidisciplinary team of volunteers in Beijing (China), provides access to information related to outdoor air quality from more than 10,000 stations in 800 cities from 70 countries. Only data obtained from official government measurement stations or maintained by professionals are published. These data are also validated through neighborhood and historical comparisons.
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network supported by governments to share more than 1,000 million records about life variety on earth from more than 1,300 collaborating institutions. Its objective is to be able to answer general questions about the interactions and ecological dependencies in the environment at different scales.
• The UNESCO International Hydrological Program has recently launched a new World Water Quality Information portal (IIWQ) that provides information on five freshwater quality indicators worldwide using remote sensing systems. The goal of the portal is to improve the knowledge base and access to information in order to understand the impacts of climate change and other human-induced changes in water security.

Health and well-being

• The Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) Projects advocates the responsible sharing of clinical research data, combining open science and data transparency. Its objective is to support research and knowledge by producing concrete benefits for patients, medical community and society as a whole through the experience and contributions of all interested parties.
• BMJ, a global health knowledge reference provider, made the decision in 2013 not to publish any drug or device trials in which the authors do not commit to make publicly available clinical data properly anonymized, becoming immediately in a community of reference in the matter. The reason that led them to make that decision was the amount of adverse outcomes associated with the hidden data from the clinical trials they had detected.
• Health indicators are often incomplete and fragmented, which makes it difficult to manage resources when it comes to helping people live a longer, healthier and more productive life. The Health Data Collaboratives is a joint effort of multiple worldwide partners to improve the availability, quality and use of health-related data, in order to support better decision-making at the local level.

Public finances and accountability

• The OpenBudgets community is designed to provide all public budgets stakeholders with a platform related to open fiscal transparency and open budgets that is scalable and easy to use. It relies on a series of additional data visualization and comparison tools, as well as on analysis and collaborative discussion.
• Publish What You Pay (PWYP) is a global community that works to ensure that revenues from oil, gas and mining resources contribute to improving the lives of people in countries with large deposits. Its network has more than 700 member organizations and 50 national coalitions, campaigning for a more open and responsible extractive sector through the use of standards such as those promoted by the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI).
• OpenSpending is a free, open and global platform to search, visualize and analyze fiscal data on purchases and expenses in public administrations. Through the platform you can access to a set of tools, a series of learning resources and a motivated community of users who collaborate in data analysis and develop stories that facilitate their understanding.

By means of conclusion, we can cite some of the characteristics shared by all the previous examples. It would undoubtedly also facilitate the creation of new successful communities in other areas:

• Open participation to everyone, avoiding any type of barrier to entry.
• Participate as one more, honestly and transparently.
• Communicate what is being done at any times to build trust.
• Use different communication channels simultaneously to maximize the effect.
• Seek to expand participation also outside the community.

It should also be borne in mind that this is just a sample with some examples of the potential of communities in four specific areas of knowledge. However, once the final version of the report on the State of Open Data is published during the next OGP Global Summit in Canada, we will be able to access to other examples in at least a dozen additional sectors.

Finally, it should be noted that several of the monitoring activities that are being carried out through these communities - including some of those mentioned here - are also serving as official indicators of the advancement of sustainable development goals, once again claiming the main role of open data and collaboration between organizations and communities when defining public policies guided by practical evidence.

Content prepared by Carlos Iglesias, Open data Researcher and consultan, World Wide Web Foundation.

Contents and points of view expressed in this publication are the exclusive responsibility of its author