
Why the “Open Data Movement” is a Joke - MaysonL
http://tomslee.net/2012/05/why-the-open-data-movement-is-a-joke.html
======
46Bit
If you're purely interested in holding government accountable for their
actions, I can see why you might write this. A lot of the open data released
has been things that will benefit entities other than political campaign
groups.

Consider data on train positions in the UK. It's been locked up in various
ways for a long time, or at least with restrictions that amount to non-
commercial usage. So what you ask? Providing a live train-times service from
the data costs money: I've been told it's upwards of 500 messages/second and
there's a lot of problems you have to work around.

Releasing the data behind it is starting to help people to find cheaper
tickets, make a more truthful record of train punctuality than official
figures, etc. Many companies will benefit financially from this (rather than
the current monopoly) but _the public will benefit_.

There are cases where accountability is at least starting to be possible. Last
year I helped a newspaper look at published NHS data for things buried under
the carpet - think hospitals that are failing to treat certain age groups for
conditions like Diabetes. That's accountability. The UK pupil database is
similarly promising.

Things need to get better but it's not as bad everywhere as the author claims
of Canada or the USA.

~~~
cube13
>Consider data on train positions in the UK. It's been locked up in various
ways for a long time, or at least with restrictions that amount to non-
commercial usage. So what you ask? Providing a live train-times service from
the data costs money: I've been told it's upwards of 500 messages/second and
there's a lot of problems you have to work around.

>Releasing the data behind it is starting to help people to find cheaper
tickets, make a more truthful record of train punctuality than official
figures, etc. Many companies will benefit financially from this (rather than
the current monopoly) but the public will benefit.

That's the point of the entire post. If someone's making money off of the
data, then they should pay for it. Taxpayers shouldn't be funding the release
of the data just so companies can charge them to access it.

~~~
wooster
They already paid for it. The service is value added, which the taxpayer
didn't pay for.

------
knowtheory
This is balderdash and largely character assassination.

The author's post contains essentially two points:

\- "Open Data hasn't resulted in 100% government transparency"

\- "There are corporate influences in the open data movement, therefor the
open data movement are just corporate sockpuppets"

These two points are ridiculous on their face.

Movements are things that take time. They are a process. They require citizen
engagement, advocacy, and political pressure. The fact that the open data
movement hasn't radically altered the way that politics are done in Canada (or
the location of your choosing) does not mean that progress is not being made,
or that we shouldn't stop demanding better data and better accountability.

Second, if one is to write off any movement with a corporate interest, we may
as well give up on the open source software movement. That a company like
O'Reilly views open data as worth their time and attention does not mean that
they wield undue influence over the subject material of what it is that people
work on or wish to achieve. I would _love_ to hear any accounts of O'Reilly or
ESRI or Microsoft or Omidyar killing or interfering with projects because they
disagree with them.

The notion that open data is some how tainted by corporate touches is also so
freaking frustrating because there already _are_ businesses built around open
data that everyone uses.

Is government weather data somehow suspect because the Weather Channel has
built a business around it? Should we block someone from building a business
like the Weather Channel on government data? If so why? It's freaking open
data, it's not like the Weather Channel controls it.

------
olefoo
Having been involved with several open government initiatives in the past five
years, both as a consumer and as a consultant to municipal governments trying
to to take positive action. I can understand the frustration and anger that
such initiatives can provoke. And how it's almost worse when an initiative
almost completes it's aim but is perverted by incidental contact with some
outside agenda.

That said, any politician who attempts to rig the national census is an idiot.
Yes it may win your party momentary advantage this year, but at the cost of
causing the government to abandon the reality principle altogether. I'd go so
far as to say that doing away with accurate data gathering and attempting to
suborn demographic statistics to meet political goals is a pathological
symptom of the Beige Fascism [1] failure mode of representative democracy.

1\. See Charles Stross's excellent summary of the issue
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2013/02/politica...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2013/02/political-failure-modes-and-th.html)

------
woah
I'm not sure what the point of this article is. There's nothing wrong with
governments providing their data in standardized machine readable formats.
This makes it easier for groups of informed citizens, hackers looking for a
side project, and non profits like CFA to process and visualize this data.
They then can create tools to make it easier for citizens to see and
understand what is going on 'under the hood'.

It's ludicrous that governments should keep the data about what they are doing
with our taxes locked inside proprietary enterprise databases. Oftentimes, the
only information available is a small subset or overview released once a year
as a PDF. Anything more usable and parseable is a big improvement on this.

It's true, governments will start by only releasing things that make them look
good (or at least not bad). But this is not the end goal. Eventually the stuff
that they don't release becomes glaringly obvious and people start asking why.

The author has what sound like some valid complaints about the Canadian
government. But somehow he thinks it's logical to conflate these issues with
the entire open data movement. I don't get it.

For example, politicians will sometimes justify bad laws by claiming that they
are 'for the children'. This article is the equivalent of complaining about
these laws by saying 'children are a joke'. Nice straw man.

------
arctangent
I can see both sides of this argument.

We should all note, however, that when the establishment appropriates the
language of the upstarts and insurgents the aim is often to disenfranchise the
movement while paying lip service to that movement's original aims.

How to counter this? Not a simple question. That said, once government
promises "open data" or "open government" it might be time to think up a new
(more pressing) demand with a new slogan to boot.

------
1wheel
Crooked Timber put together a series of essay about open data last summer
discussing these issues in more depth (including one by Aaron Swartz):

<http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/17/open-data-seminar-2/>

------
cmccabe
What does open data have to do with small government? What does the Liberal
government firing Canadian scientists in 2004 have to do with open data? What
does the Canadian Association of Journalists have to do with open data?

Content-free political spew makes me sad. This doesn't belong on HN.

