Data for the Public Good

by Alex Howard

As we move into an era of unprecedented volumes of data and computing power, the benefits aren't for business alone. Data can help citizens access government, hold it accountable and build new services to help themselves. Simply making data available is not sufficient. The use of data for the public good is being driven by a distributed community of media, nonprofits, academics and civic advocates. This report from O'Reilly Radar highlights the principles of data in the public good, and surveys areas where data is already being used to great effect, covering: Consumer finance Transit data Government transparency Data journalism Aid and development Crisis and emergency response Healthcare

Genres: Nonfiction

22 pages, ebook

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Eddy D. Sanchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los datos son el petroleo del futuro, tienen un futuro poder económico grande, los datos públicos son una fuente inmensa de datos, las ciudades inteligentes y los gobiernos generan muchos datos, estos pueden ser datos de entorno o datos privados.
Los sectores de salud, transito, mobilidad, financiero, etc, son una fuente inagotable de datos, estos deben ser usados con el fin de elevar la calidad de vida de los habitantes.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Data for the Pub­lic Good by Alex Howard is a con­cise and hard-hitting 22 pages long. I saw it as 100% long as I read it on met eReader between home and my morn­ing cof­fee and por­ridge. 22 pages really works! It is just the right amount of superbly edit­ing and cur­ated data to engage with an absorb in a ses­sion in a fast-paced world. Reflect here on how we pack­age and deliver inform­a­tion today.

The iter­at­ive open data pro­cess is at the heart of revolu­tion in any of the sec­tors touched: data drives demand -> pub­lic demand drives bet­ter data –> ver­sion con­trol (and fluid­ity of release) adds dimen­sion to this data.

The book itself is a suc­cinct sur­vey of examples and prin­ciples sup­port­ing more open shar­ing of data (both pub­lic and private) for the ser­vice of cit­izens and cit­izenry. Although much of of this book focuses on open gov­ern­ment data, it is the pub­lic good served by both pub­lic and private data that is in dis­cus­sion and doesn’t shrink from broach­ing the sens­it­ive areas of pri­vacy and eco­nomic value. Alex Howard admits read­ily that ‘account­ab­il­ity and trans­par­ency are import­ant civil goods, but adopt­ing open data requires groun­ded argu­ments for a CFO to sup­port these.’ Data for the Pub­lic Good explores the polit­ical, fin­an­cial, trans­port­a­tion and health sys­tems rap­idly identi­fy­ing the key points of fric­tion, chal­lenge and bene­fit that can be derived by open-minded con­sid­er­a­tion of how both the avail­ab­il­ity of data and our per­cep­tions of our data-informed lives are chan­ging how we see and gov­ern ourselves.

Three aspects high­light the innate value of open data to bet­ter gov­ern­ment accord­ing to Howard:

open data can rebuild frac­tured and bank­rup­ted trust in the sys­tem and pay dividends over time;
open data can cre­ate an account­able work­force through KPI driven dash­boards to increase efficiency;
avail­ab­il­ity of open data sup­ports busi­ness build­ing as the con­nec­tion between read­ing human vital signs is trans­ferred to an under­stand­ing of the vital signs of the city, and;
open data driven pre­dict­ab­il­ity ana­lysis iden­ti­fies ser­vice cost sav­ings, inter­ven­tion points and leads to greater efficiencies.
In the health­care sec­tor, the author reaf­firms the ethos that is the ‘quan­ti­fied self move­ment (I write this with a Fit­Bit strapped to my belt ; -) and reminds that in health­care, although its is eas­ily demon­strated that aware­ness dir­ectly impacts on more effect­ive dia­gnosis and treat­ment, ‘you don’t just go and down­load data and slather [it] on your­self and get healed. Data is use­ful when it’s integ­rated with other stuff that does use­ful jobs for doc­tors, patients and con­sumers.’ Beha­viour and our approach to mak­ing good data a part of good prac­tise holds the keys to improv­ing health­care in the longer term.

Finally, and I think cru­cially to both the argu­ment and the move­ment, Howard cites Todd Parks’ con­ten­tion that value is derived not just by releas­ing more data, but by mak­ing that data truly access­ible and usable — two key points that I have a sense get over­looked in the pop­u­lar dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing Open Access to data today. Note: Open + Access (does not equal) Open Access : These terms together are very dif­fer­ent from the sep­ar­ate words dealt in isolation.

This is a short book about the ethos behind the open data tagline. It’s an empower­ing, short read with a mul­ti­tude of examples and par­tic­u­larly well enun­ci­ated mes­sage: our beha­viour is rap­idly evolving in response to the increas­ingly data-driven lives we lead — there’s great indi­vidual oppor­tun­it­ies and even greater col­lect­ive rewards. Did I men­tion it’s a free down­load from O’Reilly Media at: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/06369...

[Shantanu Sharma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good introductory reading on how big data can help designing effective public policy. More detailed text would make this book very useful.

[René C. Nielsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice little introduction.