In a previous post I have written that the open data and reform of public service initiatives are creating a market of data. Such a market is like any other market. It is very much influenced by the personal ideological background and agenda of people in command. In the particular case of the market of data, because it is both burgeoning and strongly related to public service information policies, the political decision makers are very influential. So what happens when a new Government / Administration takes command? That is what might happen in the UK in the coming days, so it is an appropriate time to elaborate on and discuss it.
As Lee Bryant wrote, from the government’s perspective there are four main reasons for doing it:

• Transparency and accountability
• Empower citizens to drive public service reform
• Unlocking social and economic value (Taxpayers paid for the data)
• Help (National) research and technology have a leading role in the next generation Web

Those objectives are very high level and consequently pretty much consensual. Chances are that the open data initiatives continue in the UK, no matter a change in Administration.

That does not mean however that a market of data is proof or resilient to politics.

At this stage, most issues surface at the initiation / adoption stage. What looks desirable in countries with a liberal and democratic tradition may well be a problem in countries with different traditions. Government transparency and accountability is a double-edged sword for governments that have - for good or bad reasons the point isn’t here really - contributed to fabricating a different image of their action and/or society than reality. These people can legitimately fear social if not political unrest after releasing open data, since they potentially open the door for enabling an adjustment between what is said and what it is, by citizens.

So if we look back at the four main reasons, we might classify them by degree of desirability by both liberal and democratic governments and less or non liberal and democratic governments.

If no termination is foreseeable, changes may however happen at lower levels or on different grounds.

If the objectives are consensual, the practicalities of implementing them are subject to change depending on the personal ideological background and agenda of people in command. To illustrate the point, one may refer to the difference of understanding between Conservatives and Christian Democrats in Europe or between Republicans and Democrats in USA of what is the role of State in relation to a “market”. One can anticipate potentially changes at the following levels or grounds:

• Transparency and accountability
• Empowerment of citizens to drive public service reform
• Unlocking social and economic value
• Help (National) research and technology have a leading role in the next generation Web
• Influence of the government on the issue of the Market of Data
• Change in the locus of decision making

Transparency and accountability

The process of selecting the data make available on open data platforms has been questioned by many. Behind the availability argument, a political agenda has a clear role to play as it is always important for a government to look nice. Shortly after a period of transitions between two parties at government, it is not rare to see new data popping in to justify future policies and undermines the previous team.
A possible consequence of a change in government may therefore be a change in the process of selecting the data made available.

Empower citizens to drive public service reform
What does “empowering” means? It’s good to have people manipulating data to present different perspectives, but then what? Is there any channel inside the public administration to effectively make an impact? Do we rely on (social) media to relay, broadcast and thus lobby for a change? Appreciation of anticipated effectiveness may vary between different people.
A possible consequence of a change in government may therefore be a change in the feed-back process implemented to effectively reform the public service.

Unlocking social and economic value
The current preference for marginal cost in the UK is and remains a political choice, beyond the demonstration of the authors of the report. Possibility to revert to profit maximizing exists, depending on the understanding of economical value and added value to “added value” and “refined”. A marginal cost policy lowers the barrier of entry to the market, so that the market is made of actors smaller in and bigger in numbers. Bet is made on increased volume of transactions and long term or indirect returns. A full cost policy keeps the barrier high so that the market is made of fewer yet bigger actors. That is almost the same situation as the one existing before the reform of public service information.
A possible consequence of a change in government may therefore be returning to the previous prevailing situation.
Alternatively, some may want to review the licensing models as a way to impact the commons. The current policies facilitate the accessibility and re-usability of public service information, creating de facto a knowledge commons. Depending on the licensing models that one enforces, possibility exists to create enclosures at the next level, by granting an exclusive right to license to or charge prohibitively others to use and remix. That would be the case by adopting dominant copyright and licensing models, like the one contained the US Millennium Act. A consequence is that innovation would happen at level one, but may potentially be prevented further. The fair use of the Commons is a complex issue that resonates on the digital landscape too.

Help (National) research and technology have a leading role in the next generation Web
Helping research and technology goes beyond advocacy and dataset standards, i.e. what we visibly get right now. It is known that research is siloed, as bridges are missing between public and private labs. The French government for instance was forced to create clusters to address that matter, and despite the induced cooperation remains difficult. How to effectively contribute to national benefit is a difficult topic. Findability and accessibility of datasets, by-products and skills, are significant matters that are poorly addressed at this stage, as I have already said there
Equally important is that initiating countries admittedly sit on a mass of data thanks to amazing development, stable and central governments and early attention to “heritage” preservation. However, digital is borderless – time matters, but not space - so it may well be that “not so national” research and technology that takes advantage of open data initiatives.
A possible consequence of a change in government may therefore be finding a different equilibrium between those two seemingly contradicting issues.

Influence of the government on the issue of the Market of Data

In the USA, open data have flourished at State level before the Federal Administration embarks and plays a catalyst role. Likewise, the United Kingdom plays an important role of catalyst and example in Europe that usefully supplements the European Commission. The European Commission is effective in passing laws and directives that impact lower level of administration. States are effective in operationalising concretely those laws and directives, hence the importance of the role of the UK. However, States have enough autonomy to implement directives far later, preventing the single market and impeaching the European Commission. The Conservative Party is a long time “eurosceptic” and recently confirmed that with a strong position. Such a change would definitely has the consequence of the United Kingdom ceasing to play a role of catalyst at European level, directly impacting the evolution of the market of data not only in the UK but also on the Continent.

Change in the locus of decision making
There is a possibility that the locus of decision making changes. Currently in the UK, the OPSI is an entity of the National Archives with broad responsibilities. A new government may decide to have it closer. And for that, as France currently demonstrates, there is no particular need to formally change structures. One simply needs to double certain positions by enriching the Premier’s team.

Base of the Market of Data
A significant driver of the market of data is the reform of public service. It is a shared agenda among political parties as broadly understood as way to reduce costs and boost effectiveness. Now, when it comes to reform of public service, different political parties have different understandings. Classically, the Conservatives or Republicans understand “reform of public service” by reduced expenses, i.e. less manpower and budgets, while Christian Democrats, Socialists and Democrats understand it has maintaining manpower but focusing on co-ordination and transaction costs efficiency. How this will affect the Open Data initiatives and thus the Market of Data is a matter of a) costs of the current initiative and 2) the balance between costs and expected gains.
With these elements in mind, a possibility exists that the scope is being changed by:
Transforming public administration bodies into “trading funds” (to use English terminology), as those public, not-for-profit entities are supposed to be financially autonomous. Such a policy may well increase the commons on which the Market of Data is being built.
Pushing into the private sector certain trading funds. Such a policy may well reduce the commons on which the Market of Data is being built as, being fully for profit, some may well re-open the charging policy case by questioning marginal costs in favor of cost recovery or profit maximizing.

After Open Source, Open Data is trendy. Governments are revamping their public service information policies, robust and commonly accepted standards of data emerge, results blossom.
As a said in a previous post, the public service is at the forefront, not the private sector. The two major reasons are financial - it is an opportunity to get more revenues from PSI - and ideological - governments in democracies come from and work for the people so they should be as transparent as they can.

A review of the initiatives, particularly the UK that is the most visible and probably the most systematic one, shows that the work so far has been on:

• Re-evaluating charging policies
• Re-viewing copyrights
• Favoring the standardization of data via a single format, at least per type of content (text, image, video …)

Let’s review them in details.

The re-evaluation of charging policies
It is the result of balancing 1) the incentivisation of clients for a higher consumption of the data and 2) the respect of the cost of production as well as the competition landscape. Between free of charge, marginal cost, cost recovery and full cost, the UK opts for the marginal cost approach, following a recommendation by Cambridge experts. However, not everyone is on the same page despite strong incentives by the European Commission. For instance, there are some voices that advocate for cost recovery or full cost in France, while the UK introduced earlier this year a process that opens doors to exceptions.

The review of copyright
It is meant to make it simpler to understand and access. A consequence is for instance that *by default* public service information is public and not restricted. As restriction becomes the exception, people are encouraged to look at available data as they have higher chance to effectively use them. The UK recently released an OS OpenData license.

The standardization of data formats
The adoption and promotion of certain standards, particularly RDF, facilitate the use and circulation of data. Skills and tools are clear, there is no hurdle to translate the formats so that it is faster and of higher quality. Most importantly those format help Internet services, particularly search engines, to reference, display, re-use, remix the data and combine it with existing data. The World Wide Web is comforted in its central position of digital commons.

The construction of a Market of Data

Those three concurrent initiatives are forming a new market. What happens behind the open data and the reforms of public service information is the creation of a market of data, with a global reach and a centralized place with the data.gov websites. Market is here to be understood in the pure classical sense coming from political economy.
- The re-evaluation of charging policies is the economical side of market creation. The purpose is to provide pricing transparency so that transactions are fairer and transaction costs reduced.
- The review of copyright is the legal side of market creation. The purpose is to set a common framework within which transactions can happen securely.
- The adoption and promotion of data standards is the technical side of market creation, like weights and measures. The purpose is to set a common framework so that people can better benchmark between items.

What see forming now is similar to what Dutch and Britons (later the rest of Europeans) have witnessed 4 centuries ago for physical goods. This systematic approach is very positive. The construction of the European single market can be a good illustration of the results of a systematic approach. In fact the US experience is more interesting. Several US agencies have already been releasing freely, with a user friendly copyright a lot of data 10+ years ago. However the absence of political momentum and co-ordinated and systematic approach kept those initiatives non-visible.

With the current setting, what the UK OPSI report shows is an effective growth in volumes and revenues of the Click-Use Licence market as well as the appearance of individuals. The growth in volumes is the result of increased delivery on the supply side, while the growth in revenues is the result of new players on the demand side. These new players are mostly individuals and they account for one third of the consumer base. From there one can assume that the work done concurrently at economical, legal and technical levels, is effectively reducing the barrier of entrance to the market. Rather than creating a market, they are re-creating a market by lowering its barriers.

source: The United Kingdom Report on the Re-use of Public Sector Information 2009, page 54, Crown copyright.

Beyond building the market, structuring it

Now that being said, the emergence of such Lilliputian actors is creating a new deal on that market. Before the market was pretty oligopolistic given the lesser transparency on the economical and technical levels, and stronger complexity on the legal level. Only big organizations could afford being on that market. They have their own structures, skills, processes, budgets to deal routinely with that. All the transaction costs are internalized (Coase). On the contrary these new players don’t have that backend organization.

So, how do we deal with that? How do you secure their presence on the long term so that the market does not get back to its previous oligopolistic state and consequently the expected benefits don’t show up? As far as I can see, nobody is looking at the matter right now. They all are busy creating the market of data so that no one really pays attention to structuring that market to make sure that that market is fair, fluid and conducive of wealth creation on the long term.

That is where knowledge management can play a role. By knowledge management, I do not refer to the popular and limited understanding that confuses managing knowledge and managing documents. Documents are containers of knowledge, not knowledge. I refer to managing insights and experiences, which is relational and people oriented.

The web has demonstrated that it was possible to build powerful, yet user-friendly, knowledge sharing platforms. The mechanisms of knowledge sharing can be used to structure the market of data. This would help individuals connect to data automatically, saving them the hassle of looking for the data. This would help individuals find similar or complementary profiles so that they can combine forces and grow to form real organizations. Implementing a platform like this would help individuals, by reducing quite a number of transaction costs. It is a way to structure the market to contribute to fairness, fluidity and wealth creation.

As we can see there is yet some work to be done. data.gov.uk, for instance, has to go far beyond the simplistic, non-connected Drupal profiles it offers now. How the market of data is going to be structured is the key to its sustainability.

Australia recently surfaced in a big way on the Government 2.0 scene, the equivalent to Enterprise 2.0 for public services. They have an exhaustive, state-of-the-art report that is worth reading with attention: Engage - Getting on with Government 2.0 - Report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce.

In this document that I have not quite finished reading, I have noted two consecutive points (page 16) :

• “Web 2.0 provides public servants with unprecedented opportunities to open up government decision making and implementation to contributions from the community. In a professional and respectful manner, public servants should engage in robust policy conversations.
• Equally, as citizens, APS employees should also embrace the opportunity to add to the mix of opinions contributing to sound, sustainable policies and service delivery approaches.”

These two paragraphs underline a fundamental problem. One can change licensing, charging policies, encourage the implementation of tools, the cultural aspect is fundamental. Because the culture in question is bureaucratic, and bureaucracy is built upon the assumption that people are not reliable. Lack of trust is the root of over-focus and over-confidence on processes, to a point where people are just facilitating the functioning of a machinery. What needs to be achieved is to put people back in command, a revolution literally, as in a Government 2.0 environment, people would have to :

1 - Engage with “customers” not only to perform their job/task.
In organisations, this means moving the back-office to the front-office and is distinct from quality management theories, which advocate a customer-driven production (type, quantity, quality of outputs). However, this calls for different soft skills. How people would cope? There probably are lessons to learn from the retail banking industry, as they have been through this process recently.

2 - Explain and discuss the frame in which actions and decisions are being taken.
Here again this calls for different skills. Not only people have to apply the policy/framework, but they need to understand it, while it is very common to meet people doing things just because they’ve been told to do so. What will surely happen there is that we will move from a simple loop learning frame to a double loop learning frame (Cyert & March). People will finally understand that a rule/process is only a situational arrangement that is efficient only for some time. The more it lasts, the better is the policy maker / process designer, no more, no less. We should therefore finally see emerging a culture where people are more responsible, don’t bluntly enforce outdated rules, nor bypass them, but contribute to adapting it. The single and double loop of Cyert & Schon can provide a useful conceptual framework to make sense of it. Moisdon et alii (1997) demonstrated that this is already happening in organisations anyway, thanks to few pragmatists or idealists so far, and that is precisely how the system survives and eventually thrives.

And for both to happen, there surely is a need for some work to be done at pure management level. How do people take responsibility over their work, in their context and at their level? How does the incentive system is being reformed to encourage people to contribute, including senior management (who are both an example and a driver)? How do you get rid of a culture where the boss is right in any case, not because s/he is relevant but simply the boss? How do you get rid of people who have no positive contribution?
My point is that beyond the technically-related changes (licensing, charging policy, data formatting, delivery models and platforms), what needs to be addressed and changed is “culture”.

Don’t expect techniques to facilitate the cultural change, this simply does not happen … even if some 2.0 features help surfacing relevance as an alternative to authority, provide room for “public” recognition (a simple, efficient and key incentive). That is something everybody involved in Enterprise 2.0 knows, as s/he experiences it daily.

Another element that is worth noting in the  “Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds” (2008) report is that one of the reason for open data is public administration reform.

As the report notes, ‘trading funds’ were created in the UK to be financially sound and self-sustainable, not that they had to make money but cover their cost. A notable mindshift for organisations that have been relying on taxes, and no particular pressure re break-even. The very nature of public central administration is processing information. The attention to  the ‘knowledge economy’, culminating on political agendas with the Lisbon Summit (2000), created a new row of incentives. Altogether, making public information that is collected and processed by public administration in the course of performing appeared as an opportunity for trading funds reach financial sustainability, by opening a whole new set of (by)products to monetize.

Of course, there are many other rationale for data release, such as innovation steering and democracy strengthening. But given the state of public debts, and with a pinch of mauvaise foi, innovation steering and democracy strengthening are almost good excuse. And the great “Linked Data” vision of Sir Tim shaping by himself the internet and the digital future of civilization can be considered just solving problem, right on time*. The European Commission took responsibilities of standardizing initiatives throughout the Union, in its mission of cutting internal barriers. This eventually lead to concerted initiatives, pushing many countries to look into this issue and therefore creating the basis for a large “market”.

* just kidding here as the contribution is both massive and inspirational, driving contributions from others.

Recently the city of Rennes announced some open data initiatives. While browsing around, I’ve recently discovered some useful resources, particularly the consistent “Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds” (2008) report by Prof. Bently, Prof. Newbery and R. Pollock (all from Cambridge University).

This report happens to be extremely useful for making sense of open government, open data initiatives. Precisely like the “knowledge economy”, “open data” is a multi-faceted emerging reality that requires different perspectives to be grasped. The Cambridge report is right on the spot providing rationale for monetization and economic optimization.
As I am reading it, I might share various insights on my blog, starting with that particular post.

Citing the “Charges for Information: When and How” (Treasury, 2001) report, the authors distinguish between raw and refined information.
Raw information is “information collected, created, or commissioned within Government which is central to Government’s core responsibilities. The supply of selected components of a raw data package, exactly as in the package is raw data supply, but the supply with further analysis, summarisation etc, or of data at a different level of aggregation to that used by Government, is not raw data for the purposes of this report but is value-added information”.

Value Added information is “information where value is added to raw data enhancing and facilitating its use and effectiveness for the user, for example through further manipulation, compilation and summarisation into a more convenient form for the end-user, editing and/or further analysis and interpretation, or commentary beyond that required for policy formulation by the relevant government department with policy responsibility. It also includes supplying retrieval software, or where work on material is included as part of the compilation of related data, and where there is not necessarily a statutory or operational requirement for Government to produce the material.

In the light of those definitions, most of the information made available within the frame of the open data initiatives are refined information. A more sensible approach would lead to a different opinion as what is released is data (and not information), under specific formats that are made to be understood by computers, not humans. In fact, that is precisely this last property that qualifies the content for “refined”.

From a Digital Library angle (my current occupation), I can share that most of the work that happens inside is about refining information.