The following post is by Claudio Artusio who works for LAPSI, the European Network on Legal Aspects of Public Sector Information.

There is still 3 weeks left to apply to the 3^rd LAPSI Award on the most user-friendly design of a PSI portal in the EU (http://www.lapsi-project.eu/news/award3).

PSI (acronym for Public Sector Information) can be defined as the wide range of information that public sector bodies collect, produce, reproduce and disseminate in many areas of activity while accomplishing their institutional tasks. PSI may include (among others) social, economic, geographical, cadastral, weather, tourist, and business information.

The technological progress we experience every day in the modern digital age has drastically modified the procedures and broadened the opportunities for any citizen to reach and access information. In such a context, making information generated and collected by public sector entities available and re-usable is crucial; not only it provides citizens with a reliable knowledge regarding Government and public sector bodies activities, it also represents the initial material for public or private undertakings to come up with new added-value services and supply them to citizens.

Since PSI availability is crucial for fostering re-use initiatives, the very purpose of the Award is to support any initiative which can be beneficial to PSI re-use policies for moving forward.

The Award is open to public sector bodies, businesses and citizens who designed or manage a PSI portal in the EU.

A panel of experts will evaluate the submitted projects with regard to the user-friendly design of the portal; the originality and the layout appeal of the portal; the efficacy of the portal in facilitating the access of the PSI; the efficacy of the portal in fostering the awareness on legal aspects of PSI (such as competition, data protection and privacy, intellectual property rights).

The Award has received the support of Infocamere (http://www.infocamere.it/) and as a result, the most user-friendly design of a PSI portal will be rewarded with a prize of 1,000 Euros.

Application must be submitted in English by 23^rd of December 2011 (16:00 hrs CET).

The winner of the 3^rd LAPSI Award will be announced during the second day of the Public Conference that will take place in Bruxelles, on 23^rd and 24^th January 2012.

The Call for applications is available at: http://www.lapsi-project.eu/call2

The Submission form is available at: http://www.lapsi-project.eu/form2

This guest post by Chris Taggart was originally published on his blog at countculture.wordpress.com. Chris is co-founder of OpenCorporates,  founder of OpenlyLocal, and member of the OKF open government working group 

Yesterday I received an email from a Cabinet Office civil servant in preparation for a workshop  tomorrow about the Open Data in Growth Review, and in it I was asked to provide:

an estimation of the impact of Open Data generally, or a specific data set, on UK economic growth…  an estimation of the economic impact of open data on your business (perhaps in terms of increase in turnover or number of new jobs created) of Open Data or a specific data set, and where possible the UK economy as a whole

My response:

How many Treasury economists can I borrow to help me answer these questions? Seriously.

Because that’s the point. Like the faux Public Data Corporation consultation that refuses to allow the issue of governance to be addressed, this feels very much like a stitch-up. Who, apart from economists, or those large companies and organisations who employ economists, has the skill, tools, or ability to answer questions like that.

And if I say, as an SME, that we may be employing 10 people in a year’s time, what will that count against Equifax, for example (who are also attending), who may say that their legacy business model (and staff) depends on restricting access to company data. If this view is allowed to prevail, we can kiss goodbye to the ‘more open, more fair and more prosperous‘ society the government says it wants.

So the question itself is clearly loaded, perhaps unintentionally (or perhaps not). Still, the question was asked, so here goes:

I’m going to address this in a somewhat reverse way (a sort of proof-by-contradiction). That is, rather than work out the difference between an open data world and a closed data one by estimating the increase from the current closed data world, I’m going to work out the costs to the UK incurred by having closed data. Note that extensive use is made of Fermi estimates and backs of envelopes

• Increased costs to the UK of delays and frustrations. Twice this week I have waited around for more than 10 minutes for buses, time when I could have stayed in the coffee shop I was working in and carried on working on my laptop had I known when the next bus was coming. Assuming I’m fairly unremarkable here and the situation happens to say 10 per cent of the UK’s working population through one form of transport or another, that means that there’s a loss of potential productivity of approx 0.04% (2390 minutes/2400 mins x 10%). Similar factors apply to a whole number of other areas, closely tied to public sector data, from roadworks (not open data) to health information to education information (years after a test dump was published we still don’t have access to Edubase) – just examine a typical week and think of the number of times you were frustrated by something which linked to public information (strength of mobile signal?). So, assuming that the transport is a fairly significant 10% of the whole, and applying it to the UK $2.25 trillion GDP we get £9000 million. Not included: loss of activity due to stress, anger, knock-on effects (when I am late for a meeting I make attendees who are on time unproductive too), etc
• Knock-on cost of data to public sector and associated administration. Taking the Ordnance Survey as an example of a Shareholder Executive body, of its £114m in revenue (and roughly equivalent costs), £74m comes from the public sector and utilities. Although there would seem to be a zero cost in paying money from one organisation to another, this ignores the public sector staff and administration costs involved in buying, managing and keeping separate this info, which could easily be 30% of these costs, say 22 million. In addition, it has had to run a sales and marketing operation costing probably 14% of its turnover (based on staff numbers), and presumably it costs money collecting, formatting data which is only wanted by the private sector, say 10% of its costs. This leads to extra costs of £22m + £16m + £14m = £52 million or 45%. Extrapolating that over the Shareholder Executive turnover of £20 billion, and discounting by 50% (on the basis that it may not be representative) leads to additional costs of £4500 million. Not included: additional costs of margin paid on public sector data bought back from the private (i.e. part of the costs when public sector buys public-sector-based data from the private sector is the margin/costs associated with buying the public sector data).
• Significant decreases in exchange of information, and duplication of work within the public sector (not directly connected with purchase of public sector data). Let’s say that duplication, lack of communication, lack of data exchange increases the amount of work for the civil service by 0.5%. I have no idea of the total cost of the local & central govt civil service, but there’s apparently 450,000 of them, earning, costing say £60,000 each to employ, on the basis that a typical staff member costs twice their salary. That gives us an increased cost of £1350 million. Not included: cost of legal advice, solving licence chain problems, inability to perform its basic functions properly, etc.
• Increased fraud, corruption, poor regulation. This is a very difficult one to guess, as by definition much goes undetected. However, I’d say that many of the financial scandals of the past 10 years, from mis-selling to the FSA’s poor supervision of the finance industry had a fertile breeding ground in the closed data world in which we live (and just check out the FSA’s terms & conditions if you don’t believe me). Not to mention phoenix companies, one hand of government closing down companies that another is paying money to, and so on. You could probably justify any figure here, from £500 million to £50 billion. Why don’t we say a round billion. Not included: damage to society, trust, the civic realm
• Increased friction in the private sector world. Every time we need a list of addresses from a postcode, information about other companies, or any other public sector data that is routinely sold, we not only pay for it in the original cost, but for the markups on that original cost from all the actors in the chain. More than that, if the dataset is of a significant capital cost, it reduces the possible players in the market, and increases costs. This may or may not appear to increase GDP, but it does so in the same way that pollution does, and ultimately makes doing business in the UK more problematic and expensive. Difficult to put a cost on this, so I won’t.
• I’m also going to throw in a few billion to account for all the companies, applications and work that never get started because people are put off by the lack of information, high barriers to entry, or plain inaccessibility of the data (I’m here taking the lead from the planning reforms, which are partly justified on the basis that many planning applications are not made because of the hassle in doing them or because they would be refused, or otherwise blocked by the current system.)

What I haven’t included is reduced utilisation of resources (e.g empty buses, public sector buildings – the location of which can’t be released due to Ordnance Survey restrictions, etc), the poor incentives to invest in data skills in the public sector and in schools, the difficulty of SMEs understanding and breaking into new markets, and the inability of the Big Society to argue against entrenched interests on anything like and equal footing. And this last point is crucial if localism is going to mean more rather than less power for the people. So where does that leave us. A total of something like:

£17,850 million.

That, back of the envelope-wise, is what closed data is costing us, the loss through creating artificial scarcity by restricting public sector data to only those pay. Like narrowing an infinitely wide crossing to a small gate just so you can charge – hey, that’s an idea, why not put a toll booth on every bridge in London, that would raise some money – you can do it, but would that really be a good idea?

And for those who say the figures are bunk, that I’ve picked them out of the air, not understood the economics, or simply made mistakes in the maths – well, you’re probably right. If you want me to do better give me those Treasury economists, and the resources to use them, or accept that you’re only getting the voice of those that do, and not innovative SMEs, still less the Big Society.

Footnote: On a similar topic, but taking a slightly different tack is the ever excellent David Eaves on the economics of Toronto’s transport data. Well worth reading.

The following guest post is by Thomas Gegenhuber, Naumi Haque and Stefan Pawel, who are involved in Open Commons Linz.

In 2010, the City of Linz, Austria completed a year-long study of an “Open Commons Region” for government. The findings of the study introduce a framework for open government, with the goal of creating a vibrant public-private ecosystem that includes public administration, corporations, arts communities, educational institutions, and citizens. The focus is on local governments, who are closest to the people and have an opportunity to use principles of transparency, participation and collaboration to improve services in areas that directly affect local communities, such as education, transportation, connectivity, and culture.

In 1979 Linz became a place for experimenting with digital culture by creating the “Ars Electronica.” The initiative is part avant-garde festival, part competition, part on-going showcase for excellence in digital art, and part media art lab providing artistic expertise for R&D projects. The City of continued by addressing basic accessibility with the Hotspot Initiative and has expanded the scope of open government with initiatives such as the Public Space Server, the Creative Commons Subsidy Model, and the first steps towards open data.

The study “Open-Commons-Region Linz” was conducted by the IT department of the city in collaboration with the Johannes Kepler University. The report summarizes the role of local government in establishing an Open Commons Region. In the past, public funds for economic development have been focused largely on capital infrastructure like roads and institutions. In a knowledge economy, it makes sense to also invest in intellectual growth, shared data, and ideas. In this context, the role of the government is to create a framework for public knowledge, draft appropriate legislation, build awareness, and support budding initiatives set forth by citizens and private enterprises.

The Open Commons Region Linz is working on a platform called “Clickservice”, like SeeClickFix or FixMyStreet, and on an Open Government Data platform. The Open Government Data platform will also be open for other smaller cities around Linz, but also for institutions and companies. Both projects will start this autumn.

The following guest post is by Peter Hicks, IP Network Engineer and Open Transport Data advocate.

In the late 1990s, I decided to learn more about why my commute to and from London wasn’t always a smooth process. Having an inquisitive nature, I set about casually talking to people ‘in the know’ – friends inside and outside the industry, reading Railtrack and ATOC’s websites, asking questions on mailing lists. I found out a huge amount of information about how everything worked – from signalling to timetabling, from fares setting to seat reservations. It helped me avoid becoming one of those angry commuters that station staff have to deal with when things go wrong, largely because I could understand and sympathise.

I fondly remember speaking to the Station Supervisor at one station after a late-running train caused me to miss my connection on to a branch line. Whilst he was booking me a taxi home (which was standard practice when this sort of thing happened to the last trains of the day), I simply asked what had happened. He told me I’d been delayed by a broken-down train, and without thinking, I simply said, “The up slow line’s reversibly signalled; why couldn’t the signaller have run my train in the wrong direction through there and around the failed train on the down slow?”

His eyes lit up, and he asked me which company I worked for. When I told him I didn’t work on the railway, he told me I should apply for a job there, handed me the taxi form, and said “I wish more people were like you.”

Up until a year or two ago, I didn’t have much productive use for my knowledge – it was just a personal quest to understand and exercise my brain whilst commuting. By chance, I heard of a Saturday morning event hosted at City Hall by Emer Coleman, Director of Digital Projects at the GLA, called “Free London’s Data”. There, I met a number of passionate and motivated developers who wanted to work on transport data, and I realised I could put my knowledge to good use.

My current quest is to help open up access to rail data. My manifesto is bold and simple: Everyone should have free and open access to raw fares, timetable and real-time running data.

Release the data, free it up, and let a large number of keen, hungry and motivated developers analyse it for everyone’s good. It’s not a new concept to many – but it’s a culture shift in the rail industry.

The data is already out there and in use, and I don’t think it’s too big a job to make it available to everyone. There are barriers, but I don’t see them as insurmountable. The biggest problem at the moment is dealing with the culture shift.

Network Rail can make the timetable and real-time data available, but they’re not geared up to interface directly with large numbers of developers. They operate the rail infrastructure, and many of their customers are wholly within the rail industry.

I currently take both timetable and real-time data from Network Rail on a non-commercial basis. Getting access to the information hasn’t been that difficult and my initial request broke some new ground within the company.

It hasn’t been easy to analyse and work with the data, but it’s not something I’m going to give up on. It’s now too exciting to let rest. Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to has been very enthusiastic about the opportunities, although I don’t think anyone’s more excited than I am.

To showcase what can be done with the raw data I have, I am writing a proof-of-concept website which will make timetable and real-time data visible. I want it to act as a vehicle to inspire other people and help them come up with ideas; to lower the technical barriers and help them get on with the important task of innovating.

It would be unfair to ignore the fact that ATOC have already invested millions into a system called Darwin, which takes the same data from Network Rail, conditions it, takes further information directly from train operators, and presents it in the form of the Live Departure Boards service. This is an excellent system, which I use every day to check whether my train home is delayed – but, unfortunately, it’s not open. ATOC don’t seem to want to make it open in the Open Data sense either. Superficially, their Code of Practice seems to promote innovation, but my interpretation leads me to believe it presents more barriers than opportunities.

Finally, what about fares information? That data set, possibly the most useful to the greatest number of people, is wholly owned by ATOC. It’s available, but at a price in excess of £25,000, which puts it firmly out of the reach of the vast majority of developers and those who want to analyse and work with the data.

ATOC produce the Avantix Traveller Fares Information CD-ROM and sell it for a mere £10.81; this provides a simple Windows application which queries a local off-line fares database. It’s not updated daily, but the low cost suggets there’s an unfair premium being imposed for access to the raw data.

I will continue to work toward getting everyone free and open access to raw fares, timetable and real-time running data. I am up for the challenge. I want to help the industry overcome technical and political hurdles in providing open access to this data, so society can begin to benefit from free access to rail data.

Footnotes

The codebase is on GitHub at http://github.com/poggs/tsdbexplorer for anyone interested enough to take a look. I’m happy to talk further about the work I’m doing – please email me at peter.hicks[at]poggs[dot]co[dot]uk.

The following post is by Liliana Bonegru, Project Coordinator at the European Journalism Centre (EJC), and Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

The post announces a joint workshop between the EJC and OKF, focusing on how to get started with data-driven reporting on spending data. This workshop will focus particularly on EU spending data.

Interested in data-driven journalism and EU spending?

The European Journalism Centre together with the Open Knowledge Foundation is hosting a one and a half day data-driven journalism workshop on EU spending in Utrecht, the Netherlands on 8th-9th September.

Why EU spending?

EU spending is an important topic of investigation. The two most substantial data-driven investigations into EU spending in the recent years have been the investigation into payments and recipients of farm subsidies in the EU, and the investigation into the beneficiaries of EU structural funds (the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) in collaboration with the Financial Times). By bringing EU spending to public scrutiny, journalists helped enrich the public debate around this topic.

In this workshop participants will learn from data journalists who worked as part of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) structural funds investigation team and spending data experts how to get started with data-driven reporting on EU spending.

What will the workshop cover?

The participants will learn how to find and explore EU spending data from different sources, analyze it and find answers to their questions in order to produce stories.

How did the BIJ get the data? Can it be applied to other countries? What other stories can we get from the data if we compare it with other databases? Which Dutch companies and which public bodies receive funding? (How) can spending data be connected with lobbying interests? Do EU structural funds beneficiaries get funding under other programmes as well? These are a few of the questions that we aim to explore (participants are encouraged to contribute their own questions).

Workshop leaders?

• Caelainn Barr, EU data journalist, formerly with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ)
• Friedrich Lindenberg, developer with the Open Knowledge Foundation, working on open modes of governance and on government transparency.
• Chris Taggart, originally a journalist and later magazine publisher, now CEO and co-founder of OpenCorporates: The Open Database of the Corporate World, and founder of OpenlyLocal.com.

How do I sign up?

The workshop is aimed at aspiring data journalists, journalists, open data specialists, developers and others who have an interest in EU spending.

If you are interested in participating in the workshop please email Liliana Bounegru (bounegru [at] ejc.net) to request an invitation. Please include in the email your affiliation (if any) and a sentence or two on your motivation to join this workshop.

There is no participation fee but attendees are expected to arrange and cover their own transportation and accommodation.

Do you know of any relevant databases that we can use during the workshop? Do you have any ideas of questions and stories that we can explore?

If so please get in touch with us (bounegru [at] ejc.net).

If you’re interested in keeping in touch with developments in this area, you may wish to join the EJC’s Data-Driven Journalism group, the joint EJC/OKF mailing list on data-driven-journalism, and follow data-driven journalism on Twitter.

The official page for the event can be found here.

The following post is from Friedrich Lindenberg and Stefan Wehrmeyer from OKF Deutschland.

Today the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland is launching a new Freedom of Information (FOI) portal called “Frag den Staat”. The new site enables citizens, journalists and researchers to request information from over 830 federal agencies and institutions across Germany. Requests can be tracked on the site, creating a public archive of official documents.

Like many other European countries, Germany has had FOI legislation in place on a federal level since 2006, but many states are still missing such laws. The use of requests is not wide-spread even amongst journalists, however, and when it is attempted information is often withheld through bureaucratic tricks.

The new site is part of an ongoing discussion involving many civil society organisations, officials and the data privay and freedom of information commissioners of both Bund and Länder on how to promote the use of this useful legislation and to make its outcome more transparent.

Germany’s FOI laws are also up for a review, with exciting proposals already published by Greenpeace Germany and the Green Party. Another interesting development is Germany’s smallest state, Bremen, in which FOI legislation now mandates the preemptive publication of many official documents on the web.

With a broad alliance of organisations, including Access Info Europe, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Informationsfreiheit e.V., Deutsche Journalistinnen- und Journalisten-Union, Deutscher Journalisten-Verband e.V., Digitale Gesellschaft e.V., Legal Leaks, Mehr Demokratie e.V., netzwerk recherche e.V., n-ost Netzwerk für Osteuropa-Berichterstattung e.V., Open Data Network e.V. and Transparency International Deutschland e.V supporting the platform, we hope that FragDenStaat.de, too, may set some signs in this debate.

The following post is from Mark MacGillivray, who works with the OKF on our Open Bibliography project and other related projects.

Today the JISC called for all metadata to be openly accessible, inviting all publicly funded organisations including universities, colleges, libraries, museums and archives to make the same commitment. The OKF is proud to have been involved in the pioneering open metadata projects such as JISC Open Bib, and we will continue to support JISC and the wider community in the effort to make all our metadata openly accessible, to make all our resources more useful and more discoverable, and to increase collaboration and innovation.

In addition to the general open metadata principles promoted by JISC, we are promoting our Open Bibliographic metadata principles to provide clear explanations for what metadata can be considered open by default:

http://openbiblio.net/principles/

Full details about the bibliographic metadata we have already made available are in our final project post:

http://openbiblio.net/2011/06/30/final-product-post-open-bibliography/

We would be happy to hear from anyone willing to participate in our efforts; our website and mailing are:

http://openbiblio.net

http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-bibliography

Thanks to our smashing new designer Kat Braybrooke and the wit and design skills of the community, the OKF now have a new range of T-shirts (including women’s fit and re-adaptations of the old classics!) available via the OKF spreadshirt shop.

Congratulations again go to Hans Overbeek for his winning “Yes, we’re Open” design. Thanks to Arn van der Pluijm for scaling the image.

The designs are all available in a range of colours.

We hope that more people sporting the thought-provoking slogans will help to spread the word about Open Data and a donation from the sale of every T-shirt goes to support the Foundation’s work.

So, if you are curious to see more and keen to support the OKF’s work, check out the designs