This blog is by ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow Miguel Paz a Chilean journalist and founder and CEO of Poderopedia, a data journalism website that highlights links among Chile’s business and political elites. This post is part of the Wikiprogress series on Data and Statistics in the lead up to Open Data Day on 22 February.
It’s time to transform open data from a trendy concept among policy wonks and news nerds into something tangible to everyday life for citizens, businesses and grassroots organisations. Here are some ideas to help us get there:
1. Improve access to data
Craig Hammer from the World Bank has tackled this issue, stating that “Open Data could be the game changer when it comes to
eradicating global poverty”, but only if governments make
available online data that become actionable intelligence: a launch pad for
investigation, analysis, triangulation, and improved decision making at all
levels.
2. Create open data for the end user
As Hammer wrote in a blog post for the Harvard Business Review, while
the "opening" has generated excitement from development experts,
donors, several government champions, and the increasingly mighty geek
community, the hard reality is that much of the public has been left behind, or
tacked on as an afterthought. Let`s get out of the building and start working
for the end user.
3. Show, don't tell
Regular folks don't know what “open data” means. Actually, they probably
don't care what we call it and don't know if they need it. Apple’s Steve Jobs said
that a lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to
them. We need to stop telling them they need it and start showing them why they
need it, through actionable user experience.
4. Make it relevant to people’s daily lives, not just
to NGOs and policymakers’ priorities
A study of the use of open data and transparency in Chile showed the top
10 uses were for things that affect their lives directly for better or for
worse: data on government subsidies and support, legal certificates,
information services, paperwork. If the data doesn't speak to priorities at the
household or individual level, we've lost the value of both the “opening” of
data, and the data itself.
5. Invite the public into the sandbox
We need to give people “better tools to not only consume, but to create
and manipulate data,” says my colleague Alvaro Graves, Poderopedia’s semantic
web developer and researcher. This is what Code for America does, and it’s also
what happened with the advent of Web 2.0, when the availability of better
tools, such as blogging platforms, helped people create and share content.
6. Realise that open data are like QR codes
Everyone talks about open data the way they used to talk about QR
codes--as something ground breaking. But as with QR Codes, open data only
succeeds with the proper context to satisfy the needs of citizens. Context is
the most important thing to funnel use and success of open data as a tool for
global change.
7. Make open data sexy and pop, like Jess3.com Geeks became popular because they made useful and cool things that could
be embraced by end users. Open data geeks need to stick with that program.
8. Help journalists embrace open data
Jorge Lanata, a famous Argentinian journalist who is now being targeted
by the Cristina Fernández administration due to his unfolding of government
corruption scandals, once said that 50 percent of the success of a story or
newspaper is assured if journalists like it.
That’s true of open data as well. If journalists understand its value
for the public interest and learn how to use it, so will the public. And if
they do, the winds of change will blow. Governments and the private sector will
be forced to provide better, more up-to-date and standardised data. Open data
will be understood not as a concept but as a public information source as
relevant as any other. We need to teach Latin American journalists to be part
of this.
9. News nerds can help you put your open data to
good use
In order to boost the use of open data by journalists we need news
nerds, who can
teach colleagues how open data through brings us high-impact storytelling that
can change public policies and hold authorities accountable.
News nerds can also help us with “institutionalizing data literacy
across societies” as Hammer puts it. ICFJ Knight International Journalism
Fellow and digital strategist Justin Arenstein calls these folks "mass
mobilizers" of information. Alex Howard “points to these groups because
they can help demystify data, to make it understandable by populations and not
just statisticians.”
I call them News Ninja Nerds, accelerator task forces that can foster
innovations in news, data and transparency in a speedy way, saving governments
and organizations time and a lot of money. Projects like ProPublica’s Dollars For Docs are great examples of what can be achieved if you mix FOIA, open data
and the will to provide news in the public interest.
10. Rename open data
Part of the reasons people don't embrace concepts such as open data is
because it is part of a lingo that has nothing to do with them. No empathy
involved. Let's start talking about people's right to know and use the data
generated by governments. As Tim O'Reilly puts it: "Government as a
Platform for Greatness," with examples we can relate to, instead of dead
.PDF's and dirty databases.
11. Don't expect open data to substitute for
thinking or reporting
Investigative Reporting can benefit from it. But “but there is no
substitute for the kind of street-level digging, personal interviews, and
detective work” great journalism projects entailed, says David Kaplan in a
great post entitled, Why
Open Data is Not Enough.
“The increasing access to data creates, more than ever, a need to make
sense of disparate pieces of information,” said Paul Radu, executive director
of the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. “It is
the mix of local and global information, the combination of local shoe-leather
reporting and leaps across borders through databases, that will make the
difference on the long run.”
As Matt Waite, Politifact creator and Drone Journalism Lab director,
notes, robots cannot replace humans complexity. They can’t think like we do.
Welcome to the debate.
The
post originally appeared on the The International Journalists’ Network’s
site, IJNet.org. IJNet helps professional, citizen
and aspiring journalists find training, improve their skills and make
connections. IJNet is produced by the International Center for Journalists in
seven languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and
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Global
media innovation content related to the projects and partners of the ICFJ Knight International Journalism
Fellows on IJNet is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and
edited by Jennifer Dorroh.
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