2. Harnessing Open Data to Nurture
a Digital Civil Society
Annemarie Naylor
Associate Director
Locality
3. Our members are:
• Independent
• Led by local people
• Driving social change
• Trading for community benefit
• Developing community assets
About Us
4. The technological disruption that transformed the music industry a
decade ago is fast impacting health, employment and education
services. Our high streets are endeavouring to withstand the
combined pressures of austerity and a burgeoning internet economy,
such that local authorities are struggling to breathe new life into
regeneration plans and stem the tide of vacant shops. Meanwhile,
rural areas clamour for improved connectivity to halt the flight of
young adults to our soon-to-be ‘smart cities’, and with 90% of jobs set
to require e-skills within five years, those excluded communities
already ‘left behind’ by the digital revolution face worsening
employment prospects still over the years to come.
The Challenge (1) – Operating Context
5. • Localism – focus on ‘traditional community assets’
• Opening Public Services – diseconomies of scale,
aggregating small data
• Digital by Default (?) – health, education, employment
• Assisted Digital – confidence, knowledge and skills
• “What Works” / Impact Investment – evidence-based
policy, commissioning and payment mechanisms
The Challenge (2) - Policy
6. • Beneficiary Intelligence – data capture systems, data protection,
public sector end user licenses
• Experience – annual reports, accounts, grant monitoring, contract
reporting, campaigning and fundraising databases
• Knowledge: what open data would be helpful / is being made
available, where can it be accessed, how can it be requested
• Understanding/Expertise: how to analyse/interpret open data
• Digital Enterprise (by and for communities): where to begin…
The Challenge (3) – Practice
8. The Opportunity (1) - Ethos
The Permanent Culture Now website and content by Stephen Jones,
Michael Thomas
9. • ODI, ODUG & the OGP
• DCLG’s Revised Transparency Code
• Publicly owned assets data
• Procurement & Contracting Data
• Open Data for Neighbourhood Planning
• Charity Commission, CIC Regulator, Companies House
• Funders, Social Investors & Contracting Bodies
The Opportunity (2) - Practice
13. • Awareness Raising – emphasising the benefits of open
data to stimulate interest amongst community
organisations
• Accessing & Analysing Open Data in Local
Communities – is there a role here for local libraries?
• Commercial Sensitivities & Data Coops – what will you
do, what did you achieve and not HOW did you do it
• Investing in and Showcasing Digital Social Enterprises
Virtual Food for Thought…
Community organisations are doing their utmost to work in the midst of an operating context that is being transformed by technological developments at break-neck pace – as are their beneficiaries.
The policy context within which community organisations are operating is to some extent “schizophrenic’. Significant investment now underpins traditional community asset acquisition/development and community contracting efforts. But, at the same time, the government is pressing a ‘digital by default’ approach – where the evidence of its efficacy is ‘questionable’ and take-up by many local authorities lack lustre to say the least. GO-ON UK is remitted to extend its ‘digital participation’ activities to benefit the VCS and SMEs. But, organisations need a great deal more than ‘how to get online’ support if they are to take advantage of the open data agenda. The Government is investing significant funds in ‘what works’ centres – none of them to be developed by/with community organisations as things stand. And, over time, if the VCS doesn’t collect and collate vitally important data about its work – what will ‘evidence-based policy and commissioning’ actually look like? Whom will it benefit?
Beneficiary Intelligence – CRMs remain the preserve of medium and large VCS organisations. But, there are in any case significant challenges where data protection trumps ‘opening public services’ (e.g. sharing library user data) and/or the information is either sensitive or, else, covered by license agreements that are exclusively available to the public sector.
Experience – this is what ‘we know’. Much of it is already subject to transparency provisions where finances are concerned. But, there is liable to be increased pressure upon grant monitoring and contracting bodies to release more detailed data about VCS activities in the future: e.g. http://tinyurl.com/nnfer5p
Knowledge – the VCS is largely ‘oblivious’ to the transparency and open data agendas, together with the steps taken by government in recent years to promote this agenda.
Understanding/Expertise – most requests from (the few) VCS organisations who have taken an active interest in the data agenda anecdotally call for ‘already analysed or pre-packaged data’. So, we need to explore if/how that might change in the future?
Digital Social Enterprises – why can you not readily think of one that is explicitly data-driven?! Is the public sector ‘really’ offering useful open data?
OK – so, what does all of this mean where harnessing open data to nurture a digital civil society is concerned?
We already benefit from the ‘right’ ethos – so, the open and/or creative (digital) commons resonates with long-standing efforts to campaign around common ownership of more traditional (land and building) assets.
ODI / ODUG / OGP – there are now, at least, ‘channels’ that the VCS might usefully approach BUT are they known about and/or ‘non-geek friendly’?
DCLG’s Transparency Code – the emphasis here is more upon transparency than ‘end user utility’, but it represents a positive and welcome first step. NB: there are those concerned about its implications for FOIA in future and others who still call for a ‘community right to information / data’.
Publicly Owned Assets Data – it isn’t enough to be transparent if the information is only really of use to LA asset / contract managers BUT voluntary elements of the new Code could be pursued proactively to change all that…in particular, it would be helpful to understand what LOCAL public assets are available for sale/transfer to communities: http://locality.org.uk/news/improve-local-government-transparency/
Procurement and Contracting Data – IF we’re going down the evidence-based policy route, then, this is vitally important where holding commissioners to account is concerned. So, the VCS has an opportunity to use (as well as lose) where this agenda is concerned – IF it can respond with its own evidence-based questioning of decision-makers. But, we need to ask some difficult questions where prime contractors are liable to claim ‘ownership’ of VCS data derived from sub-contracting activities if we’re to build the sector’s “commercial advantage”. We also need to ensure that the Government backs the use of open book accounting by Local Authorities to improve take-up / deployment of the Right to Challenge and local by default service delivery in future.
Open Data for Neighbourhood Planning – a priority for DCLG and steps being taken to progress this BUT early stages AND organisations still prefer pre-packaged data at this juncture. This http://www.hact.org.uk/communityinsight is liable to become the ‘tool of choice’ because it’s already in place and working well – so, it’s ahead of the curve. But, there’s also
Regulators – they could do SO much more to help us understand our sector and the changes to which it is currently subject…and ministers are beginning to apply the necessary pressure, at least, to the Charity Commission to see that this happens. In other words, it’s not ALL about bottom-up initiatives where improving data / introducing data standards for the third sector is concerned. It could be – and, I think, it should be in some respects. But, with thousands of diverse organisations to contend with – it is liable to be more expeditious to work with such bodies to co-produce a solution that’s fit for purpose where infrastructure bodies and regulators are concerned.
Funders, Social Investors & Contracting Bodies – they can help raise awareness, enable up-skilling as well as get to grips with this agenda in the course of designing programme activity / investment criteria – watch this space!
Early deployment efforts…
To date, with the exception of social ‘tech 4 social change’ investments by Nominet and NESTA – there has been next to NO support for community organisations interested in either digital assets (data) or digital enterprise (data-driven social businesses).
None of our applicants mentioned open data – only one talked seriously about a focus upon any kind of data…a car sharing club with environmental objectives. But, everything starts somewhere…what we need are early / profile adopters.
North Somerset Community Partnership – personal data assets
The OK Cast - http://okcast.org/ (Episode 1 / 1.5) – Data Coops