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Working Paper 3: Republic of Ireland's Open Data Strategy: Observations and Recommendations

Republic of Ireland’s Open Data Strategy: Observations and Recommendations

Tracey P. Lauriault, Programmable City Project, NIRSA, National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare, Republic of Ireland

The Programmable City Working Paper 3 (Complete Working Paper is available here)

Executive Summary

Working Paper 3 of the Programmable City Project is a response to the Republic of Ireland’s Department of Public Expenditures and Reform (DPER) Open Data launch and the reports produced by Insight at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), who were awarded the contract from a government call for tender (CfT).  The Working Paper provides background context to the open data plan and critically considers governance; infrastructure; records management as well as information management and information technology (IM/IT); Legal, policy and ethical frameworks; public engagement; data curation; data dissemination and publication, and evaluation.  The Paper proposes reconceptualizing open data as a function of government record keeping, information management, shared services and national spatial data infrastructures as opposed to a standalone program.  By doing so, it is suggested, open data simply becomes a good governance strategy and by integrating it into broader government administration information management provides it with sustainability, especially if it becomes a normalized data dissemination strategy and a public engagement mechanism.  The Working Paper also includes a number of recommendations for consideration in addition to or to complement those provided by Insight.  Recommendations are as follows:

1. Good Governance

  • Open data should be a natural extension of good governance strategies and not stand alone programs.
  • Open data should be a key component of government information management (IM), record management, IT and national spatial data infrastructures (NSDI).
  • Open data should be part of a coordinated data and information dissemination strategy, which should also include publicly funded research data, scientific data, data from the humanities, and other qualitative data.
  • Focus on the production and maintenance of good quality public sector, administration, research, geospatial and scientific datasets and less on commercialization, innovation and ‘high value’ datasets.
  • Focus on data that have societal and environmental value, and also on core/framework datasets upon which other datasets can be integrated into.

2. Open Data, Records & Information Management and Thinking more Critically about Data

  • Consider open Data as a good governance strategy and as part of data and information management.
  • Integrate Open Data into IM/IT, Shared Services and integrate with the NSDI
  • Data infrastructures are critically important, Open Data should be considered with cloud computing, high speed internet, and hardware and software.
  • Open datasets should be thought of as government records (data & information) and should be managed accordingly.
  • Adopt a life-cycle and data curation approach to the management, preservation and dissemination of Open Data datasets.
  • Implement the NSDI and consider the CGDI principles for the NSDI and for Open Data in Ireland.
  • Critically reflect on data more broadly and not just as objects at the end of an information pipeline.
  • Consider evaluating the contents of an open data portal to see if these can be used to construct indicators of well-being and quality of life.

3.  The DPER / Insight Roadmap and the Best Practices Handbook

  • 3.1.      Governance

  • Develop an open data public interest mandate, vision and mission, and clear objectives against which performance can be evaluated.
  • Reconsider the organizational structure as per the schematic in Figure 5.
  • Reconsider appointments on the SIG to be expertise and skills based and less political, and that appointments be made by peers.
  • Create an open data institutional entity that will operationalize the work of the ODB, SIG and Working groups and integrate these with other government programs.
  • Open data officers should be appointed in all government offices
  • Create temporary expert working groups to develop and implement infrastructure wide practices (see figure 5).

3.2.      Legal, Policy and Ethical Framework

  • Develop a data and information legal and policy framework with open data as a component of it.
  • Conduct an inventory of collaborative and data sharing instruments (e.g., MOU, procurement contracts, data sharing agreements, etc.).
  • Assess the outputs of the Intellectual Property Activity in Ireland Based on Existing Data report resulting from the RfT in the spring of 2014.
  • Conduct an inventory of all laws, regulation, policies and directives that would govern how data are collected and disseminated.
  • Develop a set of explicit legal, policy and ethical guidelines for the management of public sector data and open data based on laws, regulation, directives, policies and practices in Ireland for public sector officials.
  • Include these guidelines as part of the data dissemination decision-making tree (Figure 6).

3.3.      Public Engagement

  • Engage with stakeholders on developing the mission, vision and mandate for the Open Data strategy.
  • Engage with stakeholders to shape how an Open Data roadmap and strategy could look.
  • Engage with, study, build upon and harmonize the Open Data strategy with existing public sector data dissemination programs.
  • Review and assess existing technologically mediated engagement tools and social media applications in other jurisdictions.
  • Public sector officials and departments should develop processes and be receptive to evidence based public input into public policy and planning, and learn to solicit feedback from the public in a useful and educated way.
  • Consider crowdsourcing, VGI and citizen science as a public engagement strategy.

4. Data Curation or a Data Audit?

  • Adopt a digital data curation and life-cycle approach to the management of data and conduct the data audit accordingly.
  • Adopt the Data Audit Framework.
  • Ensure that additional elements are added into the data audit (e.g. geocoded, scale, time).
  • The high value approach to the selection of data should be reconsidered, and an evaluation of what current data ‘clients’ value, should be considered.
  • Recognize the limitations of a machine only audit, and broaden search criteria to include all data not just those in open formats and under an open licence.
  • Conduct a full inventory of portals and catalogues from all sectors in Ireland and integrate their metadata to ensure cross disciplinary discoverability.
  • Publish the results of the data audit.

5. Data Dissemination and Publication

  • It is highly recommended that DPER consider adopting the well established data curation life cycle management approach similar to the one developed by the Digital Curation Centre, and consider taking a data curatorial approach in lieu of a data audit.
  • Adopt the Data Audit Framework for data curation as well as those developed by the Digital Curation Centre and consider developing an Information Management Directive which incorporates the ideals of Open Data, preservation and archives.
  • Create a decision making tree to help public officials determine what can and cannot be published.  Figure 6 is an example to guide decisions on the management and dissemination of sensitive data.
  • The outcomes of the decision derived from the application of the open data publication decision making tree would then form the basis for the decision supporting why some datasets are not published by default.
  • A data management and dissemination WG should be created along with those in Figure 5, and invite experts from the Digital Repository of Ireland, library and archives and information studies, geospatial community to help develop a comprehensive access, dissemination, data management and preservation plan for Ireland.

6.  Evaluation

  • Assess current performance and evaluation frameworks within the Irish public sector, including auditing frameworks, or those commonly adopted and reported on in other countries that have well established Open Data programs such as Canada, the US and the UK and as per the RfT.
  • Reassess the Open Data Barometer evaluation recommendation in the DPER/Insight report in light of its objectives and its target use and determine if it is a suitable model for a western developed national Open Data program.
  • Consider high impact datasets, those of public, social and environmental significance along with those considered to be of high value.

Sketching the Open Data Landscape in Ireland

by: Tracey P. Lauriault

Note – I have received some feedback since last night and have updated the post accordingly.  Thanks to those who provided it!

DPERThe Republic of Ireland, Department of Public Expenditures and Reform (DPER) launched its first Open Data Pilot Portal data.gov.ie on July 22nd.  The new portal was created by INSIGHT Galway who answered the DPER call for tender of January 24, 2014.  The following suite of products were delivered on April 7th and officially approved by the Government on July 1st.  This is an important milestone.

data.gov.ie DPER/INSIGHT Research Documents:

  1. Best Practice Handbook
  2. Data Audit Report
  3. Roadmap
  4. Evaluation Framework
  5. Open Data Publication Handbook

On the following day, July 23rd, the Government released Ireland’s first Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan.  The newly launched data.gov.ie portal falls within Ireland’s OGP Plan under section 4 entitled: Open Data and Transparency – opening-up Government data for greater accountability, improving public services and achieving economic growth.  It was also something civil society, academia and government have been advocating for, for some time.

OGPIreladThe first draft of this plan was released at the OGP European Regional Meetings held in Dublin in May of 2014, and part of the package of deliverables listed above are related to Ireland’s May 2013 commitments to join the OGP.  The Government also aspires to sign onto the G8 Open Data Charter.  The OGP plan was informed by a number of stakeholders from civil society, academia and the public and private sectors.  The documentation related to this process is available on the OGP page for Ireland and on the Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland website.  There are many strategies in these reports, if implemented, will greatly make government more accessible and transparent to the public.

Subsequently, the DPER invited members of the public service, involved with the production and dissemination of public sector data in Ireland, to attend an information session, held on the 29th of July, to discuss the documents, the portal, to solicit feedback on the development of an open data strategy for the Republic and to seek support.  A public briefing will also be held September 8th with civil society stakeholders and the public who have been actively engaged in the production of the OGP DRAFT Plan and engaged in Open Data and open government in Ireland.

This blog post is the first of a three part series on open data.

  1. This post sketches part of the open data landscape for the past 5 years.
  2. The next post will discuss the DPER/INSIGHT documents, the portal and provide recommendations.
  3. The final will discuss the open government plan.

Sketching the Open Data Landscape in Ireland

Members of the Programmable City Project have been actively engaged in the theory and practice of open data and making data accessible in both Ireland and Canada for 15 years.  As part of this ERC funded Project researchers are producing open data genealogies and data assemblages for Ireland, Canada and Boston in the US.  The following is but a sketch of the open data landscape in Ireland.  In the last 5 years much important work has been done prior to the DPER launch and it important to feature some of this work as it provides context to the Irish Open Data Story.

The public sector in collaboration with the private and academic sectors have been advocating for both open data and open government for some time.  opendatawkggrp-576x432For example, In June of 2011, National Cross Industry Working Group was formed “to support and inform government in the delivery of their Open Data objectives.  [They were] committed to realising Open Data opportunities for Government, society and industry while simultaneously re-enforcing [Ireland’s] international reputation as a global technology hub”.  Their Report includes recommendations, many of which were included in the DPER/INSIGHT reports and a history of open data activities from 2009-2011.  WG members also held a number of events as part of Open Data Week between Nov. 7-11 in 2011.  Shrotly thereafter, on November 17, 2011, the DPER as part of its 2011 Public Sector Reform Plan includes making data more accessible and opening government more broadly.  The current DPER/INSIGHT reports are therefore not the first time the government announces open data and open government plans.

data.gov.ie is also not the first portal as other levels of government, civil society and academia, as well as the private sector have: produced their own portals, have integrated portals; have shared some of their own datasets; have added value to some; have produced some civic apps and have helped shape the discourse of openess.

Many of the early public and academic sector data dissemination initiatives, in Ireland would not be considered as pure ‘open data’ according to the Open Definition.  Some of the County level portals listed below might not meet all of the open criteria, since many stipulate that data cannot be used for commercial purposes or passed onto third party entities.  The Fingal Open Data portal is the exception.  These would be classified as open access to data projects.  They are nonetheless precursors to the ‘open data’ DPER launch. These initiatives have  been sharing their data as part of their normal dissemination practices or as an institutional policy.  For example, statistical and geospatial data producing communities in particular are renowned for their good practices in Ireland and internationally.

The following is a selection of open access, open data and transparency initiatives in Ireland:

County Level Public Sector Data Portals: Fingal

Civil Society Initiatives:

  • Open Street Map (OSM) Ireland and Maps.openstreetmap.ie (mapping since 2005). osm_logo OSM volunteers produce framework geospatial datasets and disseminate them under an open licence;
  • Kildare Street (launched 2009) makes parliamentary records accessible and records what parliamentarians say and do;
  • Active Citizen (founded 2010) has been working with andOKILogo advocating for Ireland becoming a member of the Open Government Partnership since 2011, and develop.  In 2012 an OGP Business Case which included the fostering of an open data ecosystem was provided to DPER. It founded the Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland local group (2013) which became OKF Ireland Chapter (2014);odi-logo
  • CKan Open Data Portal (launched September 2013), it is no longer on line.  An inventory of close to 200 public sector data initiatives were added into this demo portal during a one day hackathon;
  • Open Data Ireland held numerous civic hackathons and meetups.

Academic

  • AIRO.ie (All-Island Research Observatory launched 2010), disAIROlogoseminates datasets from agencies both from the North and the South as interactive online graphs and maps  and also in an open data store.  It was initially the Cross-Border Regional Research Observatory founded in 2006.

Public, Academic and Private Sector Partnership

Dublinked.ie dublinkedLogo(Launched June 2011), a partnership project which disseminates a variety of static and real time data.

Public & Private Sector

There are far too many open access to data initiatives in Ireland to list here, the DPER/INSIGHT Data Audit Report provides a partial list, organizations like AIRO have created their own inventories which they make accessible in their Data Store, the Irish Spatial Data ExchangeISDE(ISDE) has integrated the metadata of a number of important data catalogs, dublinked.ie lists hundreds in their portal and the Ckan portal, now offline, listed close to 200 initiatives in a one day hackathon.  The private sector also disseminates data on behalf and with the public sector.  ESRIIrelandESRI Ireland for examples disseminate data in a number of ways, as products and as web services services.  Finally, there is also the GeoPortal.ie which was developed by the Department of Environment, Community & Local Government (DECLG) and Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) with guidance and oversight fromIrish public bodies on the Irish Spatial Data Infrastructure (ISDI) project steering committee.GeoportalLogo

 

The following is a very small list of how some public sector organization open access to data initiatives disseminate their data:

Shaping the Terrain:

There a number of initiatives that help shape debates on openness and transparency and some of these are:

  • TheStory.ie sheds light on law, policy and freedom of information in Ireland (based on Gavin’s Blog launched in 2002);
  • Creative Commons Ireland produces open licences enabling data producers to share their data more openly (founded in 2003);
  • Transparency International Ireland is involved in work related to transparency and accountability (founded in 2004);
  • Coder Dojo builds capacity by teaching people to code and to understand open source and open data (founded in 2011);
  • advocating open access publishing, Open Access Ireland (committee formed in 2012).
  • Code for Ireland (launched January 2014), apps are voluntarily created in a hackathon type of environment with open data, or data are produced to address civic issues and these are rendered into apps.
  • A number of app contests and hackathons have been taking place since 2010.

Indicators and Evaluation

Ireland’s openness has also been ranked according to a number of measures, and these too have inspired action within and outside the public service.  These ranking schemes were discussed in an earlier post entitled on Mapping Openness and Transparency.

Research

Finally, there are research projects which are part of a new emerging field called critical data studies, The Programmable City Project being one of the few doing so internationally, and data discovery and semantic interoperability projects such as the INSIGHT Linked Data project based at NUIG.

Open Data Assemblage

The above is by no means complete nor exhaustive list of projects and activities.   EngineYardFor instance the open source community; the private sector (e.g., IBM); lawyers, geomaticians, scientists, programmers, journalists, business associations, citizen scientists, and other individuals; are part of this landscape.  As are those who provide collaborative working spaces (e.g., T-Cube); tcubelogosponsors of open data events (i.e., ESRI) or donate space (i.e., the Engine Yard, Facebook); informal virtual server use arrangements, or the library community.  Furthermore, only the OGP, EU and OKF are mentioned as international influences, yet there are other national programs (e.g., UK, US), NGOs, standards organizations, and data infrastructures that are a part of this story.  A data assemblage analysis will be used as a way to situate these actors in the open data and the data landscape in Ireland in general.

Some motivating factors and issues:

Open data stakeholders prior to the launch of the DPER/INSIGHT documents and the portal, were motivated into action because of a number of issues beyond transparency, efficiency and collaboration.  The following is a sample of some of the more high level issues:

  • the disappointment and missed public benefit opportunity of the postal code system (eircode.ie) in Ireland, both how it is being deployed, the cost recovery model and the regressive licencing regime (See Map Scribbles for details).  the fees, and general lackadaisical approach to fulfilling Freedom of Information requests, See The Story for backgrounder.
  • the cost recovery and licencing practices of the Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI).  OSI produces important framework data that are mostly inaccessible to civil society, and are costly even to the public sector, who also have to pay for them.  The OSI has however begun to share some of its data to some academic institutions.  Beyond access, it means that important work is not being done, effort is being duplicated, and framework data standards are being undermined as people are creating their own datasets.  Open Street Map in Ireland is an OSI workaround, and in the UK, the lack of access to OS data spearheaded the UK Guardian open data campaign.
  • Uncertainty about the procurement agreements between the city and the private sector regarding access to data and the science behind the deployment of smart city like sensor initiatives.

These issues have not gone away, and some were debated during the Open Government Partnership meetings in Dublin, have been discussed in the media, and the DPER/INSIGHT Best Practice Handbook briefly addresses others.

Local Context:

Finally, the local context matters, the history of the public sector and its reform, the political economy which includes foreign direct investment and the political system in general provide a backdrop for the unique made in Ireland version of open data.  This will be studied more fully as part of the Programmable City genealogical and data assemblage research.

Until then, this sketch of the Irish open data landscape illustrates the rich culture of openness in Ireland, has identified some programs, stakeholders and issues that pre-existed release of data.gov.ie and the DPER/INSIGHT documents.  The documents did not discuss these projects in any great detail, which is unfortunate as much expertise exists in and outside of the public sector in Ireland and capturing best practices and mobilizing that knowledge would be beneficial.  Others were very briefly addressed in the Open Government Plan.

The DPER did however invite some of these actors to their July 29th and the up and coming September meetings and there is now a mandate for greater collaboration between stakeholders and the government.  And DPER is soliciting feedback more generally on these plans.