World Government Data – Is this the league table? Is there an international dimension?

Data Store – World Government Data

Hi

When I checked this out by looking at the data posted by country the results were: UK=1,699, U.S = 1042, New Zealand = 245 and Australia = 69. So on the face of it Australia is lagging behind.

When I started to look at what is actually provided in Australia I noticed that some data was old (Crime stats from 2003!) and some of the file formats were hardly what is common place. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean.

Sure there is some good stuff, but surely we need to ask ourselves why, if we are going to so something like this, up to date data is not provided. Sure, researchers might want historical data, but what about the rest of the population.

In addition, I saw little in the way of giving citizens some indication of how data could be used. Surely, if this is about open government the public service should make it easier for people to do son in the first place? Isn’t this how value is added?

And surely this suggests that public servants need to be able to enter into open dialogue with citizens so that the sharing of data can be purposeful – not just leave an prospect of value add to chance.

Lots of issues obviously, from what I have looked at the bar needs to be lifted. And surely we need some standards to ensure that all public service agencies do more than just post data.

So the big questions to me are, how open should we be? And do we need some common international standards if countries are to realise some shared benefits courtesy of Gov 2.0?

Steve D
OZloop