Stap isi

9 July 2009

From retailers to wholesalers

A tweet last week from a UK public sector conference suggested that

Councils need to change from retailers to wholesalers

I’m not sure of the note’s context but I like it as a way to describe the move to open data.

The retail model we have now is a bunch of individual councils running boutique shops. Their information comes wrapped in a quirky packet, and you’ll have to check with each shop when it’s open and how they deliver. They’re all different.

Let’s concentrate on the product and get chain stores, specialist shops and local co-ops to package it up and put it on the shelves. They can tailor form and function to customers’ needs. Or present it in ways the customer didn’t think they wanted until like, now!

Developer Rob Manson says

Only allowing me to access the Public Data we have all paid for through applications and user interfaces developed by Government agencies is limiting my world to “what they think I want” and “how fast they can develop”. By starting with opening up APIs you are letting me run alongside these agencies or even run ahead of them and letting me decide how, when and where I mash up this data. For me this provides more freedom and also may free up some of the internal Government resources so they can focus on implementing these new Open Data policies instead of just trying to second guess what the increasingly diverse web user audiences really want.

Where to start for councils? How about we follow Tim Berners-Lee?

The first step of actually putting the data out there is the one that nobody else can do.

A tidy aphorism from Tim, who also has a useful paper called Putting Government Data online.

— b3rn   open data   Jul 9, 12:04 PM   #

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