Open Government Data : Do The Least Possible

Streetfilms have made a great video making the case for opening up (US) public transit data. It nicely illustrates what can be done if private people have access to public information in a reusable way. (what is reusable public service information?)

A Case for Open Data in Transit from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Some notable quotes from the video:

Chris Dempsey, Massachusetts Department of Transportation on why it makes sense for his organization to release the data:
"If you take the model of the national weather service and apply it to the transit agencies you realize you can have just as many ways to get transit information as you do to get weather information. And the beauty of it is that it's no cost to the transit agencies."

But above all I liked what Tim O'Reilly said (emphasis mine):
"Government should think of itself as the platform that society builds on. Rather than government as a vending machine of actual service delivery. The idea of being a platform provider is you do the least possible, not the most possible, to enable others to build on what you do.

I think the importance of that remark bears repeating everywhere where the initial government reflex is to turn anything into something large and expensive. When you talk to those government parts and mention the word 'portal' they immediately envision a multi million Euro project. But that is completely unnecessary. I've spoken to different EU open data catalogue initiatives in the past few weeks and all of them are sticking to rules of simplicity and small size in terms of organization and budget, as that is what allows them to be successful. Currently I am working with the Dutch government on how a national open data catalogue should be organized, and I think Tim O'Reilly sums up nicely what the leading thought of my advice will be.

European Cognitive Edge Business Network

Last Friday I found myself in Luton, right next to the airport, for a day of interaction with ten fellow Cognitive Edge practitioners. On the invitation of Tony Quinlan and the entire Narrate crew, this was hopefully the first of multiple meet-ups and the start of doing much more actual work with Cognitive Edge methods. I for one am very eager to work with clients this way, and the network is essential for me to build up experience and steam to do that. Next meeting is planned for October, probably in Brussels.

Friday we spend the morning to get to know each other, and discussed the 'Children of the World' project Narrate has been doing. The afternoon we ate our own dog food and did both an anecdote circle sharing stories around landing and doing CE projects, as well as a 'The Future, Backwards' session to see how we can envision both a worst case and best case scenario for the business network we intended to start that day.

For me moving towards CE methods in my projects will be a focal point in the coming months, as in our complex world a lot of our current ways of working are simply failing. I believe at least some are waking up to that reality and are open to stop trying to do failing strategies harder, in the futile hope it will work this time, and start doing things differently.

Part of that focus is that I will be joining several other Cognitive Edge practitioners under the banner of TOP innosense, a new company starting in September by Harold van Garderen and Wouter de Heij. Under the TOP innosense label we will be able to do more than as individual consultants, so we are joining forces this way. It fits my perception of companies as mushrooms on the mycelium of the network. It's a building block for the European Cognitive Edge business network.