Doing this, going through my calendar looking at what happened in the past year, already last year struck me as very useful: you simply forget so much along the way, as you respond to new things, and get inundated with new stuff. In 2011 I worked 2372 hours, way too much to my liking, a number that guarantees I loose track of the details of the things I did, obscuring the accomplishments behind a list of still-to-do's and things to improve.

I decided then to do this again for 2011 and put it on my 'yearly review' task list. So, in no particular order, and sticking to professional things mostly....... Here's my Tadaa!-list for 2011.

• The Dutch national government data portal I wrote the plans for in 2010 got formally launched in September 2011, after being in beta since January 2011.
• I helped write an Open Data Motion for my home town, and saw it adopted by the City Council nearly unanimously.
• I helped bring a FabLab to my home town, and had the honour to speak on behalf of the Dutch FabLab Foundation at its official opening. (I must admit to not having used their facilities yet to make something myself, but Elmine sure has)
• Spent a week working from and sightseeing in Berlin with Elmine, where I also gave a well received talk at the Cognitive Cities Conference, on Spicing Up Your City With Open Government.. It was an inspiring event bringing many new sparks.

  Ton Zijlstra at Cognitive Cities Conference from Cognitive Cities on Vimeo.

• Edited and published the second edition of the FabYearBook.
  
• Made a living for the fourth year being self-employed, while working in what is basically a new market (open data consultancy). Studiously ignored the sensationalist headlines of impending global economic doom, spending energy instead on helping build the structures, scaffolding and systems creating new and alternative ways forward. Sphere of influence and all that Jazz....

  

• Started working as Community Steward of the ePSIplatform, creating awareness for open government data around Europe
  
• Gave presentations in Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Finland, and of course in the Netherlands, on open data mostly
  
• Worked a week out of Helsingør and Copenhagen with Elmine, visiting our rockstar-consultant friend Henriette and Thomas, having meetings with various organisations and inspiring people on open data, social media, complexity management, and FabLab
  
• Presented at a great Spanish conference on digital citizenship in beautiful Donostia (San Sebastian), where I further explored a train of thought I started at Reboot in 2008 on attitudes and skills in dealing with digital disruption, this time in order for our public institutions to survive, as survive they must albeit changed.
  
• Created the OurServices website, showcasing examples of collaborative e-government services, from around Europe
  
• Visited our friends Paolo (who turned 40) and Monica in Italy with Elmine, this time without just using their office to write a project proposal like the time before, but simply enjoying hanging out with great people and enjoying the countryside
  
• Gave input to a Dutch guide on how to 'do' open government data for local governments
  
• Did a project together with Elmine for the European Commission, running a video competition for the Digital Agenda Assembly.
  
• Enjoyed working for a client in my home town, in the midst of all the travel around Europe. A rare but pleasant treat to be able to cycle to a workshop session, and not taking a plane or train.
  
• Did most of the work in putting together the new ePSIplatform portal
  
• Took the time to attend Brigitte's opening of her new osteopathy practice in Switzerland
  
• Got to be there for friends in times of need. Thankful they let me be there for them.
  
• Sat on the jury of the OpenDataChallenge.org, that saw 430 entries.
  
• Mused about speeding up my actions, extending my range, while taking it very slow for three weeks in the French Alps.
  
• Enjoyed the heck out of the e-reader Elmine gave me for my birthday. I lost the life long habit of avid reading for a while in 2010, this got me back into it. Thanks dear.
  
• Started to work with Paul, Marc, Frank as a network to land Open Data projects together, and immediately saw it result in collaborating on project proposals
  
• Spoke at the EU Ministerial Conference on e-Government in Poznan Poland, on 'making open data work' for government itself.
  
• Started working in earnest with Harold, Niels, Erwin, Tony and others, on projects around making sense of complexity.
  
• Brought together a dozen Dutch city governments to exchange their experiences on opening up government data, and experimenting together in bringing it forward.
  
• Did three sessions at the Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw, one on how open data is an opportunity for local government to reinvent itself, save money and crack complex issues.
  
• Got to work with long-time fellow Reboot-friend and co-shareholder of the Coworking Boat PAN, Peter Rukavina on a project for a client. It's great to work with people like that.
  
• I lost 15kg, bringing me back to a weight I haven't had in 20 years
  
• Elmine and I published an e-book "How to Unconference Your Birthday" and sent out special cards to all that attended my Birthday Unconference the year before. We asked the cool people at BuroPony in Rotterdam to do the design. Find the download link in the book's Facebook page.
  How To Unconference Your Birthday, The Book

  View more presentations from Ton Zijlstra

  Creating the book and having it in our hands, giving it to all the awesome people who were there in 2010, was so much fun and rewarding. An Epic Sh*t Multiplier, as we called it on my birthday then, and in the book now.
  

That's the list. I got to work on cool projects, travelled to new places before returning home, and above all got to work with the people I want to work with. More importantly, 2011 was a year that reinforced the notion that it's your relationships that count, and that the journey is its own goal. Whether it's grieving together, celebrating together, or even both at the same time, those are the moments I find intense beauty in being with friends. Onwards!

Therefore the DAE is also going local in the Netherlands.

With three events and on-line interaction a bridge is being build to groups and sectors: youth, the ICT sector, partners in the information society, and the local public sector.

Youth on the Move
The first event 'Youth on the Move' already took place, and centered on what Europe means for young people who are growing up in the digital age.

ICT Delta: research and innovation
ICT Delta, a large scale conference on ICT research and innovation, takes place on November 16th. The Going Local team will be hosting a session titled "The future of ICT research in Europe" to collect suggestions and improvements for the Horizon 2020 programme, the EU funding programme for ICT research. In parallel many other topics will be discussed, ranging from ICT in healthcare, ICT in energy, to ICT for the creative industry and open government data. An excellent place to encounter many different perspectives!

ECP-EPN: information society
The very next day, November 17th, the ECP-EPN yearly conference takes place. ECP-EPN is a 'platform for the information society', and the conference has three broad themes, 'the future', 'society' and 'application'. Going Local 2011 is one of four side events on the program. The Ministry for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, together with the European Commission are hosting an interactive session about the Digital Agenda and its connection to the Dutch Digital Agenda, and the Digital Cities Agenda. One year down the road of implementing the DAE, the question is if you have felt positive impact, what can be improved, and how the DAE can contribute to a better social and economic climate in both the Netherlands and the EU. Are we together succeeding in making the DAE practical on a local level?

Add your thoughts! Ask your questions!
You can ask questions or add your suggestions to the November 17th session by sending them in now! Ask your questions about the Digital Agenda for Europe, the Netherlands and your own city. Use this form, and your input will be part of the Going Local event at the ECP-EPN conference.

Add your thoughts and follow the discussion on-line as well, using the #daelocal_nl tag.

(full disclosure: I have been asked to support the on-line visibility of the DAE 'going local' by blogging and tweeting about it, and am getting a small payment for it. Doing this fits with my personal activities around open government data, and allows me to try and align the Dutch open government data discussion better with other policy initiatives of the Dutch (local) public sector: making open data relevant to government itself.)

If open government data is here to stay then only because it has become an instrument to government bodies themselves, and not because government are releasing data only because of compliance with transparency and re-use demands from others (central government or citizens).

This workshop started from the premise that there is opportunity in local governments treating open data as a policy instrument to find new solutions to the issues local communities face, amongst others in coming up with new ways of working in light of budget cuts.

Contributions were made by the local open government data initiatives of the cities of Berlin, Munich (Germany), Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Enschede (Netherlands), Linz and Vienna (Austria), who all shortly presented the current status of their initiatives. It was great to be able to have seven cities take the stage after each other to explain their work in and with local government on open data, and it shows how much things have changed in the past year alone.

Slides of the introductory presentation I gave are available, and are embedded below.

After the introductions, the workshop participants worked in little groups on identifying local issues where open government data could be used towards new approaches by local government and citizens.

This was done in three steps:

• Identify issues that are currently relevant to your local community.
  
• Try to define which datasets might be connected to these issues.
  
• Discuss what new steps are possible, using the datasets mentioned.
  

The collective output of the workshop has been made available as a document I wrote for the ePSIplatform.eu (download PDF), and is embedded below.

Making Local Open Data Work

In my presentations over the past 8 months I've positioned data as an object of sociality: it becomes the trigger for interaction, a trigger for the forming of connections between people. Much like photos are the social object of a site like Flickr.com, and videos are the social object of YouTube, or your daily activities are for Twitter.

The current best example of how data can be a social object is something John Sheridan showed at the Vienna Open Data Conference last June. All legislation information in the UK has been made available as linked open data. This makes it possible to reference specific paragraphs in laws.

In general law is generally regarded as boring and decidedly un-hip, but the availability of all this legal data as linked open data has a surprising effect: people are referencing specific paragraphs in their on-line conversations, for instance on Twitter. This is what you see in the screenshot below, where people link to specific parts of UK legal texts in the course of their conversation. From boring and useless texts (other than to legal minds that is), to the social object around which everyday conversation can revolve.

Data is a social object. It is a trigger for citizen participation that way, a new way for people to engage with their community. And, the other way around, participation (e.g. existing participatory processes, existing conversations) is a path to data use. From this basic starting point any newly needed skills will grow.

Last year, when I turned 40, Elmine and I organized an unconference to celebrate (of course we also had a bbq party!), and we invited people from our various circles. The topic was 'Working on Stuff that Matters', 'WSTM'. Some 40 people participated in the unconference, some 20 workshops were held, and it was an event that is still giving us energy almost 18 months later.

We always wanted to create something tangible as an outcome of the event, to create an 'Epic Sh*t Multiplier' as we called it on the day. We created an e-book, explaining 'how to unconference your birthday'. The text was written during the summer of 2010. A professional designer (BUROPONY in Rotterdam, hire them, they're great!) created the book itself in May/June this year. In the past days we sent out cards to all participants of the unconference to allow them to download the book. We'll publish the e-book itself on-line later. Right now it's a gift for those who attended. A small token of our appreciation for the big gift they gave us by attending the unconference, and the energy and inspiration that is still generating for us. Thank you.

Below are some pictures giving you a sneak preview.

During the design process

First edition

Sending out cards to participants

So here it is, with two contributions from me:

#opendata from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo.

We are very interested in your views on drivers, barriers and impact of collaborative production, and hope you are willing to take part in our survey.

We would also appreciate if you could spread the information about the survey in your networks.

At OurServices.eu I have been collecting examples of collaborative e-government services, and am still adding more. I will also publish there descriptions for each EU Member State concerning these services. You are most welcome to also add your own examples. Please use the form on the website for that.

Below is a map of the over 100 examples of collaborative e-gov services collected so far.

I also did a few interviews with Austrian press, a video of which is embedded below (in German). There has also been an interview in the FutureZone.at webmagazine.

Other presentations of the conference can be found on Slideshare.

Basically this presentation was an extension and a more detailed version of a much more general presentation I gave at Reboot 10 in 2008 (reboot page, video), where I talked about the societal effects of internet and mobile communications as infrastructures.

This time around I started where my 2008 talk ended, and put it squarely in the context of the citizen-government relationship. Digital disruption is hitting our government structures, much like it has hit publishing and the music industry. How do we transition to a new way of doing things, fitting with the influences and metaphors that new infrastructures give us, and how do we make the transition without going to too long periods of chaos, where we already demolished and lost trust in the old, but haven't figured out how to do or scale up the new yet?

As internet takes the network metaphor as core-feature, and as individuals (not locations) are the nodes in that network, and therefore the new unit of organization, I explored the attitudes we need to deal with this changing more complex society, and also talked about the skills that help us express those attitudes in our actions, and the tools with which we apply those skills. Because attitudes, skills and tools at hand are defining aspects of what humans can do, and humans are our unit of organization. I will be making a blogpost with a more complete outline of the talk, but for now have a look at the embedded slides. The slides contain the transcript of my text, so you can get the full version of what I talked about in Spain, not just the pictures.

The motion was the result of cooperation between civil servants, at the information management department and the city council's administrative staff, as well as me and other citizens in Enschede.

Early beginnings: Open Innovation Festival
It basically started a year ago when I got in touch with a few people at city hall to discuss the Open Innovation Festival, that was going to take place in June 2010. I offered to do a session on Open Data, and Patrick Reijnders and Peter Breukers of the city's IM department and I teamed up to put the session together. Next to the session Patrick with some of his colleagues created an app that combined Twitter, Foursquare and geodata about the various venues in the festival, making it possible to see the discussion on Twitter for the entire festival as well as per venue, and see who was present in the session. The geodata needed (addresses with zipcodes and XY coordinates, was released to the public on that occasion)
At the end of the week Patrick and I put together an open data manifesto and presented that to an Alderman. Around that time I also translated the Vancouver Open Data Motion adopted in 2009 into Dutch and put it up on a wiki for further improvement.

Awareness Raising
In the following months we kept working on raising awareness for open government data. I gave a presentation in August to all of Patricks colleagues involved with IM, application management etc, as part of their yearly get together which Patrick was in charge of organizing this time.
In November a new, smaller, edition of the Open Innovation Festival took place, and I again did a presentation on Open Government Data. There I challenged the city government: I would give them 11 days of my time in 2011 to help them 'do' open government data, and I wanted to be paid in the public release of datasets.

Hackday
In December, we, being Patrick, Lars Fehse (also with the city IM dept), Heinze Havinga (recently graduated student, now entrepreneur) and me put together the Enschede edition of the Global Hackday, which brought together some 20 coders and civil servants, including a city council member for a day of hacking. Patrick arranged the release of 25 datasets, by going around city hall asking his colleagues for data. Two prototypes were built on that data during the hackday. For the event we also launched the website http://opendataenschede.nl/

Connecting
After the hackday, which made more people visible to each other around open data, we started to organize the 'Enschede Data Drinks' (modeled after Alper Çugun's Dutch Data Drinks), to informally bring together interested people.
The IM department was meanwhile looking into writing a project plan on how to release 'easy data' quickly and plan for making open data part of the regular processes over time. That is still ongoing. Others in the IM department, triggered by the awareness raising actions, made a little internal platform that would more easily allow the publication of data out of the back-office systems of the city.

Then...the Motion
In January we got a call from the administrative staff of the City Council. On the basis of my earlier translation of the Vancouver motion they were preparing an Open Data Motion. André de Rosa-Spierings and Jeroen Heuvel of the city council staff made sure the motion fitted the coalition agreement, current city gov goals etc, and building political supprt. The city council member that was at the Hackday in December, Erwin Ilgun, and his colleague Eelco Eerenberg from the ICT commission got behind it very quickly. We, (me, Patrick and others from the IM department) helped with the final wording, making sure it was technically correct and feasible, as well as connected to internal work already taking place.
The mentioned Council members were our hosts on March 7th when Patrick and I again did our presentations, this time for interested members of the city council, to explain the why, what and how of open data, as well as the things the IM department was already doing.
After that session, over the course of a week, all of the 9 parties represented in the city council became co-signatories to the motion putting it on the agenda. (Updated this sentence, I said 7 of 9 earlier)

Yesterday, on March 14th the motion was put on the agenda at the start of the meeting by Council member Erwin Ilgun, and it came up for debate and vote at the end of the meeting, near midnight, when I was the only one left on the public balcony to witness it. After Erwin Ilgun explained the motion, one party explained their opposition to the motion, other parties declared their support, and then it came up for a vote: 34 in favor, 3 against (those against cited privacy concerns when combining data sets).

The real work starts now
Now we have to get to work and make sure open data brings benefit to our city. I am very, very, pleased that my own hometown adopted this motion. Also because over the course of the past year I got to know and work with a whole range of people new to me, all passionate about their work. Normally my work takes me away from Enschede, this time I will be seeing the impact of my work right at home, and enjoy that impact with those who work in and care about this city.
The eleven days I gave the city government will go a long way in helping create that impact. Looking forward to it!

This is a (quick and dirty) English translation I made of the motion:

FabLab Enschede has been a long time in the making, with the lead of the project changing hands several times (also between different institutions), but with the consistent and persistent support of civil servant(s) of the city, guiding the project through the various administrative hoops to secure funding. I wasn't involved directly but on behalf of the FabLab Foundation added our experience with starting other labs, and helped the plan evolve.

In the end, the FabLab has ended up under the umbrella of Saxion Hogescholen (the local university for applied sciences), and has a focus on smart materials and textiles. It is housed directly adjacent to Saxion's materials lab and product testing lab.

The formal opening was a great and festive event, with a lot of interest from the business community, and also a lot of people showed up who were eager to start making things. That however is not quite possible yet. Machines are still to be delivered (for the opening they borrowed some machines from elsewhere), and there is also still a job opening for the FabLab's coordinator. So I am curious to see when it really opens, and how quickly it will gain traction in the local community here.

For now I am just extremely pleased that I as a board member of the FabLab Foundation BeNeLux could sign the license for FabLab Enschede, and that there is now a FabLab in my own city.

This posting is a write-up of my talk "Spice Up Your City: Just Add OpenGov".

Cities are complex adaptive systems. That means there is no predictability as to how they evolve and take shape, but you can see how things, once they are there, came to be. We, as human beings, immediately recognize the patterns and structures that emerge in cities. So much so that if someone mimicks those structures and patterns, for instance with pots, pans and other kitchen utensils, we instantly associate it with city scapes. We also intuitively know on a deep level what cities do for us, that they are serendipity hubs: a heady mix of ideas, people and resources that bounce into and off each other, making all kinds of new combinations possible. That intuition is what is worded in the REM quote. Cities, in short, are very exciting things.

Government on the other hand is mostly seen as much less exciting. And open government can be just as stale. Particularly so if you see open government as something you do for the sake of transparency. Either because you are a civil servant who thinks you need to do it for citizens. Or because you are an activist who thinks the concrete silos of government need to be cracked open so others can see what is going on inside. In both cases it is not for the sake of government or the people creating transparency itself, but for the imagined and assumed sake of unnamed 'others'.

I however hold a different view of open government, one that comes with a lot more excitement.
First, for government itself, open government is a 'change or die' issue. This is, as Chris Taggart says, the wave of digital disruption hitting government that previously hit the music and publishing industries. Governments institutions and work flows are 'business models' from an era when the logistic costs of organizing and scaling were quite different. In the digital era trust in government, as well as its ability to act, will only survive if government opens up and enters into a much more networked way of interacting with the public. If they don't we all will see there is no wizard behind the curtain and simply route our actions around it, like is the norm in a network where some nodes fail.

I see open government as consisting of two components: participation + open government data. Now participation in the 'classic' way of being consulted at the start of some policy initiative is not what will make open government exciting for citizens. However, participation is actually synonymous with life itself, being an active person in your own social environment. Urban farming is a great example of this. Inner city Detroit has no shops that sell fresh vegetables anymore, and those without cars cannot drive out to shops that do outside the city. So urban farming emerged. Now that is participation!

Open data at the same time is a rich untapped resource. Government holds enormous amounts of data about all aspects of society, to be able to execute its tasks. An EU legal framework is in place that, except when privacy and things like state security are concerned, allows citizens to get and re-use that data. Practice is not quite there yet, but ideally open data is data shared in open standards, machine readable, and comes with no legal strings attached.

Participation and open data need each other. Participation needs to be informed by data, and likewise the re-use of data lies in participation.
Together, forming open government, they make government as a platform possible, where government asks itself what type of data and information needs to be released so citizens and organizations can come up with the answers to the questions that politicians and policy makers ask. This in contrast to traditional government, where citizens and organizations ask, and politicians and civil servants are expected to come with solutions.

The place where this can be expressed best and most tangible is right in our own living environments, our cities and neighborhoods.
That is where all the things happen that matter to us directly. So you get services where you can check if a restaurant is safe and clean enough to go eat, and platforms where citizens can report issues, or discuss what is going on in there neighborhood. This way you can inform yourself and your decisions.

Using singular data sources can however lead to a pitfall, of making visualizations that are really meaningless, that do not inform at all.

Much more interesting is when multiple data sources are combined and lead to new insights. That is like us all becoming Dr Snow, who figured out the connection between cholera and water quality in London in the 19th century.

But why stop at simply informing ourselves, why not also use data to activate ourselves. Why not use data so we can undertake things again. Like the Danish findtoilet.dk which allows people with bladder problems to go out into the city again without having to fear they will not know where the nearest toilet is in case of need. Or alerts send to you when air quality predictions cross a threshold you have set yourself.

And why not go even one step further. You can start augmenting government data with your own data. Having your own sensors collect data and publish them, like the Dutch sound sensor net created by citizens, or people feeding data into Pachube.com. When government publishes data it turns out that people and organizations are willing to also release data. This is happening in international aid, as well as visible in for instance the food industry.

But you can go one more step further still. That is building your own sensors, as well as actuators. Create data, and feed data from other sources into smart devices you build. So that these devices can take actions, based on the received data. The means for building those devices are available to you in FabLabs.

In this stage, we are truly acting like we should in complex environments: data form probes, and measurement has become intervention. That way we can build much more resilient communities. Cities are the perfect platform for data in the context of action and participation. Open government is a key ingredient to spice up our cities.

It does assume one thing though: your knowledge of a problem is leading, and coding and data skills are the literacy you need and use. Not the other way around. You need intimate knowledge of the issue you are addressing.

So here's my challenge and invitation to you, to bring open government into play in your city:

Find an issue that matters to you, that you own emotionally. Think about what data you need to address the issue. Then go to government and get that data. But realize that 'the government' does not exist. It consists of a multitude of organizations and bodies, and all of those are filled with people. So you just need to find one single civil servant that is willing to help you. I found my single civil servant in my city government, the guy in the blue shirt in the picture, who has been working with me and others to release data. You need to go out and find your guy in the blue shirt.

Make it real, make it matter to you, make it count. All it takes is just a little shove, to open things up.

(the conference organizers plan to make videos of the talks available soon)

The work will aim at four things:

• Run the already existing website epsiplatform.eu as a one stop shop for all things that are happening in the EU and beyond on the re-use of government information (open government data).


• Provide an advisory service to the EC, including a scoreboard on how well Member States are doing on open government data


• Stimulate the community of stakeholders


• Raise awareness in places where momentum for PSI re-use is currently low.

I am very excited about the opportunity to work on this, and make PSI re-use rock across the EU. Last September we worked very hard on wording the proposal, including working through a stay in Italy, that was meant as a holiday with Elmine. But it paid off.
I will be working in the team (with Zenc BV, Marc de Vries, Katleen Janssen and the Open Knowledge Foundation), as ePSIplatform's Community Steward and Lead Editor. All the others also are deeply involved with the subject matter itself.

Our plans include using a narrative database to gather stories around re-use of government data and thus surfacing barriers, opportunities, concerns and novel uses.
We intend to actively reach out to existing communities around the EU, supporting local events etc.
And we'll turn the current website into a main hub for people, not just news, that also connects to other existing on-line spaces where the Open Government Debate is already being held. All this while maintaining the current level of information and news available through the website, additionally actively defining the scope of discussion.

I have been active as a news editor for the current ePSIplatform.eu in the past months. This new contract however provides the opportunity to also bring in my full experience on community of practice, community building, narrative sensemaking, and guiding change processes.

And it still leaves plenty of room in my schedule to add other exciting projects as well. One of those has already been added to the portfolio. More about that later.

Got a cake at the Cognitive Edge Bizz Network for the narrative database project that's part of the EPSI plan

General 'verdict': rocky but fun, rewarding and ending well
All in all 2010 was a rocky ride economically. It started out with feeling the effects of economic downturn and being impacted by the fall of the government (which meant some projects I was bidding on were postponed, waiting for the new government to take office 8 months later). Early in the year my work portfolio was basically empty and our reserves were running on empty, and at that point it was also unclear where sizable chunks of work might be coming from in the short run. So a lot of my energy went to establishing new opportunities. It was a year I worked very hard, having made more work hours by October than normally make up an entire year. So the last few months I was mostly very tired. At the same time it was also a year in which I did a lot of things I greatly enjoyed and gained energy from. I certainly ended the year on a high-note, having ensured a work portfolio that will provide the basics for the coming 2 years.

The TaDaa!-list then, in random order:

• Giving the closing key-note at SHiFT, titled "Maker Households", where I explored and worded a grand overarching story for the first time, bringing together a number of themes close to me.


• Contributing with sessions or as moderator to various Open Gov Data events: ODIS in Copenhagen, HackdeOverheid in Amsterdam, Gov 2.0 camp in Berlin, EC PSI Group Meeting in Luxembourg, Open Gov Data Camp in London, Aporta/EPSI meeting in Madrid, Open Data meet-up Graz.


• Speaking at Lift Marseille (about FabLabs)


• Speaking at PICNIC (about open government data)


• Teaching students at the Saxion University for Applied Sciences networking/networked information management and social media, and a course in creativity management


• Facilitating the discussion around a national government data catalogue for the Dutch Home Office, writing a comparison of similar projects and plan for such a catalogue, and then see it launch in beta last week.


• Bringing a bit of interaction to an otherwise very scripted and top-down conference, the WCIT conference


• Guest blogging at the EPSI platform and then joining the EPSI platform as news editor


• Publishing the first FabLab YearBook ever


• Seeing 6 new FabLabs opened in Groningen, Arnhem, Leuven, Amersfoort, Maastricht and a mobile truck, as part of the board of the Dutch FabLab Foundation


• Being, with the entire Dutch FabLab network, host to the worldwide FabLab conference Fab6


• Working with several dozen students on concepts for the FabLab e-community at HAN University for Applied Sciences


• Being stuck in Portugal for a week due to the ash cloud


• Helping my widowed sister move to a new home


• Sometimes having the most gorgeous morning view from the home office
, or from a home away from home.

• Struggling to write a European tender, at the cost of disrupting a relaxing visit with Elmine to our friends Paolo and Monica in Italy, but winning the tender, and being sure I wouldn't have written it quite the same way at home


• Writing an article on the consequences for government of internet with Waag Society


• Finding passionate open data people in my home town and together bring open data in our city steadily forward, during the 'Open Innovation Festival' and Global Hackday, and offering the city 11 days of my time in 2011 in exchange for releasing public data sets


• Joining the TOPinnosense label to work on sensemaking/complexity projects


• Being part of kicking off the now regular Cognitive Edge business network meetings in Europe

And the absolute best thing last year was that Elmine and me were host to some 40 people for my birthday unconference "Working on Stuff that Matters", and some 80 people for a BBQ party. It was the best birthday gift I ever had: sharing it with so many great peopl. This event gave me energy throughout the year. And it still does.

All of these things were done together with great other people. One of the biggest perks of being self-employed is I get to choose the people I work with all over again for every new activity I engage in.

For two specific reasons I cannot share the conclusion of the mentioned study: first the way value-added is defined as the effort government put into making data available and re-usable, and second using the data-information-knowledge ladder as a yard stick for that added value, even though using such a ladder is fundamentally flawed, as it implies a causality and hierarchy that in reality isn't there.

Below however I list a few reasons why I have difficulty in general with charging for government data, and making distinctions between non-commercial and commercial re-use. I posted them to the OKFN mailing list (see the entire discussion there), but post them here so I can easily retrieve them later.

The question 'isn't it reasonable to charge for commercial re-use of data?' is simple to ask, but has no simple answer. The answer is the sum of a number of arguments that together must be weighed against that single question. Some of those arguments would be in my perception:

The customer always pays, and therefore we all pay twice.
Any company will charge the costs of data they bought in the price of their product, so the customer pays. However all customers already paid for the data generation through taxes. Unless the revenue goes directly to cut taxes for all, citizens are actually paying twice. As are the owners of the companies involved (they are after all also citizens). Charging for data hence becomes a 'data-tax'.

Setting a price has consequences if it's based on the perceived market-value
This way of price setting will always be according to what one sees happening now in established markets. You are then damaging innovation efforts as any price creates a threshold for novel ways of doing things. Innovation is really not about merely a novel product, it is also about novel costing-structures, novel distribution channels, and novel customer groups (the ones that cannot be served by the incumbent costing structures and distribution channels) Setting a price on perceived market value therefore helps incumbents in the re-use niche involved, and impedes new entrants, as it assumes that innovation apart form the product does not change other aspects of the playing field. Government is then basically saying: under this price threshold nothing much can happen, in fact we are making it actively impossible as we set that minimum cap. Setting a fixed price this way creates a minimum threshold (which is also assymetrically favouring those companies that can afford it better and thus a market intervention), setting a relative price is effectively an additional revenue-tax for the companies involved. This way of pricing also turns the government into a market party/player.

Setting a price has consequences if it's based on incurred costs (other than incremental costs of distribution)
What are the costs of getting data and getting it ready for release? Is collection part of it? Is putting it on-line part of it? Even if it's in the same format you collected it in? There are no separate systems or processes for it, the datasets are a result of the entire system of government executing its tasks which are paid through our taxes. And are you charging all of those costs to commercial re-users? Also to pay for non-commercial re-use, which is basically party of gov's requirement to actively inform the citizenry about its ongoing tasks?
Also, there are positive effects for data release to the internal workings of government itself (transparency, participation etc., as well as higher effectiveness and efficiency in their own tasks). Are you going to account for that off-set first in determining the costs of the data-sets? If you cannot clearly demarcate the costs, you are in fact charging for what you think others will be willing to pay (see item above). I have a feeling that isolating specific costs will bring you to a load of trivial costs, ending at the conclusion "let's charge incremental distribution costs". Anything above that will be again a wholly arbitrary price setting. Government is not supposed to be acting arbitrarily but predictably and controllable.

Innovation is not non-commercial
Thinking that innovation happens as research, analysis etc, and then after a while magically becomes a commercially viable product, is far from reality. Innovation happens not in the lab (new knowledge can happen in the lab, but innovation and new knowledge are not synonymous) but in experimenting in the market. Innovation is a trajectory, a path of exploration, repeated 'life' attempts at getting a still changing and developing product to take a market foothold, not an incident of something shooting out of a lab. Therefore it cannot be argued that when you charge for commercial re-use, you are not impeding innovation as that 'can take place as non-commercial re-use'. Innovation includes successful market-entry and commercial success. Thus the non-commercial / commercial distinction will indeed have an effect on possible innovation.

Collecting revenue is not cheap
Collecting revenue costs a lot of money. If you charge at the level of 'production costs' for commercial re-use, government incurs a lot of new costs: Administrating billing, monitoring and actively policing of commercial re-use (to make sure nobody gets a freebie and make sure all commercial re-users are treated equally)
This will either cost more than the revenue collected, or it will drive up prices for the data-sets to effectively preclude a larger part of potential commercial use of said data, raising the threshold more towards the high end of any re-use market and excluding not just new entrants but also the smaller incumbents in a market, again constituting market intervention for the sake of monetizing a single transaction.

Commercial re-use may save government costs
Commercial use may in fact make gov's work lighter,with e.g. products in the area of having informed citizens making better decisions about their own lives, and thus make less demand of other government services.

Who will set the price?
Who is actually mandated to set a price for commercial re-use on any given dataset? How do we know it is fairly/reasonably calculated? Where are the checks and balances for those decisions? If any gov institution sets its own price (now the case it seems) you create a confusing and unpredictable landscape. Unpredictability in resources is not something companies take lightly: they will move away from that, and stop using the data. At the same time this might be the real revenue opportunity: charge not for the data, but for the service level companies want to have on top of what a gov does as part of its own tasks. Data with no strings attached, and SLAs with a price tag.
If all gov institutions adhere to the same price setting process, this probably needs legislation first as well. Is there currently a legal basis other than the phrase in the PSI directive (costs plus reasonable profit margin, which applies to all re-use, not just commercial) for pricing?

All in all, charging for commercial use of data is only interesting it seems to me if you stick to looking at only the basic transaction, not at the chain or ecosystem that transaction is part of. If you look further than just the transaction, as I am sure we must, you are for all intents and purposes raising a data-tax and doing market interventions if government starts monetizing commercial re-use. That may be a government goal, just as it may be it wants to keep people from using data, using money to influence behaviour (like rising tobacco taxes) or it may be it really wants to get some short term revenue at the cost of less innovation, higher taxation. Neither of those however is the stated goal of any government at this point when it comes to data re-use.