A briefing from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)15 highlights the fact that under-investment in data risks undermining countries’ capacity to innovate.
In recent years, interest in open data has been rising. Open data originated with the belief that data that government organisations collect should be made available to all citizens. The World Bank’s Open Data Toolkit16 reports that since the first government open data policies appeared in 2009, more than 250 national, subnational and city governments have launched open data initiatives. Almost 50 developed and developing countries, and entities such as the European Union and United Nations, have also done this.
Data are considered to be ‘open’ if anyone can freely use, re-use and redistribute them, for any purpose, without restrictions. While a large amount of data is published on government websites, the majority of published data is intended only to be read as stand-alone documents, not re-used for other purposes. To be considered ‘open’, the data must be re-usable, meaning they can be downloaded in open formats and read by software, and users have a legal right to re-use it.17
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________15 Data-driven Innovation for Growth and Well-being16 The World Bank, ‘Open Data in 60 Seconds’, accessed 17 February 2022.17 The World Bank, ‘Open Data in 60 Seconds’.
According to the Open Data Barometer ‘s 2016 Global Report: 18
In a well-functioning democratic society, citizens need to be informed and have access to information on government policies and progress.
Open data — data that is freely available and shareable online, without charge – dramatically reduces the time and money citizens need to invest in understanding what the government is doing and to hold it to account. At the same time, because open data is made available in bulk and in formats that simple computer programs can analyse, comparing and combining data from different sources becomes faster and easier, even across national boundaries. This greatly enhances the ability of policymakers, scientists and entrepreneurs to find solutions to complex development problems.
According to the open definition, to be truly open, data should be:
The benefits of widely available and easy-to-use data can be significant. However, as a relatively recent development, its broader potential has not yet been realised. Among many other positive outcomes, strategically used open data may improve policymaking and service efficiency, stimulate innovation, and improve public safety. But while organisations like the Open Data Institute and World Bank have put significant effort into engaging, familiarising, and helping governments to publish open data, they recognise that the embedding process is essential to achieving long-term sustainability and impact.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________18 ODB Global report : Third edition
According to a 2021 OECD report on building resilience,
‘Following the COVID-19 shock to economies and societies, many countries are including renewed infrastructure investment as a stimulus measure. Such investments present an opportunity for governments to address short-term infrastructure challenges through maintenance spending while building resilient and sustainable infrastructure for the future. Tackling the complex challenges and opportunities related to infrastructure resilience and maintenance requires a multidimensional approach, considering a range of factors and stakeholders at the local, regional, national and global level. This approach seeks to get the best out of the asset over its lifecycle across functions and tasks and the entire infrastructure system/network. As infrastructure is inevitably affected by environmental social and governance (ESG) risks, this approach can identify the trade-offs among objectives, and therefore enable more robust policy choices’.19
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________19 Building Infrastructure Resilience, OECD, 2022.
A large, public source of open data, the GLA is ‘a strategic regional authority, with powers over transport, policing, economic development, and fire and emergency planning. Three functional bodies — Transport for London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority — are responsible for delivery of services in these areas’.
The GLA’s 900 hosted datasets20 are available for anyone to access, use and share using robust search features and filters, or to review in a report format. Datasets cover a range of topics relevant to Londoners including:
Environment
Demographics
Transparency
Planning
Business and economy
Housing
Health
Transport
Crime and community safety
Income, poverty and welfare
COVID-19 data and analysis
Data is also presented in report format, one example being quarterly macroeconomic scenarios for London’s economy post-COVID-19, which provides medium- and long-term information to support recovery strategies in an uncertain environment. Scenario dimensions include the effectiveness of public health response and the impact of economic support measures amid wider factors such as Brexit and migration, the international economic context, technology and innovation, the financial climate and GHG emissions.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________20 London Datastore, Greater London Authority (GLA), 2022. 21 “Technology: Improving local government performance: digitalization and open data” Vol 3: Part 1, 2018. CGMA
When the first edition of this report was published (2014), 70,000 users visited the GLA Datastore’s open data each month. During 2022, over 150,000 users visited each month. With such growth, the Datastore seeks methods and finances to better meet citizen needs. As stated in our previous report, as data volumes increase, the Datastore will help inform policy and improve city operations, as well as supporting the new data markets that are likely to emerge.
The Datastore streams out free and open-source data on city performance, for use by developers both inside and outside government to make new software and platforms that help the city work better.21
Rough sleeping statistics are created by outreach teams in London and reported in the ‘Combined Homelessness and Information Network’ (CHAIN), a multi-agency database about rough sleepers and the wider street population in London. For purposes of the reports created, ‘people are counted as having been seen rough sleeping if they have been encountered by a commissioned outreach worker bedded down on the street, or in other open spaces or locations not designed for habitation, such as doorways, stairwells, parks or derelict buildings'.22
Reports are compiled for major metropolitan areas quarterly, and include a variety of demographic data. Data is obtained at both the borough level and the Greater London level by nationality, gender, age and ethnicity, support needed, and history in institutions and armed forces. An important area of information focuses on the identifiable and needed support, including immediate (book into shelter or emergency accommodation), temporary and long-term placement.
As the attention to rough sleeping increases, London has created a Rough Sleeping Initiative, released September 2022, which sets out to end rough sleeping by the end of 2024. The government plans to invest ‘£500million […] over three years to provide 14,000 beds for rough sleepers and fund 3,000 staff to provide support’. The U.K. seeks to become a world leader in eliminating homelessness and the transparency of this open data system allows the entire world to monitor its progress.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________22 Chain Annual Report: Greater London. April 2014-March 2015.