Open Data Economy: Eight Business Models for Open Data and Insight from Deloitte UK

Howard, Alex. "Open Data Economy: Eight Business Models for Open Data and Insight from Deloitte UK." O'Reilly Radar, January 28, 2013. 

From the article: "The first response concerned Deloitte’s ongoing research into open data in the United Kingdom [PDF], conducted in collaboration with the Open Data Institute.

Harvey Lewis, one of the primary investigators for the research project, recently wrote about some of Deloitte’s preliminary findings at the Open Government Partnership’s blog in a post on “open growth.” To date, Deloitte has not found the quantitative evidence the team needs to definitely demonstrate the economic value of open data. That said, the team found much of interest in the space." Read more

Towards Distributed Citizen Participation: Lessons from WikiLeaks and the Queensland Floods

Bruns, Axel. "Towards Distributed Citizen Participation: Lessons from WikiLeaks and the Queensland Floods." Journal of e-Democracy and Open Government 4 (2012): 142-159.  

From the report: "This paper examines the rapid and ad hoc development and interactions of participative citizen communities during acute events, using the examples of the 2011 floods in Queensland, Australia, and the global controversy surrounding Wikileaks and its spokesman, Julian Assange. The self-organising community responses to such events which can be observed in these cases bypass or leapfrog, at least temporarily, most organisational or administrative hurdles which may otherwise frustrate the establishment of online communities; they fast-track the processes of community development and structuration. By understanding them as a form of rapid prototyping, e-democracy initiatives can draw important lessons from observing the community activities around such acute events." Read more

EU Open Data Portal Now In Public Beta

"EU Open Data Portal Now In Public Beta." European Public Sector Information Platform, December 21, 2012.

The European Commission has launched its open data portal, announced last year December, in public beta. While the site is already on-line, the EC has requested to not widely circulate the URL yet. In January 2013 the beta launch will be more widely announced.

The EC data portal, at launch provides access to 5800+ data sets, mostly coming from Eurostat. With this portal the EC intends to lead by example in opening up public sector information pro-actively for free re-use in Europe, as part of the European open data strategy.

The EC portal is for now aimed at publishing the EC's own data, but is at the same time a first step towards a pan-European data portal that will provide access to all underlying national (and regional, local) data portals across the 27 Member States." Read more 

The Benefits of a Big Tent: Opening Up Government in Developing Countries

Weinstein, Jeremy and Joshua Goldstein. "The Benefits of a Big Tent: Opening Up Government in Developing Countries." UCLA Law Review Discourse 38 (2012).

From the report: "Bringing open data and open government under a single banner, Yu and Robinson argue, leads to conceptual muddling that ultimately impedes progress for both projects. They express a concern that superficial commitments to open data “can placate the public’s appetite for transparency.” Drawing on our experiences with the Kenya Open Data Initiative and the Open Government Partnership, we argue that this need not be the case for three reasons." Read more

Avoiding a Data Divide Between the US and the EU

Kerry, Cameron. "Avoiding a Data Divide Between the US and the EU." European Voice, November 22, 2012. 

From the article: "The US and EU privacy regimes differ because their legal systems and political structures are distinct, but our values are similar. The ‘fair information practices principles' that informed the EU's privacy directive originated in a US government report in the 1970s. These principles are also the foundation of the Obama administration's consumer privacy bill of rights.

The US and the EU ultimately share the same goals – to protect privacy and facilitate trade and economic growth." Read more

Government Transparency and Secrecy: An Examination of Meaning and Its Use in the Executive Branch

Ginsberg, Wendy, et al. "Government Transparency and Secrecy: An Examination of Meaning and Its Use in the Executive Branch." Congressional Research Service, November 8, 2012. 

From the report: "This report subsequently examines the statutes, initiatives, requirements, and other actions that make information more available to the public or protect it from public release. It also examines transparency and secrecy from the standpoint of how the public accesses government information, and whether the release of government data and information may make operation of the federal government more or, counter-intuitively, less transparent. Finally, this report analyzes whether existing transparency initiatives are effective in reaching their stated goals." Read more

The Benefits of Open Data – Evidence from Economic Research

Xu, Guo. "The Benefits of Open Data – Evidence from Economic Research." Open Economics, October 3, 2012. 

From the article: "Making information accessible to the public can improve public service delivery. In countries where corruption is pervasive, services and funds often do not reach the frontline provider. And even if services do reach the people, the quality of services provided is often shockingly poor: Survey evidence from Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Peru and Uganda found absence rates as high as 20% and 35% for school teachers and health workers. In many cases, the staff is poorly trained.

Releasing data on service delivery in this case can help reduce corruption and improve public services. In Uganda, researchers provided information to parents by publishing funding data for a random subset of schools in local newspapers. In consequence, corruption decreased significantly, while schooling outcomes improved substantially. Similar evidence in health delivery and redistributive policies suggest that providing information can help the public to discipline public service providers, improving the quality of services." Read more