Posts
Governments collect and distribute a massive amount of public data each year. It is a continual challenge to make this data accessible and usable for citizens, commercial organisations, researchers, scientists and policy makers.
This challenge isn't limited to a few dedicated statistical organisations, such as the ABS. Many other government departments collect, collate and publish extensive public data about their customers, about the market and about their operations.
Putting on my previous private sector hat, public data can be difficult to locate, download and use in a meaningful way to add value to an organisation. I have struggled at times to discover all of the data I needed and combine the different datasets (from different public providers) with internal data in ways that add value to my employers.
The challenges around public data have led Amazon to launch Public Data Sets on its Amazon Web Services platform.
Described as a "convenient way to share, access, and use public data", the system is designed to provide "a centralized repository of public data sets that can be seamlessly integrated into AWS cloud-based applications."
Why is this significant?
The approach makes it much faster and easier for organisations to locate, download, customise and analyse large public data sets - such as census, scientific or industry data.
Using Amazon's system,Now, anyone can access these data sets from their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and start computing on the data within minutes. Users can also leverage the entire AWS ecosystem and easily collaborate with other AWS users. For example, users can produce or use prebuilt server images with tools and applications to analyze the data sets. By hosting this important and useful data with cost-efficient services such as Amazon EC2, AWS hopes to provide researchers across a variety of disciplines and industries with tools to enable more innovation, more quickly.
Amazon has already exposed data sets such as the US Census and various labour statistics. Shortly it will also provide transport databases and economic databases.
All of these are public data sets being provided by US government bureaus.
Also available are scientific information such as Human Genome data, a collection of all publicly available DNA sequences and chemical structures.
Amazon is also working to provide further public domain or non-proprietary data sets and invites organisations to submit applications for data to be included.
Given that this data capacity sits alongside Amazon's cloud computing service, providing an expandable virtual computing environment, it becomes possible for a range of organisations, researchers and individuals to access and make more effective use of large sets of public data, supporting innovation and democratising the marketplace.
It also allows for the creation of data mash-ups, combining data across different agencies with other data sources, maps, graphics, charts and analysis tools to generate new ways of experiencing data and new insights.
I don't expect Amazon to be the only provider of this type of capacity, Google is very committed to cloud computing and organising the world's data. Microsoft and IBM are also moving rapidly into these spaces.
In the long run I see this type of platform as a very valuable distribution tool for governments seeking to make their public data accessible and usable by the broadest possible group of citizens and organisations.
In turn this will broaden and deepen innovation and permit new realisations based on cross-referencing data from different providers - becoming a competitive advantage for countries savvy enough to make their public data more accessible.
What would it take for Australia to make its public data available via this type of channel? A phone call or email to Amazon and some work in structuring our datasets.
That's a low entry cost compared to the challenge of building a replica system.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Storing and exposing public data sets | Tweet |
Thursday, December 04, 2008
US Army gets a SecondLife | Tweet |
The US Army is about to set up several islands in the virtual world Second Life to explore the effectiveness of the medium as a recruiting tool.
Reported in The Inquisitr, the article, titled U.S. Army to setup camp on Second Life, the army is looking to provide virtual experiences, such as parachuting and using a weapon to entice new recruits to sign on.
Given that the US army is already using unmanned remote controlled robots, and the airforce is using remote controlled planes, some soldiers are already working in a video game-like experience, making this not too far a leap from virtual to real soldiering.
From the article, the US army is exploring these types of avenues in order to go where their audience is and start conversations, they cannot simply set up shopfronts or phone lines and wait for eager recruits to walk in the door anymore.
To quote,
What I find really facinating about these types of things involving the Army is that they seem to get what all this social mdia and technology is about better than most of the people trying to market it to businesses. They understand that social media isn’t about just setting up shop somewhere and controlling what happens. The Army understands that it is about going to where the people they want to talk with are and then creating a valid reason for a conversation to begin.Can anyone think of other (public or private) organisations seeking to attract the best talent who might need to move beyond traditional recruitment methods?
For the Army it isn’t a matter of finding a way to make money off of social media interaction. They are looking at purely from an outreach and conversation point of view. This doesn’t mean that they are seeing it as some pie in the sky either but instead are being quite realistic about its potential.
What is your view of Web 2.0 use in Australian government? | Tweet |
Following AGIMO's Web 2.0 in government seminar this morning, what is your opinion on how well Australian government has been implementing Web 2.0?
I'm writing this before the event and will not be attending due to other commitments (but are sending several of my team), and so are very interested in what others thought.
List of US government Twitter users | Tweet |
The eGovernment Resource Centre has posted a link to a new resource listing government Twitter users from the US.
Named GovTwit, it lists over 100 accounts from US government agencies, over 30 US Senator and Rep tweeters and 40 from US states.
There's also a set of international tweeters, including three from Australia (Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, Mosman Council) and our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
It's a useful resource for understanding the breadth of use of the system in the US and potential local applications.
How Web 2.0 will transform local councils | Tweet |
Given that a case study on Mosman council is being included in today's Web 2.0 in Government seminar being run by AGIMO, I thought it was worth referring people to this article in Govtech by Bill Shrier, the CTO of Seattle.
The article, per its title, discusses How Web 2.0 will transform local councils.
Rightly or wrongly, Bill draws a strong connection between the core goal of local government and the intent of Web 2.0 technologies,
Government is, by its very nature, all about community. Government is a group of people - citizens or constituents - doing together what they can't do as individuals or otherwise obtain from private business. I believe most of us wouldn't want individuals or private businesses to manage street networks, maintain parks or operate police and fire departments. In the end, government is community.
Therefore, Web 2.0 - community building tools - seems tailor-made for government, at least theoretically.
