Economic value should be a benefit, but not the reason for open data

I've been reading various views and reflecting on the DataStart competition.

There's a shift I've been observing in how some people in government talk about open data that is making me quite uncomfortable.

I like that the commercial world is finally taking note of the value of open data and the prospect to build businesses using it.

I like that corporations are beginning to adopt some of the techniques of openness pioneered in the public sector and use them to build usability, value and (hopefully) profits.

I like that the government is taking a firm position on innovation and has finally begun to realise that Australia needs to have a strong and effective digital strategy with senior leadership to remain a relevant first world nation in a world increasingly built on data.

However there's one thing that does concern me.

There's been a progressive shift in language from certain government levels that suggests that the primary reason for releasing public sector information in open, reusable formats is for economic benefit.

Other benefits, such as the ability to hold government to account, improve policy development and assessment and the social benefits of open data in areas such as health, emergency management, education and employment, have been downplayed or ignored.

We've seen hackathons run in Australia on government data for six years now, with over 1,500 web services and apps developed by teams.

The vast majority of these apps and sites focused on social, policy or accountability benefits - very few were developed specifically with economic goals, even in competition categories focused on entrepreneurship.

These competitions have showcased a wide variety of benefits for open data, and agencies have, for the most part, heard this. However the language from the top of government is all about commercialisation and creating businesses from data, the other benefits ignored.

Exemplifying this trend, the DataStart competition doesn't specifically exclude non-commercial entrants, however there's no cash prize at the end for any such winner, the $200,000 investment package prize is restricted to those entrants who squeeze out a commercially viable business (as defined by RightClick Capital and Polleniser).

Other entrants can get, at best, some support from the Department and maybe a five-day start-up bootcamp in Sydney.

The message being sent is clear - non-commercial ideas for open data need not apply.

Essentially the DataStart competition puts the economic benefit of open data ahead of any other benefit - and again this isn't a bad thing. There's reason to support the commercial value of open data, just as there's reason to support the social and policy value of this data.

What is concerning is that the message from government is shifting towards making this economic benefit the main reason for opening up, or improving the quality, of government data.

This could lead into a situation where the data prioritised for collection, cleaning and open release is the data with commercial value, over data that has accountability or social value to Australia.

It attaches a price signal to open data - it must be commercially valuable, or it's not valued.

This flies against the spirit and full value of open government data.

I hope that we do not see governments making commercial decisions on whether to open up data based on the number and perceived economic value of the start-ups they foster.

Government has a bigger role in this, it should focus on public value - balancing how this is achieved, via commercial value, social value or the accountability necessary for a democracy.

So yay for DataStart, but it would be unfortunate if economic value became the reason, rather than one of the benefits, of opening up Australian government data to the public.

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Government launches DataStart fund to foster open data startups, but which problem is it trying to solve?

A few days ago the Australian government announced the launch of the DataStart fund, to be managed by Polleniser and with the involvement of RightClick Capital, which aims to foster open data driven startups with commercial ideas.

The pilot nine month process will see 20 startups pitch to a board of government and industry judges, with a winner to receive $200,000 in support to get their business off the ground.

This is an area that people in the open data scene have been discussing for a few years now, on the back of the low rate of initiatives coming out of hack events in Australia that go on to some form of commercial existence, let alone financial success.

Initiatives in this area are always good, however I worry about what problem this is designed to solve.

Is it the government's problem that startups aren't using lots of open data to facilitate their businesses, or is it an actual problem where startup businesses with viable commercial ideas involving open data cannot locate appropriate funding options?

I wonder whether the first step should be to ensure that the open data being released by government is both the right data for companies to use to deliver on commercial needs and is being released to a commercial standard.

Frankly while I totally support the increasingly open release of data there's very little that I see being released at a commercially ready level and granularity. Weather and public transport data at state level being a few of the exceptions.

There will be startup opportunists who bake a little open data into their startups to access this fund. There also may (I hope) be a few hack participants able to take their open data fuelled ideas forward in a more commercial way.

I am sure the government will happily support both types through this initiative in the hope this creates some momentum - and I truly hope it does.

However unless these start-ups have solid ideas with strong business cases and could essentially be profitable even if they had to collect the data themselves or pay for it, by and large government is still an unreliable source of timely and relevant open data.

Right now data.gov.au has a shoestring budget and no funds have ever been allocated by an Australian government to support agencies to develop and implement effective open data release processes.

While the team at data.gov.au has done a fantastic job with very little, and the ball is now truly rolling in agencies, which are increasingly interested in releasing datasets for public reuse, the lack of foundational funding means that the frequency of data collection, data quality and data release tends to be highly variable across government open datasets.

Right now I would prefer to see funds reinvested into ensuring government provides reliable data rather than on fostering businesses build on data sources that are insufficiently robust or could disappear overnight with a Ministerial or agency-level decision.

I know both the government and Polleniser are authentically enthusiastic and supportive of fostering open data driven startups. I hope that in coming weeks we see budgets allocated to help agencies provide reliable and robust open data sets, not just to fostering companies built on an unreliable base.

For now, register for a DataSmart information session (to be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra at DataStart.com.au (I will be at the Canberra event, so feel free to say hi).

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Come along to IAP2's November Canberra session on 'Introducing collaboration into the process of planning online participation'

I will be presenting at November's IAP2 session in Canberra from 6-8pm on 'Introducing collaboration into the process of planning online participation'.

The session will look at how to get internal stakeholders onboard and on the same page for an online participation process, particularly when they have disparate experience and understanding of digital approaches.

Using real world examples, and an interactive session involving Social Media Planner, attendees will get to work through the process of aligning stakeholder expectations and needs while building their understanding and support for an online engagement approach.

Presenter: Craig Thomler, Director, Social Media Planner

Time: Tues 10 November 2015, 6 for 6.15 pm (finishing about 8 pm)

Venue (TBC): Canberra Innovation Network, Level 5, 5 Moore St Civic

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Fostering Entrepreneurship and innovation in Australian universities

Last week I was privileged to be invited to speak at the Canberra Startup Showcase, run by the UC Advertising and Marketing Society and EntrepreneurshipUC Society at the University of Canberra.

Together with three other entrepreneurs, Mitchell Harmer of Sign On Site, Dawn Hayter of Urban Providore and Joe Mammolita of iCognition, we discussed our journeys and experience in entrepreneurship and answered the questions of the gathered students.

It was an awesome experience. Each of the entrepreneurs had a very different background, and were at different stages in their company development, providing a broad cross-sectional view of what it's like to found and build a business in Australia.

Fostering entrepreneurship at Australian universities is critical for Australia to build future businesses and grow the economic opportunities for all Australians. The level of interest from attendees, including several who were already seasoned entrepreneurs while still in their early twenties, demonstrated that passion for entrepreneurship was alive among young Australians.

All they needed was the knowledge and tools to realise their passions, avenues to learn from more experienced business owners and access systems that can leapfrog their learning and avoid at least some of the pitfalls.

While I was expecting some interest from the students in Social Media Planner as a tool to support an aspect of business planning, I didn't anticipate how popular it would be - several students bought decks on the spot and more have followed up after the event.

This suggests to me that tools like Social Media Planner have a valuable place in helping our future entrepreneurs to define, refine and test their ideas, preparing them for the business landscape of the future.

I'm glad I could provide some knowledge and support to the students of the University of Canberra, and hope I can continue to support younger people in their journey towards entrepreneurship for years to come.

I hope governments, corporations and universities also recognise where and when our education system needs to be supported by relevant business experience and appropriate business tools.

Without appropriate support many potential Australian enterprises will fail, or not achieve their potential success, restricting Australia's economic development and success.

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Innovation, the International Space Station and horses arses

The International Space Station (ISS) orbits Earth about 15 times a day. As the largest human-built structure in orbit, it is visible to the naked eye when it passes over, only 330-430 kilometres overhead.

The ISS serves an important purpose as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other scientific fields. It also is crucial in exploring the technologies needed to take humans back to the moon, to Mars and, eventually, the stars.

The ISS was built from a number of parts carried into orbit on different space missions, including a number of components carried on US Space Shuttles while they were in operation.

When the Space Shuttle was being constructed a number of its parts were contracted out to various companies across the US and other nations.

In particular the large booster rockets, which carry the shuttle to orbit and fall away for reuse, were contracted to a company in Utah, which built them onsite and transported them by rail to the launch site.

The engineers that built these boosters wanted to ensure they were as large and powerful as possible, but had to keep in mind that they had to be transported through a train tunnel, which was built to US rail specifications.

The US rail gauge is 4 foot 8.5 inches and was defined by the manufacturers of steam trains, who reused the standard they'd used in their previous work developing horse-drawn trams in the 19th century. The standard used for these trams was, in turn, based on the standard for building horse-drawn wagons, which was the former occupation of tram-makers.

The width of wagon wheelbases was, in turn, based on US road widths, which had been imported to the New World by the English, drawing from UK road standards.

The reason it was important for wagons to have standard width wheelbases in the UK was because of the ruts cut into the roads by hundreds of years of use. Make a wheelbase too wide or narrow and wheels would break more easily and often.

This was because the UK road standard had originally been defined by the Roman Empire, which built the first continent-spanning road network in Europe. The Romans built these roads both for trade and for easier passage by their armies, which included war-chariots drawn by two horses.

As a result, the gateway to humans exploring the solar system, the International Space Station, was designed on a thousand-year old standard from the Roman Empire, the width of two horses' arses.

Now what does this have to do with innovation?

Clearly there's been a long process to get from two-horses arses to the International Space Station, but at every stage many of the core technologies have been designed iteratively on those that came before them.

All the innovations that have occurred in that process occurred within a set framework, which both enabled and limited progress.

When thinking about innovation it is important to be conscious of the frameworks we operate within, personally and institutionally.

Our capacity to innovate is often shaped by our education, experience and environment. Often what we may call innovation is actually iteration - taking an existing model and improving it in some way.

Innovation in the purest sense occurs when there's a break from a past framework. These breaks are often highly disruptive as they force people to rethink all their assumptions and reframe their experiences in light of new ways of seeing the world, or a given problem or situation.

Some of these major innovative breaks include such things as the Theory of Evolution, the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the printing press (with movable type) and the creation of the Internet.

It's true that each was built on knowledge that came before it. Dinosaur skeletons were discovered long before Darwin and his peers conceived of evolution and books existed for thousands of years before movable type.

However in each of these, and similar, innovations, the way people saw the world shifted. Industries rose and fell, as did nations and societies. These new ideas and inventions weren't simple iterations on previously accepted wisdom that saw society make minor adjustments but continue on its existing course.

Often when organisations seek to be 'innovative' they are actually focused on being iterative, to improve what they do in order to maximise their success within the current social and economic environment.

There's nothing wrong with this but it doesn't necessarily require the same approach as actual innovation.

Actual innovation is about overturning what is considered normal, breaking from current practice and finding new approaches which redefine how we see and behave in society and our economic, political and social environments.

This type of innovation is hard. It involves lifting people out of their unconscious patterns and creating lasting change, often overcoming fears of the unknown and the well understood and comfortable lives people and organisations have created for themselves.

In fact humans are biologically wired against too much, or too fast, change. Scientific research has established that our brains reside in a lower energy state when supporting or defending the status quo than when we try to actually change our thinking. 

While we can, and do, change, it's far easier to consider innovative change when we're fresh, fit and fed rather than when we're stressed, tired and hungry.

So it's important when seeking to create or support innovation to create the right environment to foster innovative thinking, picking or designing appropriate locations and times for change to occur.

It's also important to use the appropriate systems and tools to support innovation. These need to help people step out of their comfort zones as comfortably as possible, to give people a change to play with ideas and approaches in non-threatening ways.

When people feel comfortable and safe they're far more capable and open to new concepts and approaches and able to consider the flaws in current situations in a far more objective way.

While I didn't realise it when I invented Social Media Planner, my card-based game-like system for helping people to design effective social media strategies around a table, over years of testing I've found that it fosters this innovative thinking. By taking people from a digitally-focused space to a collaborative tabletop environment they are better positioned to objectively play with different and innovative approaches and concepts.

When I observe or work with individuals and groups using Social Media Planner, they rapidly shift into an innovative state of mind, considering new options, devising new ideas and working together to develop and assess them to design new approaches to their social media engagement.

This is of course one small corner of innovation, but it has shown me the power in giving people a familiar and flexible tool, the physical playing cards used in Social Media Planner.

Through fostering an interactive physical activity in a low distraction environment with game-like goals and limits, individuals and group find they have the space to experiment, brainstorm and reflect.

The approach also addresses the 'blank page' issue, where people struggle to find a place to start on solving a problem or finding a solution. The scenarios included in every Social Media Planner pack allow people to safely learn the system without feeling foolish or lost.

The card-based approach also addresses the challenge of holding complex models in one's head. Most people typically can retain 5-9 items in their short-term memory at a time, however with the Social Media Planner tools cards laid out on a table it's easy for individuals to access 40 different concepts without relying on their short-term memory and interfering with creative thought.

If your organisation is seeking to innovate - or even to iterate - it's worth investing in the systems and tools which will help your teams do so in the fastest and most successful ways.

I've used Social Media Planner as an example of these types of tools because I designed it, tested it and have seen how effective it can be for organisations planning their social and digital media engagement. 

There's many other tools useful when innovating that are worth considering, as well as organisations experienced at fostering the spaces and mindsets that foster effective innovation and change.

So if your organisation needs or wants to change, to improve how it operates, to become more effective at serving its customers, clients, citizens or stakeholders, invest in tools that will help your people to innovate, accessing the creative potential every human possesses.

Don't simply put in place frameworks and processes to refine and proceduralise innovation and change, also invest in the environments and tools that foster innovation.

You'll get better outcomes, faster and more cost-effectively. And your people will be happier and more productive by being part of the journey.

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