Overview
There needs to be a strategy that coordinates the efforts of multiple agencies
Why
A plan is essential if decision makers at the highest level, i.e. ministers, are to support an approach to implementation.
Intended outcome
It must be possible for different agencies to understand what is required, to plan accordingly and to measure progress.
Possible Approach
An individual civil servant or department should be given responsibility for developing the plan. They should convene a meeting, or a series of meetings, between stakeholders - data producers, data users etc. and develop the plan through an iterative process before seeking high level endorsement.
How to Test
As a minimum, a summary of the plan should be publicly available.
Evidence
Evidence to support this best practice is recorded in the report on the Share-PSI workshop in Samos, June-July 2014.
The RECODE project includes an analogous statement as the first of its Policy recommendations for open access to research data (PDF).
This matched earlier work including the G8 Open Data Charter published in 2013 that built on, among other things, the Shakespeare Review of Public Sector Information. Both emphasised the need for
…a clear, visible, auditable plan for publishing data as quickly as possible, defined both by bottom-up market demand and by top-down strategic thinking, overcoming institutional and technical obstacles with a twin-track process which combines speed to market with improvement of quality:
- an ‘early even if imperfect’ track that is very broad and very aggressively driven, and
- a ‘National Core Reference Data’ high-quality track which begins immediately but narrowly;
and then moving things from Track 1 to Track 2 as quickly as we can do reliably and to a high standard. ‘Quickly’ should be set out by government through publicly committed target dates.
Lifecycle Stage
Planning
Audience
Senior officials, policy and strategic decision makers.