Two Problems

Silo image by Doc Searls, Shankill Peace Wall image by Jennifer Boyer. Both images from Flickr Some rights reserved

The Three Star World

Screenshot of some data from City of Palo Alto - nicely visualised 3 star data

The Five Star Promise

★	Available on the Web (whatever format) but with an open licence, to be Open Data
★★	Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
★★★	as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of Excel)
★★★★	All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
★★★★★	All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context

Originally developed by Tim Berners-Lee

Some rights reserved by foroyar22

Yes. But …

Study on business models for Linked Open Government Data (BM4LOGD)

Phil Archer, W3C; Makx Dekkers, AMI Consult; Stijn Goedertier, Nikolaos Loutas, PwC EU Services, November 2013.

Assumptions

5 star data is worth more than lower starred data → applications that use it are worth more;
5 star data is worth more than lower starred data → more applications will use it;
5 star data is worth more than lower starred data → we should do this for the good of everyone;
5 star data is what developers prefer.

Case Studies

AT – Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP)
DE – German National Library (DNB)
EU – Europeana
EU – European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Consumers
EU – European Environment Agency (EEA)
EU – Publications Office of the European Union
IT – Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale
UK – BBC
UK – Companies House
UK – Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
UK – National Archives
UK – OpenCorporates
UK – Ordnance Survey
UN – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Questions

What did it cost to make it available as 5 star data?
Who uses your data?
Can you please put us in touch with users of your data?
What are the benefits of the approach?

Questions

What did it cost to make it available as 5 star data?: Hard/impossible to split out cost of LD from other costs
Who uses your data?
Can you please put us in touch with users of your data?
What are the benefits of the approach?

Questions

What did it cost to make it available as 5 star data?: Hard/impossible to split out cost of LD from other costs
Who uses your data?: Don't know, it's not why we do it, but server logs suggest traffic is increasing.
Can you please put us in touch with users of your data?
What are the benefits of the approach?

Questions

What did it cost to make it available as 5 star data?: Hard/impossible to split out cost of LD from other costs
Who uses your data?: Don't know, it's not why we do it, but server logs suggest traffic is increasing.; Most people who use the data download a copy rather then use the SPARQL endpoint.
Can you please put us in touch with users of your data?
What are the benefits of the approach?

Questions

What did it cost to make it available as 5 star data?: Hard/impossible to split out cost of LD from other costs
Who uses your data?: Don't know, it's not why we do it, but server logs suggest traffic is increasing.; Most people who use the data download a copy rather then use the SPARQL endpoint.
Can you please put us in touch with users of your data?: Ermmm …; Lots of users of the service
What are the benefits of the approach?

Questions

What did it cost to make it available as 5 star data?: Hard/impossible to split out cost of LD from other costs
Who uses your data?: Don't know, it's not why we do it, but server logs suggest traffic is increasing.; Most people who use the data download a copy rather then use the SPARQL endpoint.
Can you please put us in touch with users of your data?: Ermmm …; Lots of users of the service
What are the benefits of the approach?: Lots!

The Benefits of LOD for Government

Flexible data integration (REEEP, FAO, EEA)
Increase in data quality (DG SANCO, Publications Office, UK National Archives)
New services (UK National Archives, DNB)
Cost reduction (FAO, UK National Archives, DEFRA, BBC)

Flexible data integration

Internal processes more streamlined, i.e. sharing data within the department
Where working relationships already exist, much easier to share.
Linking reference collections → discovery of new relationships
No other technology comes close for what we want to do ourselves.

Increase in data quality

Little in the way of crowd sourced corrections so far (often the data defines the legal status)
Use of open data internally brings errors to light → greater quality of data for all
Use of open standards increases quality of systems

New services

Related information about people, places and subjects; links previously obscured
Gazettes are a prime example of this

Cost reduction

Not a reduction in cost of providing the service
Benefit is in increased efficiency
50% increase in data useage noted by FAO due to enrichments by using LOD
30% improvement in services due to greater contestibility and portability through use of open standards

Enablers

Efficiency gains in data integration – the network effect
Forward-looking strategies
Increased linking and integrated services
Ease of model updates
Ease of navigation
Open licensing and free access
Enthusiasm from ‘champions’
Emerging best practice guidance

Roadblocks

Necessary investments
Lack of necessary competencies
Perceived lack of tools
Lack of service level guarantees
Missing, restrictive, or incompatible licences
Surfeit of standard vocabularies
The inertia of the status quo

The 5 Star Benefits of LOD

★★★★★	More efficiency, better provision of the public or commercial task
★★★★	Greater flexibility leads to lower cost for future projects
★★★	New services, new discoveries, new connections
★★	Improved navigation within and between datasets
★	Other people can build apps based on your data

The 5 Star Benefits of LOD

★★★★★	More efficiency, better provision of the public or commercial task
★★★★	Greater flexibility leads to lower cost for future projects
★★★	New services, new discoveries, new connections
★★	Improved navigation within and between datasets
★	Other people can build apps based on your data

http://www.w3.org/2014/Talks/0220_phila_lod2014/

Phil Archer <phila@w3.org>

@philarcher1

Loads of Data on the Web

A Problem

Two Problems

The Five Star World

The Three Star World

The Data Activity

The Five Star Promise

Yes. But …

Assumptions

Case Studies

Questions

Questions

Questions

Questions

Questions

Questions

The Benefits of LOD for Government

Flexible data integration

Increase in data quality

New services

Cost reduction

External apps

Enablers

Roadblocks

The 5 Star Benefits of LOD

The 5 Star Benefits of LOD