Thank you very much for inviting me and hello from Sheffield.
I'm a lecturer in information politics and policy. I've been researching the politics of open government in the U.K. for the last few years now. What I've decided to concentrate on in my opening presentation today are the two themes that I saw emerging in the questions that were presented to the panel by the committee.
First of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about how Canada compares to other jurisdictions; and secondly, I'm going to talk about this issue of generating value from open government data.
The first question, then, is how does Canada compare to other jurisdictions? There's a number of different methods that we could use to compare different countries' open data initiatives. A very simple approach would be the one taken by the open data index, which is an Open Knowledge Foundation supported project. This basically just compares a number of different data sets that have been opened in different categories by different countries. In this kind of method, Canada comes out 10th overall out of 70 countries, so it's doing pretty well there.
A more complex approach is the one that Richard mentioned, the open data barometer project, which was supported by the Open Data Institute and the Web Foundation, and published last year. This more complex methodology looks at open government data readiness implementation and impact across different countries. In this methodology, Canada scored eighth out of 77 countries, so it's doing a little bit better in this sense.
Now, the researchers behind the open data barometer project used a number of different methods to collect the data. One was an expert survey that they did across all the different countries, and they used quite a robust methodology here to gather and to analyze this data. I think this is the best sort of comparative data that we have at the moment. What this data suggests is that Canada's is a very well-resourced open data initiative, but in terms of government support, in terms of incentivizing reuse, for example by competitions and grants and things like that, Canada is perhaps a little bit lower compared to some other countries. Also in terms of the training that's available for potential reusers in Canada...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...from the experts that Canada is a little bit lower there as well.
That's how Canada fares in terms of the implementation coming out of the open data barometer. In terms of impact, as Richard also said, Canada seems to be doing pretty well comparatively in terms of the political impact, and even the economic impact of open data. Although scoring only 3 out of 10 through this survey, that does actually compare quite well. It brings in Canada to joint eighth overall. But in terms of social impact, and this includes things such as environmental sustainability and the inclusion of marginalized populations in policy-making through using open government data, Canada is scoring relatively low, scoring 0 out of 10 for environmental impact and 2 out of 10 for social inclusion. Now relatively speaking, that means that Canada is doing quite poorly in terms of environmental impacts, but is about average for impact on socially excluded populations. There's been very little impact from open government data on improving social exclusion issues.
What this study also highlights is that this is quite a similar pattern to what we're seeing in the U.K. In the graph that Richard showed earlier, the U.K.'s pattern is very similar as well. The social impact of open government data in both the U.K. and Canada is a lot lower relative to the observed economic and political impacts. This suggests that perhaps not enough is being done in both Canada and the U.K. to enhance that social impact from open government data.
This pattern is not the same in every country. For example, in the U.S.A., Sweden, and New Zealand, those countries are scoring much better relatively on the social impact in relation to the political and economic impacts, which suggests that there might be interesting best-practice cases and similar things that you could use from those countries if you're interested in increasing the social impact of open government data.
Now what I would also point out is that both of these studies, the open data index and the open data barometer, are very quantitative studies that are interested in ranking countries against each other. My research is interested in the political drivers behind open government data.
I'd say there's a real need for further comparative political research in the drivers behind open government data across different countries. I think we need to really be asking, who is benefiting from specific decisions in different jurisdictions? Who is being empowered and disempowered as a result of where the boundary is being drawn between open and closed data in different countries? Who's being empowered and disempowered as a result of where the investment is being made, where the reuse of open government data is being incentivized? As well, what do the regulatory contexts in different countries allow in terms of what is allowed or prohibited in terms of open government data reuse?
That takes me on to thinking about the potential value to be generated from open government data. I just want to state quite explicitly there's no simple linear trajectory from opening up data to generating positive societal impact. A lot of other things go on within that space as well.
In terms of economic value, lots of claims have been made based on economic modelling. Richard referred to the McKinsey report. There has been other research done as well, such as Rufus Pollock's work in the U.K., but there are still a lot of uncertainties in terms of the conclusions this research comes to.
In terms of the headline figures that research like this promotes, such as x trillion pounds can be added to the global economy, £6 billion can be added to the U.K. economy, I think we need to remember that all economic growth is not necessarily good growth. Open government data can lead to the production of all sorts of exciting, innovative, socially beneficial products and services. Equally, open government data can be used to develop products and services that could have negative social implications even though they generate substantial profits and might contribute a lot to GDP.
One example I'm thinking of here is the weather derivatives market, which is heavily dependent upon open weather data but has a very questionable relationship with climate change mitigation.
So that's the economic value.
In terms of generating social value, which is an area that the open data barometer project suggests Canada is relatively weak in, I think what we need to see really is an investment in the development of an infrastructure that brings together organized civil society, local communities, researchers, and other domain experts, with open data, to both source data sets from public bodies to advise on their collection of data that is useful for them to be using, and to develop methods of data analysis and create tools and resources that can engage and critically inform common concerns.
We're starting to see a little bit of this in some of the work that the Open Data Institute does, but I think that could go further and be more widespread as well.
In conclusion, I just want to reiterate really that we need to avoid the assumption that there is this simple linear trajectory from opening data to generating positive societal impact. When making policy decisions, I think it's important to think about what specifically you're aiming to achieve with open data, and then think about the wider policy ecology that needs to be thought about in order to make that happen.
Thank you.