The Open Source movement is moving into government data. Governments are finding a new source of untapped economic stimulus with the mountains of data they collect. The data is collected for the ultimate good of the public but rarely shared because information access was too people intensive and expensive up until recently. Things have changed.
ETALAB (France), data.gov.uk (UK), data.dc.gov (Washington, DC, US), whitehouse.gov/open (US), and countless other local and national governments have open their data coffers. In the case of DC for instance, the cost of publishing the data was $50K for the city. The DC government expected it to spur the creation of a few new ventures, and a bit of private investments. Instead, 50 startups were born and $3M invested. There is a world of open data coming to the private software industry.
Open Government data is also going to be Big Data. The size of data collected is by definition larger larger than traditional “enterprise data” for instance (especially at the national level). The tools being developed for big data will solve some of the issues with access and real time analytics that exit with government data. Exorbyte MatchMaker is one of these tools. That’s why government agencies have already chosen MatchMaker for their search and data access challenges (2 national European census agencies, German Finance Ministry, and more).
Are you ready for open government data? Any ideas what would make sense to build with this data?
