Live blogging session #6: How to make government data more accessible and valuable for businesses and the public

SESSION #6 THEME: If Only We Knew…how to make government data more accessible and valuable for businesses and the public

• CHANGE AGENT: Kris Kobach, Secretary of State, State of Kansas
• FACILITATORS: Joel Gurin and Theresa Pardo

The following is a liveblog of one of six sessions at The GovLab Experiment: Making Engagement Work. It will be updated as the sessions progress from 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM. For the full schedule, please see: http://thegovlab.org/events/making-engagement-work/. For more, read the session description at the bottom of the post.
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2:45 PM: Two groups from session discussing the possibility of a citizen engagement platform: Asking them what their interests are and using that as a foundation of evaluating where valuable data is located and how it could be applied. Kansas would in essence provide a smoother interface between people and the data accessible to them. These interests could then be followed/evaluated via metrics (through #tagging, etc) in order to determine their value. It could essentially be the State of Kansas’ customer (/citizen) relation tool. “Collecting data has a value,” and the aggregation of all this data could be very valuable.
This pilot project brings up many questions in and of itself, however: How do you know what information is really valuable? What do citizens want? How do you know what information in dangerous? What happens when all of this information is available? What synergies could stem therefrom? An important consideration still on the table.
12:19 PM: Breakout session discussion in one of the groups gets into U.S. Freedom of Information Act issues and broader transparency issues. The liberation of data is a contentious issue, which the Freedom of Information Act did not manage to resolve. The government should have opened all information, instead of putting the burden on the citizens to appeal for information (General public does not know what information to ask for due to: a) lack of demand, and b) the classic “you don’t know what you don’t know.”). The Federal Government should have to justify why information deemed not ‘fit for public consumption’ is not disclosed, not the other way around. If information were to be open to the public, the benefits would be innumerable: elimination of overlapping efforts, and more efficient open collaboration, to name a few. The data the public has should be the same data the government uses to make its decisions.
11:36AM: “Information is the currency of democracy,” Jefferson.  “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Brandeis. These are basic things that open data needs, and simultaneously the end for which it strives. The main struggle is in creating the demand, for “open data won’t flourish without an increase on the demand side.” One way to solve all three of these predicaments is to actively engage citizens. With active citizens, policy would be driven by a sense of civic duty to engage. The main issue is the interoperability, as civil language is not the language of policy. What kind of language would open data use to be applicable to policy? How can all these civilian ideas be aggregated and appreciated? What metric can we use to evaluate these policies? These are all topics being dissected by the experts of session six.
11:17AM: While the benefits to data/information sharing are undeniable, how do we quantify this value? There is a necessity to redesign metrics in an attempt to understand their effects, objectively measure their impact. This is being dubbed the “blind spot in data sharing” in session six, as experts discuss opening data. No less important, there needs to be more of a demand created for this data, not just focus on the supply side.
11:08AM: “Policy from the top down is only as good as those who implement it,” regarding the Federal government’s attempts to open data and information. The government’s forthcoming open data policy will provide tools to states endeavoring to access these large information sets. The goal is to turn large data into “big data,” because “unstructured data is an enormous expense. Costs and complexity rise without structured data.” These unwieldy databases house a wealth of information; the question is how to get to it. “Many of the answers are already available, but which are the ones that count?” is the question trending around the session six table right now.
10:36 AM Participants discussing a model of business registration that creates a “one stop shop.” for new businesses. This “one stop shop” model entails a single platform on which all new businesses will be registered, creating an interoperable forum. By registering your business online: the entire legal process is streamlined and much more efficient thus saving taxpayer money, eliminating overlaps and needless shuffling of information through non-integrated bureaucratic offices.
(Live blogging updates provided by Taylor Viens, N.Y.U. Student)
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CHALLENGE FOR THE SESSION: 
To develop specific ideas for making government data more useful and accessible, using the State of Kansas as a model. The State of Kansas is attempting to architect a statewide system that will facilitate more rapid, efficient, and effective transfer of data both from businesses to government and from government to business. Session participants will help develop approaches that the State of Kansas could implement, and that could be models for other governmental agencies.
 
SESSION DESCRIPTION:   
Government agencies collect huge amounts of data on areas of great public interest, such as corporate registration data, financial data, and data on health care and other major service sectors. Many third parties outside of government have tried to put this data to use. Businesses and investors analyze corporate and financial data, watchdog groups and journalists study government safety data, and entrepreneurs use government data to build Web and mobile apps. But despite these successful uses, much government data remains difficult for third parties to access. Government agencies may keep data in paper files rather than easy-to-use electronic formats; they may structure data in ways that make it hard to compare with data from other agencies; or they may have data that are inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete.
In theory, government should give businesses, organizations, and individuals easy access to the data sets their taxes have paid for. Ideally, government data should be released in standardized, machine-readable formats and published in real time online. The reality, however, is that it will take considerable time, effort, and resources to restructure how we gather and publish all government data. We have to begin with some data sets that are chosen because they have the most potential impact for economic development and the public good.
This session brings together diverse experts to discuss how best to improve the flow of data both to and from government. Drawing on the expertise of session participants, we will address several key questions, which apply both to Kansas and to other government-data programs.
We will address the following questions:

• How can we apply lessons from the federal government, nonprofits, technology experts, and the states to the challenge of making government data more accessible and usable?
• How can we find out what data government has, what part of it is valuable (and to whom), and determine whether and how government can make that data available?
• How do we cost-effectively build the technology to collect data more efficiently and allow it to be easily accessed?
• What limits should there be on releasing government data, for privacy or legal reasons?
• What are the use cases that make the best economic argument for making government data more accessible and useful?