Some of Coté‘s link comments are better than my blog posts. Like the one I lift wholesale below, for your perusal and delectation.
Data.gov.uk troupe gets shirty about standards
A nice cautionary tale of governments opening up data. Part one: don’t over-rotate on the perfect format to have the data in, just put it up on the web and evolve it. Part two: make sure the government understands what “open” means, a hint is that it doesn’t mean using a third-party contractor to gate who gets access to the data. Another interesting note is that while we in the software world love the idea of “release early, release often” or “fail to success,” we have zero tolerance for that approach when it comes to the government. “Beta” and “government” don’t mix well.
There you have it – follow Coté.
Eli Ezeugoh says:
July 22, 2010 at 11:08 pm
I don’t know that government and Beta are that incompatible, unless we are saying that the government needs to be clairvoyant. Personally, I think a more important trait is that they are able to respond quickly to adverse conditions.
Consider also that we already get incomplete or sometimes doctored data from governments even now.
I think to get open data right they need to be able to adopt fail fast. It will be less costly for the tax payer. No?