Jason Hare's Data Management Blog

Metadata. You may have heard the term before, and may have asked yourself either “what is metadata” or “why is it as important as data?” This article will be an attempt to clear up those two subjects. As this can often be quite dense, let’s jump right in! Metadata can be explained in a few ways: Data that provide  information about other data . Metadata  summarizes basic information about data , making finding & working with particular instances of data easier. Metadata  can be created manually  to be more accurate, or automatically and contain more basic information. In short, metadata are important. I like to answer this “what is metadata” question as such: metadata are a shorthand representation of the data to which they refer. If we use analogies, we can think of metadata as references to data. Think about the last time you searched Google. That search started with the metadata you had in yo...

I didn't want to be vain and write a piece about why I decided to not pursue open data any further. I waited until someone else's reason matched mine. That someone was Mike Bracken! Mike Bracken, whom I respect greatly, summed it up nicely. "I just got tired." He is right. Only those who have done it, managed an IT department, been a police officer or worked in open data know what the pressure is like. My only addition to Mike's words below is that we only have power to open data as much as we have the nerve to push public sector to do so. This is a quote piece from Computer Weekly- the article is written by Bryan Glyck and can be read here: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500251662/Interview-Government-digital-chief-Mike-Bracken-why-I-quit Mike Bracken, the outgoing director of the Government Digital Service, talks exclusively to Computer Weekly about his departure from Whitehall Sometimes what is not said can be just...

Personally identifiable information is more likely when public data is enriched with private data and used in a less-than-transparent manner. This is also known as the “Mosaic Effect”. “Mosaic Effect”, small fact, is a term invented by the intelligence community in the US. No longer do we have transparent government, instead we have transparent citizens. For more information on this etymological footnote, read Victor V. Ramraj’s brilliant book Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy. Public data, Open Data, has been paid for by taxpayers. The data is a public asset and should not be given away to private sector companies that have no transparency requirements. See Ade Adewunmi’s brilliant piece written on the UK’s Government Digital Service Blog for more on this. Also a blog post I wrote based on my work at the White House Open Data Roundtables in regards to data as an asset on the OpenDataSoftblog. The Data Exchange Model Already Includes You. Many years ago I worked as a Vice Pres...

As we saw in our recap of the 2nd White House Open Data Round Table, data quality is crucial to Open Data. But looking further than just this one massive subject, it is also crucial to the growth of Public-Private collaboration through data interoperability. The White House releases Open Data in the context of an asset. “Data as an asset” is encoded on the White House policy of “open by default” detailed in memorandum M13-13. To make possible the release of higher value Open Data to the public, the White House Office of Science and Technology (OST) in conjunction with the Center for Open Data Enterprise, convened four Roundtables. This last Roundtable was on Public-Private Collaboration. OPEN DATA AS AN ASSET The Center for Open Data Enterprise’s own page on the Roundtables states their objectives: Identify Open Data case studies, learned lessons, and best practices across the Federal Government; Strengthen a community of technical, legal, and policy experts in support of Open Data...

This was first published on the OpenDataSoft monthly newsletter. Wanna receive fresh news about data every month?  Sign-up here. Putting 'Access' Back into Open and Accessible France will serve as Lead Chair on the Open Government Partnership steering committee from October 2016. As such, France will host the OGP Summit on December 7, 8 and 9. The agenda for the Global Summit will be based on an open call for proposals. Proposals you can still vote for. Here's ours: Putting 'Access' Back into Open and Accessible Over 60% of datasets hosted on data.gov cannot necessarily be understood and effectively used by a wide range of users. This situation is reflective of a larger problem in Open Data: it is still limited to users with advanced technical skills. If only a small group with technical skills can understand data when they are published in their raw form, can such data be considered 'open'? We believe it is time to bring 'Access...

As much as we would like to have precise data on how users interact with devices, we are not there yet. This is not an in-depth study of analytics methodology but a statement about how I see web analytics used and some of the apples and oranges comparisons I have seen.  To those that practice measuring user behavior online this may seem obvious. To those that rely on reports about user behavior online this may at first be an unsettling opening statement. I have recently come across a few instances where the definitions and nomenclature used by technical and marketing people vary in definition. This has led to some confusion as to what we are measuring, why we are measuring and how we measure. The Business of Data Collection has Changed Online behavior analytics has matured greatly over the past ten years. Architectures involving web services have also evolved from mostly 3-tiered models to n-tiered Serviced Based Architecture (SOA) models. In addition to the shift from dedicate...

The Open Government Partnership was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. I wrote a blog post for the Open Government Partnership in 2013. The post called for an international body, independent of the OGP, to oversee OGP country commitments. At the time I named the Open Data Institute (ODI) as a possible neutral world leading organization to oversee, rank and hold accountable countries that made commitments. 3 years passed and I realize the ODI is not the right vehicle. One of the global NGOs like the World Bank might be a possibility as a watchdog. Open Government: Ambiguity through “Open Washing” I read the Yu and Robinson article “The New Ambiguity of Open Government” a few years ago. I disagree that the edge of open government is going away. Yes there are data sets being published that have nothing to do with accountability. Yes there are Open Data ...