Data

Next up 3 short talks about data

1. Technical director of Open Data Institute On Adapting to an Open Data World

What is open data?
Data for everyone, not limited by funding, who you are, or what you intend to do with it.
ata that is reusable, published with a permissive licence, machine readable in standard format, reliable and trustworthy.
Has to be good enough quality to base decisions on.

Accountability - citizens expect to know more.
Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.. Right to have data behind an FoI response in a machine readable form so you can analyse it yourself.
Move to more transparency, eg Tesco website with detailed information about all of their products. ( can't help thinking this might not be the best example following the horse meat scandal :-))

Open data can help with efficiencies. Can inform key activities, make better decisions.
Also improves collaboration eg open street map, legislation.gov.uk
To get the best out of open data, have to engage a community around it.
Use of open data requires tools - publication, analysis, visualisation, interactive guides, questionnaires.
Better quality data is easier to reuse. Need to focus on quality that makes a difference.
Open Data Institute trying to help organisations who are publishing and consuming data.
They run short course, lectures, on- line guides, training and consultancy.

2. Head of public sector consulting from IPL talking about Data Headaches.
Total amount of global data grew to 2.7 zetabytes during 2012, increase of 48%. Not just structured data anymore, mainly unstructured. Digital by default can only mean one thing, more data. Double edged sword. Online delivery of services cuts cots, but there is a cost in managing the data produced. Not solely a technology issue, requires people with the right skills.
People need to be skilled in information management and this requires a culture change, it not something that "IT can do".
Regulation and legislation provide the stick ( CEOs can go to jail). That's OK then as long as its not CIOs......
IM basics, housekeeping, metadata, quality. Everyone should be responsible for this on their own data. Think deleting emails. :-)

But, will need specialists to manage specialist data. Need skills in:
Assurance, data quality, master data management
Retention, records management, archiving, digital continuity (maintaining access in the future)
Finding, enterprise searching.

To get true value out of data, need not just to store it, but to analyse it. Trend analysis, predictive analysis, performance analysis.
Data visualisation with dashboards, heat maps, bubblemaps.
Layering data, eg with GIS.
Need people with skills in data analytics, and information designers to exploit the data in a good presentation layer.

Can ignore it, only going to get worse, have to do something about it- asset management is critical!

3. Independent consultant talking about legal aspects of data and cloud services

Legal risks of new technologies not just technological, but reputational.
All very contextual, and little certainty in this area.
All countries have different laws, but is a lot of guidance available.
Interesting clarification on whether data has to be kept in UK ( it doesn't).
Her view is that all personal data has to be kept in European Economic Area. Doesn't fit with our view. Hasn't mentioned safe harbor. In a question asked at the end it was acknowledged that it does apply.

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