Using Open Data

Research can generate open data, but it can also make use of existing open data. In fact, working with other open data can be a great lesson in learning what makes for a good open workflow in terms of its description, discoverability, and licensing. Open data can provide important training opportunities for coders, scientists, technologists and others who are interested in working on the worlds most difficult problems. Now that we have looked at why open data is valuable and the process for making your own data open, let’s take a look at leveraging others’ open data in a few different contexts.

Open Data in Government

Government-collected data are increasingly being made available and may compliment personally collected data. The core idea behind open government data is a simple one: public data should be a shared resource. It is valuable not only to the government departments that collect it, but also has value for citizens, entrepreneurs, researchers, and other parts of the public sector.

According to the Open Data Barometer, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and South Korea are the leaders in making open data available and accessible. Open government data ranges from legislative data, to census date to crime statistic data. Examples of the types of government generated data that can increasingly be accessed to support discovery and research include:

• Map data
• Land ownership data
• Census data
• Budget
• Legislation
• Transit data
• Crime statistics

Securing government accountability, coordinating action to improve society, and bootstrapping new business ideas can all benefit from access to government data. Yet far too often there are unnecessary technical and legal restrictions that prevent data re-use. Calls for a data revolution are placing renewed attention on ensuring the collection and management of high-quality data around the world, and are driving a focus on the use of new ‘big data’ resources in policymaking. Against this backdrop, questions concerning who has access to data, and whether citizens have the capability and freedom to create, access, and analyze data about their own communities are so important.

Using Open Data to Work on Real-World Problems

The NASA Space Apps Challenge is one example of a governmental agency using open data to work with stakeholders and specialists across various fields and disciplines to come up with innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing issues.

Training the Researchers of the Future with Open Data

With the increasing availability of open data, teachers can plan learning activities using real data, without having to leave the classroom. Using open data in teaching helps to make scientific organizations more transparent, further provides evidence that public money is well spent, and demonstrates scientific knowledge use for society. Open data also affords opportunities for teaching researchers to connect and share experiences, data, and activities. Javiera Atenas et al (2015) “identifies a set of core, discipline-agnostic competencies” that they believe students can acquire using open data sets.

• Critical thinking: Students can understand, verify data, and develop evidence-based arguments across different disciplines.
• Data curation skills: Students can analyze data and present complex reports
• Research skills: Students can compare data from multiple sources and replicate the research
• Statistical literacies: Students can perform statistical operations
• Teamwork skills: Students learn skills to help them collaborate in multidisciplinary research teams
• Global citizenship: Students can critically evaluate and use data to solve local and global challenges

One example of instructors using open data for course assignments comes from Math 210 at the University of British Columbia:

Sections of text on this page were adapted from the World Wide Web Foundation, Open Data Barometer Global Report (Second Edition), 2015, licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 License