Tim Davies - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Tim Davies
Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation... more Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation. Yet little is known about the detailed processes of how hackers create or reshape services out of new releases of public datasets, and the conditions for the move from data release to service innovation. We argue the utility of open data is accrued through the creation of new artifacts with enhanced performativity transformed by human and material agency. In a multimethod study of the open data hackers in the UK we identified a series of interlocking processes involved in the conversion of public data into services of public value. We found that few of the ‘rapid prototypes ’ developed through hack day events are maintained or sustained as service innovations beyond those events. Five artifacts provided the value stack of complementarities: cleaned data available through APIs or bulk downloads, linkable data, shared source code and configuration, source code repositories, and web techn...
The Journal of Community Informatics, 2016
Open data has rapidly moved from being a niche interest, to being part of the global policy mains... more Open data has rapidly moved from being a niche interest, to being part of the global policy mainstream. Government-led open data initiatives have spread across the globe, and civil society or technologist experiments using data to improve governance have been spreading organically, from budget monitoring in Nigeria, to court transparency projects in Argentina. It is increasingly seen as enabler of a “data revolution” in the process of decision-making and accountability. However, understanding how experience of open data will vary from country to country and context to context, and, understanding the common features of open data that are shaping its implementation in these diverse settings, requires broad-based research framework. It requires research that can engage with both existing realities of decision-making in sectors, acknowledging the growing complexity of this process in an increasingly networked society. In this paper we have reviewed the framework of the “Open Data in De...
Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference on - WebSci '13, 2013
Under the UK government's open government data (OGD) initiative, departments have been encouraged... more Under the UK government's open government data (OGD) initiative, departments have been encouraged to make nonpersonal government held datasets available online under open licenses and in standard formats, enabling the re-use of data to support transparency and accountability, improved public services and innovation and economic growth. This policy covers a wide range of government datasets, from core reference data and regularly collected performance indicators, to one-off research commissioned to support policy making. In arguments for open data, government datasets are commonly treated as if they are pre-existing artifacts waiting to be transferred from their current locations locked away on government hard drives, to public availability on websites and data-portals. However, in practice, many datasets are constructed in the process of being opened: whether as combinations of source material, or as derivative extracts of internal data systems. In this short paper we present a brief case study of one instance of open data release, focusing on a dataset related to the 'Digital Landscape Research' published in 2012 alongside a new Government Digital Strategy. We explore different factors influencing how the data came to be published, and question whether a simple call for 'raw data' best serves the cause of promoting data re-use.
JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 2014
Open data has been given a lot of attention in the public. In some situation ‘open by default’ ha... more Open data has been given a lot of attention in the public. In some situation ‘open by default’ has become established as a core principle, whereas others argue about the limited results and the lack of robust studies demonstrating the value, and point to the risk that open data might turn out to be a short lived policy fad. This special issue contains a variety of research papers addressing this topic from different views and providing recent research results on open data. The papers in this issue deepen the understanding of open data and show that the subject of open data is moving from the general to the study of specifics. The special issue also includes invited papers presented at the first public meeting of the SharePSI project. Share-PSI 2.0 is the European network for the exchange of experience and ideas around implementing open data policies in the public sector.
U4 Issue, 2014
Governments adopt anti-corruption-related ICT innovations for many reasons. Different motivations... more Governments adopt anti-corruption-related ICT innovations for many reasons. Different motivations for adopting these technologies shape the way they are put into practice and the anti-corruption impacts they may have. ICT for anti-corruption should not be understood as a single approach, since different technologies, and different modes of technology adoption, create different dynamics. Whether or not a particular ICT can bring anti-corruption benefits will depend upon the design of a specific implementation, the incentives driving its adoption, and the wider context in which it is applied. This issue paper raises critical questions for policy makers, funders, and advocates to consider when seeking positive anti-corruption impacts from ICTs.
Who would reject the idea of a democratic and responsive government? Digital era technologies hav... more Who would reject the idea of a democratic and responsive government? Digital era technologies have promised both to make government more responsive to citizen needs, and to revitalise flagging democratic structures. However, just as liberal and democracy were not always terms spoken in the same breath (Dryzek and Dunleavy, 2009), caution should be exercised before running together 'responsive'and 'democratic'government without critically assessing exactly what forms of responsiveness, and what forms of ...
Strong claims have been made for the potential benefits to be derived from government open data i... more Strong claims have been made for the potential benefits to be derived from government open data initiatives: from open data fuelled economic growth, to stronger democratic accountability and improved delivery of public services (33; 16; 11; 22; 15; 21). Activists have called on governments to free our data (1) and provide raw data now (3). Open data initiatives are conventionally presented with the primary role of governments being to remove the legal and technical barriers that have previously restricted access to ...
The Social Life of Data Pilot will develop and apply a draft methodology for a dataset centric st... more The Social Life of Data Pilot will develop and apply a draft methodology for a dataset centric study of open data in the context of a pilot project looking at the re-use of data published through the International Aid Transparency Initiative. The research is framed by two sets of questions reflecting the methodological and applied research concerns:
Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation... more Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation. Yet little is known about the detailed processes of how hackers create or reshape services out of new releases of public datasets, and the conditions for the move from data release to service innovation. We argue the utility of open data is accrued through the creation of new artifacts with enhanced performativity transformed by human and material agency. In a multimethod study of the open data hackers in the UK we identified a ...
… Research Report. The …, 2008
This report draws upon evidence from the literature, a survey of 120 youth work managers and prac... more This report draws upon evidence from the literature, a survey of 120 youth work managers and practitioners, and a series of focus groups. It offers a survey of the current online social networking landscape, sets out the evidence on opportunity and risks for young people arising from ...
IDS Bulletin, 2012
Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, t... more Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, to research, to operational project statistics) online in standard formats and without restrictions on reuse. A number of open datasets are published as linked data, creating a web of connected datasets. Governments, companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the world are increasingly exploring how the publication and use of open and linked data can have impacts on governance, economic growth and the delivery of services. This article outlines the historical, social and technical trajectories that have led to current interest in, and practices around, open data. Drawing on three example cases of working with open and linked data it takes a critical look at issues that development sector knowledge intermediaries may need to engage with to ensure the socio-technical innovations of open and linked data work in the interests of greater diversity and better development practice. "Our assumption is that … building openness into polices and technologies will result in greater opportunities for developing countries to transform into equitable and sustainable knowledge societies." (Smith & Elder, 2010) "… for "open data" to have a meaningful and supportive impact on the poor and marginalized, direct
Its been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thous... more Its been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thousands of programmes and projects around the world have worked to open data and use it to address a myriad of social and economic challenges. Meanwhile, issues related to data rights and privacy have moved to the centre of public and political discourse. As the open data movement enters a new phase in its evolution, shifting to target real-world problems and embed open data thinking into other existing or emerging communities of practice, big questions still remain. How will open data initiatives respond to new concerns about privacy, inclusion, and artificial intelligence? And what can we learn from the last decade in order to deliver impact where it is most needed? The State of Open Data brings together over 60 authors from around the world to address these questions and to take stock of the real progress made to date across sectors and around the world, uncovering the issues that will s...
Governments are increasingly making their data available online in standard formats and under lic... more Governments are increasingly making their data available online in standard formats and under licenses that permit the free re-use of data. The justifications advanced for this include claims regarding the economic potential of open government data (OGD), the potential for OGD to promote transparency and accountability of government and the role of OGD in supporting the reform and reshaping of public services. This paper takes a pragmatic mixed-methods approach to exploring uses of data from the UK national open government data portal, data.gov.uk, and identifies how the emerging practices of OGD use are developing. It sets out five ‘processes’ of data use, and describes a series of embedded cases of education OGD use, and use of public-spending OGD. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data it presents an outline account of the motivations driving different individuals to engage with open government data, and it identifies a range of connections between open government data us...
Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation... more Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation. Yet little is known about the detailed processes of how hackers create or reshape services out of new releases of public datasets, and the conditions for the move from data release to service innovation. We argue the utility of open data is accrued through the creation of new artifacts with enhanced performativity transformed by human and material agency. In a multimethod study of the open data hackers in the UK we identified a series of interlocking processes involved in the conversion of public data into services of public value. We found that few of the ‘rapid prototypes ’ developed through hack day events are maintained or sustained as service innovations beyond those events. Five artifacts provided the value stack of complementarities: cleaned data available through APIs or bulk downloads, linkable data, shared source code and configuration, source code repositories, and web techn...
The Journal of Community Informatics, 2016
Open data has rapidly moved from being a niche interest, to being part of the global policy mains... more Open data has rapidly moved from being a niche interest, to being part of the global policy mainstream. Government-led open data initiatives have spread across the globe, and civil society or technologist experiments using data to improve governance have been spreading organically, from budget monitoring in Nigeria, to court transparency projects in Argentina. It is increasingly seen as enabler of a “data revolution” in the process of decision-making and accountability. However, understanding how experience of open data will vary from country to country and context to context, and, understanding the common features of open data that are shaping its implementation in these diverse settings, requires broad-based research framework. It requires research that can engage with both existing realities of decision-making in sectors, acknowledging the growing complexity of this process in an increasingly networked society. In this paper we have reviewed the framework of the “Open Data in De...
Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference on - WebSci '13, 2013
Under the UK government's open government data (OGD) initiative, departments have been encouraged... more Under the UK government's open government data (OGD) initiative, departments have been encouraged to make nonpersonal government held datasets available online under open licenses and in standard formats, enabling the re-use of data to support transparency and accountability, improved public services and innovation and economic growth. This policy covers a wide range of government datasets, from core reference data and regularly collected performance indicators, to one-off research commissioned to support policy making. In arguments for open data, government datasets are commonly treated as if they are pre-existing artifacts waiting to be transferred from their current locations locked away on government hard drives, to public availability on websites and data-portals. However, in practice, many datasets are constructed in the process of being opened: whether as combinations of source material, or as derivative extracts of internal data systems. In this short paper we present a brief case study of one instance of open data release, focusing on a dataset related to the 'Digital Landscape Research' published in 2012 alongside a new Government Digital Strategy. We explore different factors influencing how the data came to be published, and question whether a simple call for 'raw data' best serves the cause of promoting data re-use.
JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 2014
Open data has been given a lot of attention in the public. In some situation ‘open by default’ ha... more Open data has been given a lot of attention in the public. In some situation ‘open by default’ has become established as a core principle, whereas others argue about the limited results and the lack of robust studies demonstrating the value, and point to the risk that open data might turn out to be a short lived policy fad. This special issue contains a variety of research papers addressing this topic from different views and providing recent research results on open data. The papers in this issue deepen the understanding of open data and show that the subject of open data is moving from the general to the study of specifics. The special issue also includes invited papers presented at the first public meeting of the SharePSI project. Share-PSI 2.0 is the European network for the exchange of experience and ideas around implementing open data policies in the public sector.
U4 Issue, 2014
Governments adopt anti-corruption-related ICT innovations for many reasons. Different motivations... more Governments adopt anti-corruption-related ICT innovations for many reasons. Different motivations for adopting these technologies shape the way they are put into practice and the anti-corruption impacts they may have. ICT for anti-corruption should not be understood as a single approach, since different technologies, and different modes of technology adoption, create different dynamics. Whether or not a particular ICT can bring anti-corruption benefits will depend upon the design of a specific implementation, the incentives driving its adoption, and the wider context in which it is applied. This issue paper raises critical questions for policy makers, funders, and advocates to consider when seeking positive anti-corruption impacts from ICTs.
Who would reject the idea of a democratic and responsive government? Digital era technologies hav... more Who would reject the idea of a democratic and responsive government? Digital era technologies have promised both to make government more responsive to citizen needs, and to revitalise flagging democratic structures. However, just as liberal and democracy were not always terms spoken in the same breath (Dryzek and Dunleavy, 2009), caution should be exercised before running together 'responsive'and 'democratic'government without critically assessing exactly what forms of responsiveness, and what forms of ...
Strong claims have been made for the potential benefits to be derived from government open data i... more Strong claims have been made for the potential benefits to be derived from government open data initiatives: from open data fuelled economic growth, to stronger democratic accountability and improved delivery of public services (33; 16; 11; 22; 15; 21). Activists have called on governments to free our data (1) and provide raw data now (3). Open data initiatives are conventionally presented with the primary role of governments being to remove the legal and technical barriers that have previously restricted access to ...
The Social Life of Data Pilot will develop and apply a draft methodology for a dataset centric st... more The Social Life of Data Pilot will develop and apply a draft methodology for a dataset centric study of open data in the context of a pilot project looking at the re-use of data published through the International Aid Transparency Initiative. The research is framed by two sets of questions reflecting the methodological and applied research concerns:
Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation... more Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation. Yet little is known about the detailed processes of how hackers create or reshape services out of new releases of public datasets, and the conditions for the move from data release to service innovation. We argue the utility of open data is accrued through the creation of new artifacts with enhanced performativity transformed by human and material agency. In a multimethod study of the open data hackers in the UK we identified a ...
… Research Report. The …, 2008
This report draws upon evidence from the literature, a survey of 120 youth work managers and prac... more This report draws upon evidence from the literature, a survey of 120 youth work managers and practitioners, and a series of focus groups. It offers a survey of the current online social networking landscape, sets out the evidence on opportunity and risks for young people arising from ...
IDS Bulletin, 2012
Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, t... more Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, to research, to operational project statistics) online in standard formats and without restrictions on reuse. A number of open datasets are published as linked data, creating a web of connected datasets. Governments, companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the world are increasingly exploring how the publication and use of open and linked data can have impacts on governance, economic growth and the delivery of services. This article outlines the historical, social and technical trajectories that have led to current interest in, and practices around, open data. Drawing on three example cases of working with open and linked data it takes a critical look at issues that development sector knowledge intermediaries may need to engage with to ensure the socio-technical innovations of open and linked data work in the interests of greater diversity and better development practice. "Our assumption is that … building openness into polices and technologies will result in greater opportunities for developing countries to transform into equitable and sustainable knowledge societies." (Smith & Elder, 2010) "… for "open data" to have a meaningful and supportive impact on the poor and marginalized, direct
Its been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thous... more Its been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thousands of programmes and projects around the world have worked to open data and use it to address a myriad of social and economic challenges. Meanwhile, issues related to data rights and privacy have moved to the centre of public and political discourse. As the open data movement enters a new phase in its evolution, shifting to target real-world problems and embed open data thinking into other existing or emerging communities of practice, big questions still remain. How will open data initiatives respond to new concerns about privacy, inclusion, and artificial intelligence? And what can we learn from the last decade in order to deliver impact where it is most needed? The State of Open Data brings together over 60 authors from around the world to address these questions and to take stock of the real progress made to date across sectors and around the world, uncovering the issues that will s...
Governments are increasingly making their data available online in standard formats and under lic... more Governments are increasingly making their data available online in standard formats and under licenses that permit the free re-use of data. The justifications advanced for this include claims regarding the economic potential of open government data (OGD), the potential for OGD to promote transparency and accountability of government and the role of OGD in supporting the reform and reshaping of public services. This paper takes a pragmatic mixed-methods approach to exploring uses of data from the UK national open government data portal, data.gov.uk, and identifies how the emerging practices of OGD use are developing. It sets out five ‘processes’ of data use, and describes a series of embedded cases of education OGD use, and use of public-spending OGD. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data it presents an outline account of the motivations driving different individuals to engage with open government data, and it identifies a range of connections between open government data us...