Do you trust open data?

Submitted by jptarrant on Thu, 21/02/2013 - 11:43

Hello, all.

I'm researching levels of public trust in UK government-published open data. This is for a Master's at City University London. I'm looking to make contact with experts and professionals who regularly use open data in the course of their work. I'm also running a short survey.

If any of you fall into the expert/professional category, I'd be very grateful if you could do the survey. It's quite short. 

http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublishes.asp?k=D5U3QQGASM7K 

I'm also talking to and surveying members of the public to see if they trust government data generally and talking to people who are involved in publishing open data on local authority websites. So: publishers, experts and the non-expert public. 

I'll be happy to share findings once I close the surveys, if anyone is curious about levels of trust. 

Lastly, apols to anyone who considers this message to be spam. I know it's a bit contentious on the site at present. 

Regards,

Joe Tarrant

PS: don't forget the survey! :-) 

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Comments

Open data and trustworthiness

Posted by Owen Boswarva on Thu, 21/02/2013 - 19:10

Hi Joe,

Thanks for posting this. Your reseach is certainly on topic for this forum. I don't think anyone is likely to mistake it for spam. There seems to have been an uptick in academic interest in open data lately, and I think we all welcome that.

I probably fall within the expert/professional category, depending on your definitions, so have submitted a survey response. Please feel free to e-mail me if you want any additional comments. My background is in data modelling for the insurance industry, which involves (among other things) researching and licensing input datasets from both open and commercial sources. In a personal capacity I also sometimes agitate to unlock specific public data assets via FOI, the ODUG process and other channels.

I did struggle a bit with some of your survey questions. I think it's difficult to generalise about the "trustworthiness" of open data. That really depends on the individual dataset and publisher. Aside from some procurement factors, the criteria I would apply in assessing the trustworthiness of an open dataset are pretty much the same as those I would apply to a closed or commercial dataset.

One point you might consider is that many professionals involved in evaluating open datasets do not consider themselves open data experts per se. "Open data" is mainly a licensing concept. Particularly in industry, the data professionals who evaluate whether a dataset is "fit for purpose" might not be involved at all in the acquisition of that data -- so the distinction between "open" and "closed" data may not occur on them. If you specifically canvass self-identified open data experts you will probably find yourself talking to IT developers and entrepreneurs, but miss the heavy analytic users of government data.

-- Owen Boswarva, 21/02/2013 

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Survey

Posted by jptarrant on Thu, 21/02/2013 - 20:01

Thanks, Owen. At this point, I'm happy to talk to anyone who knows more than I do. I don't have many contacts in the industry so all responses are good responses, to that extent.

Thanks for doing the survey. 

Regards,

Joe Tarrant 

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Do you trust

Posted by judith101 on Wed, 02/10/2013 - 12:45

Hi Joe

Just joined and was interested in your project. I too am Master's student doing a project about open data - not specifically about trust or trustworthiness. I saw a TED about that recently! Prob should be classed as interested not expert. Anyway how did your survey go and from what angle are you looking at this? That is what discipline.

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