The Importance of the Open Data Movement in Government
Tags: Open Data, Govtech, Civictech, Technology, Government

Innovation is often the result of hard work by many people. By opening more of its data to the public, the federal government democratizes the opportunity to contribute, join the dialogue and succeed.

What is the Open Data Movement?

Open data is the concept that data, for the most part, should be freely available to everyone to use.

At the government level, having a policy of open data allows the public to contribute to data sets with their own research or use the data for their own purposes. Examples of open data being used include the support network Patients Like Me, the portal OpenPhillyData.Org, and, Propeller Health which tracks asthma and COPY flare ups and the locations they occur to help patients manage their health.

At Fearless we’ve utilized open data for numerous projects. Working with a Department of Defense customer, Fearless built two applied research prototypes that leverage open source, unclassified data to free up time and resources and further unlock the creative problem-solving potential of intelligence analysts.

Applying best-in-class data science techniques, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML), analysts can use Fearless prototypes to easily query, search, and discover unclassified multimedia data through keyword searches and view the relationships between different data points at a glance.

HUBFinder was initially developed for internal Fearless use. Managing HUBZone certification was a time-consuming process so we developed HUBFinder to fix the problem. Using SBA’s available open data Fearless built a powerful platform capable of automatically crunching data and business calculations that previously had to be performed manually, visualizing users’ HUBZone compliance through streamlined maps and metrics. Our technology has since been incorporated into SBA’s HUBZone mapso all HUBZone and potential HUBZone companies can track their compliance and eligibility.

Brief History of Open Data and the Federal Government

In 2013 a Presidential Executive Order made Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.

“As one vital benefit of open government, making information resources easy to find, accessible, and usable can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific discovery that improves Americans’ lives and contributes significantly to job creation.”

The order highlights the innovations that came from making weather data and the Global Positioning System freely available. The weather newscasts we rely on when planning our week or location-based applications we use daily would not be possible without open data in government.

In 2019, the OPEN Government Data Act was signed into law. The law builds on the 2013 executive order mandating that all non-sensitive government data assets be made available as open, machine-readable data under an open license by default. An agency’s failure to utilize open data can now be considered legally questionable. The law also formalizes a number of open data best practices and establishes a Chief Data Officer for each agency.

What Fearless would like to see next in the open data movement

We urge the incoming administration to build on the work already being done within federal agencies when it comes to open data and further empower the federal government to embrace digital transformation.

There are two components to opening up data and more broadly bringing digital transformation to the federal government and its workforce. The first component is utilizing the right technology, Having the right tech infrastructure will allow an agency to interact with a modern landscape on a technical level. Then there also must be a cultural mindset that is open to transformation and collaboration.

We like using the plays of the US Digital Service Playbook as a guide when working with customers to identify the best tools, practices, and migration strategies to holistically transform their organizations. By aligning the entire organization around a transformation strategy while modernizing and simplifying outdated tools and processes, there is better performance and collaboration.We’re not the only ones who believe in open data. The US Government’s own digital services agency, 18F, affirms that open data democratizes innovation. By giving our fellow citizens access to the data that supports the applications we build, we give them the opportunity to offer their own contributions and join in on the dialogue. We cannot make development decisions for our fellow citizens, we must do it with them.

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