Open Data

Open Data is data that can be freely used, re-used, and redistributed by anyone–subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike. There is broad agreement that geospatial data, health data and transport data is critical for planning and decision making. There is also agreement about the value of data from an economic standpoint. There’s however no common understanding about the economic value of open data.

If society is to derive economic value from Open Data, there is a need to have a common way to determine and express the economic value of Open Data. Establishing a way for Open Data to feature on financial statements of governments would likely increase progress in adopting Open Data as a key component in generating value and harnessing that value from governments, very significant originators of Open Data.

The IEEE Open Data initiative seeks to bring together various players including governments, businesses, academic institutions to develop a common way of determining and expressing the economic value of Open Data. The community is established in South Africa and is initially looking at the regional context, and ideally would like to scale it to the global context if possible.

The activity has outlined four deliverables that can help make the case for Open Data to stakeholders and help grow the ecosystem:

Goal 1: Open Data Economic Value

• Determining the value of a dataset
• Tracing economic value chain in the development of an Open dataset
• Measuring the economic cost of developing open data
• Publishing financial cost of developing and managing open data

Goal 2: Open Data Economic index

• Developing a common reference point for economic contributors to open data
• Developing a public outline of the economic value of open data
• Present Open Data Economic value across governments

Goal 3: Framework for Open Data Economic Value

• Develop framework and proposal for a common standard for measuring Open Data
• Publish the open data economic value framework in Africa and promote application and feedback; feedback from global stakeholders would be welcome.

Goal 4: Open Data Economic Value Standard Proposal

• Develop paper on Open Data economic value framework
• Develop proposal to standardize the framework for Open Data economic value.

We invite a diverse set of participants to join the initial participants from South Africa to join and grow the activity, including local governments and institutions, as well as entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers, and others to help shape the economic value framework.

To learn more about the program and how to join the Open Data activity, please express your interest by sending an inquiry to the activity chair whose information can be found in the Contacts section.