A lot of discussions about using open government data centre on building things. Data.gov.uk for example lists ‘Apps’ created with the data, and there are many application competitions, local and national, inviting ideas for what should be developed next.
However, skimming through some the early responses into the Open Data Impacts survey, whilst the majority of examples of open data use given are about building something, there are a number of examples where data users have not built anything at all.
Instead, they’ve downloaded the data – looked at if – and understood something better. Or they’ve queried the data and then used it to support decision making in their own organisation or community. Or they have looked for a relationship between two datasets, and then blogged about the finding.
The first two examples here may never have any presence online, or ‘application’ to point at – but as uses of open government data, have the potential to have as much impact as a general purpose web-tool.
(BTW: The survey is still open until the end of May, and if you’ve not yet responded then please do…)
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