Would you like to write a guest blog post explaining more? If yes, please send it via How To Submit A Guest Blog Post to OGP or email it along with a short biog and photo of yourself. If you have any images or video that can accompany the post please share them with us.

Thanks for the post. You may be interested in a more recent economic study done in Australia. It was conducted by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), whom are strategic partners with the Australian Governments’ Open Access and Licensing Framework (AusGOAL). In summary, the study found that for every dollar spent/forgone by government in opening up data, 5 dollars is returned to the economy. In the case of geospatial data, that return is in the order of 1 to 18-26 dollars. These figures are not theoretical, rather they are based on actual departmental figures and comparisons. The study and a summary presentation can be found here: http://ands.org.au/resource/cost-benefit.html

Kind regards,

b

I agree that we are still in the early days of this process, but we still see a lot of potential there. The steps that you describe at points 2 and 3 of your reply are certainly correct, but are just one of the many possible ways in which businesses can use the data. Businesses and private companies can use the freely available data to develop applications, products and services with a commercial value. In other words, they can sell what they have developed on the basis of open data. Public data also enable social enterprises to start and reinforces local economies and small businesses. Businesses can also use the data to better understand their market and customers.

To see in more detail how this logic can work out, you can have a look for instance at the very recent Deloitte’s Open data: Driving growth, ingenuity and innovation http://www.webanalisten.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/uk-insights-deloitte-analytics-open-data-june-2012.pdf. There are many other serious studies out there where everything is explained, such as the European Commission’s 2000 paper “Commercial exploitation of Europe’s public sector information” http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/pira_study/2000_1558_en.pdf.

Thank you for sharing your views. We will take a look at your website and good luck with it!

I understand the three main channels: business innovation (making R&D research more accessible), business creation (businesses which add value to the original public service data) and business efficiency (becoming more efficient through customer insights).

I certainly agree with “business innovation” and “business efficieny”, but I would like to dive deeper in “business creation”.

On a small scale, this is what I see right now:

1. Government starts an ‘open data’ challenge and opens data;
2. Developers use open data to develop new applications;
3. The newly created applications can be downloaded for free on the web (because nobody is going to pay for a government app..).

In this last case, government benefits because they don’t have to invest in expensive applications. Of course, this is great: a huge cost-cut! And this is what government needs in these days of economic crisis.

Hence, the businesses/developers are not bringing in money, so how does this relate to economic growth? I do understand that they create a lot of value, but the applications are free (yes, most of them also without advertisements).

Maybe this is just the way to start? And the predictions in the blogpost are longterm. But right now, I don’t really see the benefits for business creation, apart from their societal value added and their huge contribution to government’s cost reduction. What do you think?

I also would like to invite you to contribute on this topic via: http://www.kroupys.com/12958/How-can-open-data-be-a-driver-of-economic-growth/

I just launched this website and working hard to build a community for social knowledge sharing. Thanks.

Greets, Paul.