On the open government mailing list, my friend Thomas Lord made an observation about the ownership and management of the data generated by our engagement with mashups of services that we tend to assume are "free".  The key insight is a trend toward privitization of access through the pre-eminence in the marketplace of these services, which results in the removal of public sector alternatives or a diminuation of incentives to create public services. 

I asked for permission to cite his thoughts in full, and he graciously agreed.  There are ramifications for most online services, such as Google Books, which are rarely considered.  Obviously these commercial services are useful, often enlightening, but we need to define and exert expectations for privacy and management of these data.

Below, then, his words -

[W]hat about those increasingly popular "crime maps"?   They take public data from the police and, via "mash-ups", not only format and deliver that data to Google, but also deliver a real-time history of interest in that data.   Does an upward trend in detailed exploration of a crime map by IP addresses correlated with the region indicate a rising concern about crime that suggests an upward trend in crime and degradation of the neighborhood?  Or is it just mass hysteria?   Or just a spike curiosity or civic engagement?  The metaphysically true answers to such questions may matter less than how those in possession of the intel treat it:  If lenders decide "that probably means property values there are shaky" then that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It would be harder and more expensive to build the same functionality for citizens in a less (not un-) exploitable way.   For example, in mash-ups, data is formatted and given to Google and a fine-grained record of clickstreams is formatted and given to Google.   An alternative is for a jurisdiction to host its own servers, use its own maps, and avoid Google altogether.

There is a principle here, therefore:

Making open data more accessible to software does not make the data "more open" if the new uses that are created can only be created by immediately combining the data with proprietary data and services. That's a privatization of a civic function, not an "opening".

The crime map services are not a democratization of access to the data: they are a privatization of asymmetric, preferential access to the data.

See it?

Prior to these maps the main way that neighborhood crime data propagated in Berkeley was through registered neighborhood groups, each of whom got police department contacts in exchange for their registration.   It was a two-way channel between all the stake-holders.

The rush to put data on-line and perhaps turn a quick buck or get some resume fodder with a mash-up has helped to sever the two-way channel and meanwhile invited in Google, marketers, and others to lurk around and spy on the propagation of the information.

-t

(C) Copyright 2008, Thomas Lord (lord [at] emf dot n-e-t)

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