From our perspective, the most important word in this definition is “freely”. And we pose the question: does this mean that Open Data and Business are incompatible? The short answer: absolutely not.
- OpenCorporates. A large open database of companies in the world.
- Transport API. A digital platform for transport collecting all kinds of transport data, especially in the UK.
- Quandl. A financial and economic data portal.
Another business model around Open Data is to help institution publish their Open Data in a structured way. Such projects are mostly performed for governmental institution:
- Socrata and Junar are cloud platforms that allow government organizations to put their data online.
- Localidata focuses on Location Data, especially in Spain.
- FiWare is an independent, open community to build an open sustainable ecosystem around public, royalty-free and implementation-driven software platform standards.
Once the data is published as Open Data, developers and other companies can then access that data and build value added applications. In the governmental space it is not uncommon for Public Administration to pay for having its data published as Open Data, and then to pay again for an innovative application that uses this Open Data to provide value to citizens (e.g. with information about schools).
Here at LUCA, we’re fascinated by Open Data so watch this space to see more posts and content on the power of opening up data to bring new value to society.
CIPFA is the leading accountancy body for the public services providing education and training in accountancy and financial management. AAT Qualification