Why bother opening data?
As digitization progresses in virtually all areas, it is prudent to take care of your data and have a plan to manage it. Data in general will make your work more efficient, facilitate teamwork and enable the development and use of new digital services and tools. Open data then allows you to harness the potential of data more broadly and involve third parties in the development of your city or organisation.
Benefits for the public
- Enhanced transparency – better availability and access to information about the functioning of public authorities, for example access to contracts and public procurement;
- Making public administration more efficient and improving quality of life – the public sector informs the public about planned changes and actions through open data, creating greater trust between the citizen and the public authority;
- Control of public administration – published data allows scrutiny of how taxes are managed or the costs of the organisations we support;
- Citizen involvement in decision-making – citizens can participate more informed in the functioning of the state thanks to data and analysis;
- Data journalism – open data is an indispensable source of information for journalists and data analysts;
- Services – on top of open data, specialists create new applications and value-added services that make publicly available data produced by public administration in a new way.
Benefits for the economy
Open data also opens up opportunities in the economic sphere. Companies are using it to design and implement commercial applications and services in various areas (tourism, transport, healthcare, creative and sports business). As a result, new business opportunities and the associated profits and jobs are created in the region/city. As an example, consider the benefits published by the national open data portal:
- €100 billion per year on the institutional side and €450 billion on the client side can be saved by open data for Western economies (McKinsey & comp study),
- £16 billion was generated by the use of public sector data in the UK in 2011, when the government opened over 8,000 datasets (Deloitte 2012),
- £2 billion a year is brought to the UK economy by open data (Rufus Pollock 2011),
- up to €40 billion a year can be brought to the economy in the European Union by open data (EU Study 2011),
- $20 million in savings for California after visitors to a transparency portal pointed out unnecessary costs (Capgemini Consulting Study).
Benefits for data providers
- Reduction in the number of requests under Act No. 106/1999 Coll., – the publication of open data can significantly reduce the number of requests under Act No. 106/1999 Coll. and thus significantly relieve data providers,
- improving the public perception of public administration and public involvement in improving the work of authorities and the public – the public sector informs the public about planned changes and actions through open data, thus creating greater trust between the citizen and the organisation,
- improving public administration processes and data, improving communication and cooperation between public administrations – publishing data in open data format can also help communication between public administrations. The publication of open data can replace the sometimes unnecessarily complex transfer of data between organisations,
- Improving public services / quality of life – the public sector uses open data to inform the public about planned changes and actions, thereby creating greater trust between the citizen and the public authority,
- organising its own data – data analysis, cataloguing and publication will enable the public authority to organise its own data and optimise its own internal processes.
