Digitisation might seem a big change to public servants who are new to the concept, but by international comparisons Australia's public services have barely begun to dip their toes into the digital ocean. While many advanced countries have digitised most or in some cases almost all their government data, Australia lags. Although we still are better than many – especially developing nations with poor IT infrastructure or authoritarian governments – we are far from the forefront among more developed countries.
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A problem is the notion that government "owns" its data and controls access to it, often charging people who want to use it commercially. As communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull was a fierce opponent of this practice, chastising corporate regulator ASIC, for example, in 2014 for putting its data behind a paywall. The revenues that agencies such as ASIC might raise from charging for data are trivial compared with the economic benefits that open, accessible data would drive in terms of entrepreneurial, innovative uses.
The benefits of openness are huge. The economy benefits as entrepreneurs find commercial uses for data and generate activity and employment from those uses. Citizens benefit from having better access to data about their own governments. Not-for-profit bodies – at least, those with access to good analytical tools – can discover from open data where they need to focus their efforts to improve social outcomes for their members or clients. The costs of making data open are comparatively trivial; the barriers are primarily the cultural ones of risk aversion, legalism and fear of the unknown. The government – certainly the Prime Minister, Turnbull – gets it. What is needed now is to overcome the cultural barriers in the middle ranks where data is held close and openness feared.
The idea that government agencies own their data stands in contrast to the United States' deep philosophical commitment to the principle that if taxpayers pay for data then taxpayers own it and are entitled to free and open access. The default setting is that government-funded research, data and analysis is published online, in an open format. Of course, bureaucratic tendencies towards secrecy and the legacies of closed systems apply there, too. US data could still be more open. Last week, President Barack Obama released the latest Open Government National Action Plan. It is the third in a series of initiatives aimed at greater openness. Among the improvements in this third plan is release of underlying budget data information in machine-readable format. The US government's own links encourage users to manipulate the data on the private sector's (unfortunately named) GitHub site.
Recently, at a gathering of economists at the Australian National University, someone asked why it was so hard for articles with Australian content to be published in leading international journals. The answer from a very well-qualified professor in the room was surprising. It was not – as many assume - that Australia is considered unimportant in the US-dominated world of academic journals. Norway, a country with a smaller economy than ours, is regularly featured in US economics journals. The difference was data. Norway has highly open government datasets, which make it possible for academics to do leading-edge analysis and present information in ways that are new and interesting for the rest of the world. Not only do Norwegian academics find publication easier, but other academics around the world can use online Norwegian data to develop new ideas. By comparison, Australian government data is closed, limited and thus boring.
That would be a familiar theme for Baden Appleyard, who runs AusGOAL (the Australian Government Open Access and Licensing framework), an organisation dedicated to making government data more open. He believes we could do much more to improve access. We lack suitable policies on copyright and information management within government agencies. Mostly, though, barriers to openness arise from practice: use of restrictive licences, fear of publicity and aversion to companies using government data for profit.
Some data is available: go to data.gov.au to find thousands of datasets open to public access. It is a useful initiative in response to the Government 2.0 Taskforce report. It is, however, limited. Many federal agencies don't put their data (especially their more interesting data) on the site, and it mostlt omits state government data. These are huge gaps for users that limit the site's usefulness.
A key cultural barrier is the apparent attitude in government that entrepreneurs making use of government data for commercial purposes is immoral. Take a simple example: the national public toilet map. It is a useful tool for people who need it. The catch is in the copyright section at the end: 22 lines of legalese, including references to using it only for non-commercial uses and the threatening words "you are not permitted to retransmit, distribute or commercialise the information ... without seeking prior written approval from the Commonwealth". Why not? Who would be hurt if some entrepreneur used the information to make money?
There are thousands of similar legal clauses on multiple government websites that prohibit commercial uses of data. This ignores one of the most fundamental drivers of innovation: entrepreneurs' chance to make some money from their bright ideas. No one loses. The government still has the original data, the business makes money, and its customers have a new product or service that uses data in original ways.
At the federal level, the blame often lies not with the department that maintains the dataset but with other governments at state, territory or local level that themselves provided the data on restrictive conditions. As Appleyard notes, the Commonwealth is a big aggregator of data, so it can inherit restrictive conditions. The more of these that apply, the harder it is for anyone to make innovative use of data.
The three areas where access to data would be of most clear and obvious benefit are in health, education and the economy. Data in these areas is rarely open. Results or analysis might be published, in the form of printed government reports, but the underlying data is kept off limits. So, for example, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare produces excellent analysis based on data made available to it by other jurisdictions, frequently under conditions that prohibit public access to the datasets.
By contrast, in Britain, health data is comprehensive and open, even down to doctors' prescribing practices and patients' illnesses (see hsic.gov.uk). The objection that this invades patient privacy is spurious: such data is easily made anonymous, it is little more effort than the click of a button. Ministers needed to drive that change – British health officials resisted but were made to open up. It is way ahead of Australia but may go even further. Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, while acknowledging privacy concerns, has called for individual patient data to be made public due to the enormous benefits to clinical trials and better medicine.
The same could be said of datasets in tax, education, corporate regulation, land valuations and a myriad other areas. Privacy is often raised as the objection to making data open; an excuse, not a good reason to keep data closed. Technology has moved on; today, coding to keep personal data anonymous is child's play (although lack of understanding of coding in government departments is a whole other story).
Once data is made open, there is no telling what exciting and innovative uses might be made of it. This, of course, is another barrier for those public servants who avoid risk. They don't know what might be done with the data, it is unpredictable, so they prefer to restrict access or impose licence conditions to ensure they retain control. That is inimical to innovation. To those public servants, you need to give up control so others can find uses for your data that you never thought of.
Stephen Bartos is a former senior public servant. stephenbartos@fastmail.fm
