| title | permalink |
|---|---|
Obstacles |
/Obstacles/ |
- "Not my job"
- Privacy
- Legal liability / policy issues
- Lack of resources to put data online
- Not a high enough priority
- Agency politics
- PR and press management for contentious data
- Concern that media requests will be overwhelming
- Not enough confidence in the accuracy of the data to display it
- More work while resources are being cut (priority)
- Embarrassment
- Job security
- Entrenched practices
- Naysayers
- Costs / entrenched vendor
- Not enough staff/vendor time
- Technical / systems obstacles
- Paper records
- Digital divide
- Messy data
- Being embarrassed by messy or dirty data is a valid and instinctual gut reaction to opening up. Whether it is source or data, people instinctually worry about the quality of what they're releasing. But more often than not, releasing opening up your data helps you improve product quality and reduce your costs. It all depends on how you talk about it.
- Concern about being attacked for inaccurate data that the current custodians inherited is probably more of a concern than embarrassment.
- Raw, messy data is OK-- of course you, as a government agency should be working hard to improve the quality of data coming into your agency, but if you work with your outside stakeholders, they can help you pinpoint problems with your data intake issues, and help come up with better solutions for publishing data in a more clean way. Stakeholders aren't your enemy, they're your friend. Going "open" is a scary first step, but if you work with your stakeholders and your community to iterate with them, you'll find that you'll probably improve your own access to your data streams.