What are the commercial values of government data disclosure?

great commercial value of government data disclosure

8:37 on June 8, 213? Author: Feng Xuming's data about air quality and noise from the Internet

can be used to estimate house prices, and hotel recommendation websites such as Yelp and Public Comment can also be included in the health and quarantine assessment of quality supervision departments. These, in turn, will promote environmental governance and encourage hotels to improve hygiene standards.

if buried in archives, data will always be just a pile of data; If it is placed on an open platform, it may be deeply mined and turned into useful information. If buried in archives, data will always be just a pile of data; If it is placed on an open platform, it may be deeply mined and turned into useful information.

"The earliest cities in human history were born by the river, and rivers provided food, water and transportation for human beings. What we have to do is to create a river of data to nourish the development of the information economy. "

how romantic and profound! This sentence is a slogan I saw on the homepage of a website in new york. This website is dedicated to building a platform for data exchange, exchange and sharing, including all kinds of public data released by New York City Government and non-public data released by private institutions and enterprises. Anyone can search, view, download and use these data. Although it has just been established, many applications relying on it have been born.

sensitive to the development trend of big data, the author took the time to do some research and found that there are nearly ten websites like this in new york. On this basis, there are hundreds of websites and innovative teams that conduct data analysis and specific application development.

Open Data Act

On February 29th, 212, new york City passed the Open Data Act, which came into effect after being signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on March 7th. This is the first time in American history that large-scale opening of government data has been incorporated into legislation.

According to the Open Data Act, by 218, all data owned by the New York City Government and its branches must be open to the public, except those related to security and privacy. Moreover, it is stipulated that the use of these data does not need to go through any registration and approval procedures, and the use of data is not restricted. (An interesting digression is that Michael Bloomberg himself is naturally sensitive to data, and his successful experience also benefits from data. He is the founder of Bloomberg Consulting, a world-famous financial information group.

March this year marks the first anniversary of the entry into force of the bill, and it is also the deadline for the first phase of the bill-all the data that have been opened to the public in various departments are included in a unified network portal, and are made available on the Internet in a user-friendly and machine-readable form. By September this year, more than 8 departments under the jurisdiction of the municipal government need to work out their own plans in order to achieve the final goal of 218.

new york's actions are of great significance. After all, laws have a mandatory role, which is more stable and long-term than administrative orders. At the same time, it can also play an exemplary role in other regions. San Francisco, located in the western United States, also started a similar open data work. With the support of Silicon Valley's rich innovation atmosphere, a large number of new applications based on government open data were born in a short time.

Recently, the Obama administration has also signed the Open Data Act. The author thinks that new york's legislation and its practice are likely to become the standard of government open data in the future, which can be used for reference and imitation by other regions and countries.

open data platform

The author recently logged into the open data platform in new york and found that 29 sets of data have been online. This includes not only historical data such as demographic information, electricity consumption, criminal records, teaching evaluation of primary and secondary schools by postal code, but also dynamic real-time operation data of subway bus system. It includes not only data closely related to public life, such as community noise index, parking space information, housing rental and sales, tourist attractions summary, but also data closely related to business, such as hotel hygiene inspection and basic information of registered companies. Among all the data, the most concerned data is the location data of Wifi hotspots, which has been accessed more than 37, times.

new york also encourages the public to view and use these data in various forms. For the data that is not available on the open data platform, the public can make suggestions to express their needs, and there will be special staff to analyze and answer these needs. There was an application developer who wanted to get the crime rate data specific to the community level. Although this data has not been opened on the open platform at present, the staff found that the data in pdf format can be obtained from the new york Police Department and provided a link.

An open data platform can improve the efficiency of social operation

In the traditional sense, people often only associate public information disclosure with improving government transparency. But in fact, the significance of opening public data is far more than that. If buried in the archives, the data can only be a pile of data forever; If it is placed on an open platform, it may be deeply mined and turned into useful information. The dissemination of more effective information can usually make the society run more efficiently.

Like many cities, new york is also plagued by traffic congestion, public security and urban sanitation. For example, social security was once the most difficult problem for the New York City Government, and a large amount of financial funds were spent on police and police equipment every year. With the opening of detailed criminal record data, not only have mobile phone applications been developed to remind the public to avoid entering crime-prone areas and improve their vigilance, thus reducing the probability of crime; But also can combine criminal record information with dynamic traffic data to guide the deployment of police force.

after the publication of the dynamic data of the public transportation system, many scholars and commercial organizations appeared to dig it deeply. It not only creates a mobile phone application to provide real-time advice for public travel, but also puts forward a better scheme for the deployment of the subway system during the peak hours of passenger flow and between hot stations and ordinary stations. These are unimaginable in the case that the police station or the transportation department monopolized the data respectively.

Stimulate great commercial value

In addition to improving the efficiency of social operation, the open data platform also contains great commercial value. Data on air quality and noise can be used to estimate house prices, and hotel recommendation websites such as Yelp and Public Comment can also be included in the health quarantine assessment of quality supervision departments. These, in turn, will promote environmental governance and encourage hotels to improve hygiene standards.

in addition, the open data platform can also stimulate innovation. The reason is very simple, because most of the data collected by the government are directly and closely related to the daily life of the public, which often stimulates people's curiosity and is of great mining value. The practice in new york has proved that an open data platform will attract the attention of a large number of high-tech talents and enterprises, and stimulate cutting-edge innovation and application. Although it was established only one year ago, there are hundreds of application development teams around new york's open data platform.

a comparable example is the opening of GPS (global positioning system). In 1983, the United States opened the satellite positioning system GPS originally used for military use to the public, and after 2, the restrictions on the accuracy of civil GPS were lifted. From car navigation and precision farming to logistics and communication, GPS has not only served production and life, but also created a large number of jobs. It is estimated that about 3 million jobs in the United States alone depend on GPS.

unlock the key to "smart city"

"smart city" is a very popular concept in recent years. However, the author believes that the model of "government promotion+consulting company" is unlikely to become the leading force in building smart cities in the future.

the essence of building a smart city is to promote the city to a higher level of information development, and its most effective driving force must be countless active individuals. Only a large number of individuals can realize the continuous creative and in-depth mining and application of social operation information. All the public departments need to do is to build and maintain an open data platform.

new york has initially established an "ecosystem" based on urban social operation data. Although this ecosystem is still very simple, it is the most real and promising practice of "smart city" so far.

At the bottom of the ecosystem are the traditional economy and its participants, including individuals, families and enterprises, who are producers of urban data. These data from economic individuals are collected and summarized through two types of institutions-traditional data collectors (such as government departments, telecom operators and financial institutions) and emerging data collectors (such as social platforms like facebook and search engines like Google). The upper level is the core strength of smart city-data analysts and developers, where wisdom flashes, including a large number of innovative development teams and small and medium-sized technology companies.

(The author introduces: Tsinghua University, Ph.D. candidate in economics, is now a visiting scholar at Harvard University. )