Exploring the barriers faced by the Open Government Data agenda

Advocates of Open Government Data^[1] (OGD) talk about the potential of such data to increase government transparency, catalyse economic growth, address social and environmental challenges and boost democratic participation. This heady mix of potential benefits has proved persuasive to the UK Government (and governments around the world). Over the past decade, since the emergence of the OGD agenda, the UK Government has invested extensively in making more of its data open. Yet the transformative impacts claimed by OGD advocates still seem a rather distant possibility. Even the more modest goal of integrating the creation and use of OGD into the mainstream practices of government, businesses and citizens remains to be achieved. In this blog I reflect upon the barriers preventing the OGD agenda from making a breakthrough into the mainstream. These reflections centre on the five key finds of my research, recently published in Policy and Internet, exploring where members of the UK OGD community perceive barriers to the OGD agenda. 

1. Barriers to the OGD agenda are perceived to be widespread

Unsurprisingly, given the relatively limited impact of OGD to date, my research shows that barriers to the OGD agenda are perceived to be widespread and numerous. What I find rather more surprising is the expectation, amongst policy makers, that these barriers should just melt away when exposed to the OGD agenda’s transparently obvious value and virtue.  Rather given that the breakthrough of the OGD agenda requires change across the complex socio-technical structures of government and society, many teething problems should be expected and considerable work will be required to overcome them.

2. Barriers on the demand side are of great concern

Members of the UK OGD community are particularly concerned about the wide range of demand side barriers, including the low level of demand for OGD across civil society and the public and private sectors. These concerns are likely to have arisen as a legacy of the OGD community’s focus on the supply of OGD, which has often led the community to overlook the need to nurture initiatives and groups that make use of OGD.

Adopting a strategic approach to supporting niches of OGD use could help overcome some of the demand side barriers. For example, such an approach could foster the social learning required to overcome barriers relating to the practices and business models of data users. Whilst there are encouraging signs that the Open Data Institute is supporting OGD use in the private sector, there remains a significant opportunity to improve the support offered to potential OGD users across civil society. It is also important to recognise that increasing the support for OGD users is not guaranteed to result in increased demand. Rather the possibility remains that demand for OGD is limited for many other reasons – including the possibility that the majority of businesses, citizens and community organisations find OGD of very little value.

3. The structures of government continue to act as barriers

Members of the UK OGD community are also concerned that major barriers remain on the supply side particularly in the form of the established structures and institutions of government. For example, barriers were perceived in the forms of the risk adverse cultures of government organisations and the ad hoc funding of OGD initiatives. Although resilient these structures are dynamic, so proponents of OGD need to be aware of emerging ‘windows of opportunity’ as they open up. Such opportunities may take the form of: tensions within the structures of government (e.g. restrictions on data sharing between different parts of government present an opportunity for OGD to create efficiency savings); and external pressures on government (e.g. the pressures exerted by a rapidly changing climate could create opportunities for OGD initiatives and demand for OGD).

4. There are major challenges mobilising resources to support the open government data agenda

The research results also showed that members of UK OGD community see mobilising the resources required to support the OGD as a major challenge. Concerns around securing funding are predictably prominent, but concerns also extend to developing the skills and knowledge required to use OGD across civil society, government and the private sector. These challenges are likely to persist whilst the post-financial crisis narrative of public deficit reduction through public spending reduction dominates the political agenda. This leaves OGD advocates to consider the politics and ethics of calling for investment in OGD initiatives whilst elsewhere spending reductions are leading to the degradation of public services provision to vulnerable and socially excluded individuals.

5. Within the OGD community the nature of some barriers remains contentious

OGD is often presented by advocates as a neutral, apolitical public good. However, my research highlights the important role that values and politics plays in how individuals within the OGD community perceive the agenda and the barriers it faces.  For example, there are considerable differences in opinion, within the OGD community, on whether or not a private sector focus on exploiting financial value from OGD is crowding out the creation of social and environmental value.  So benefits may arise from advocates being more open about the values and politics that underpin and shape the agenda. Whilst, OGD related policy and practice could create further opportunities for social learning which bring together the diverse values and perspectives that coexist within the OGD community.

Having considered the wide range of barriers to the breakthrough of OGD agenda, and some approaches to overcoming these barriers, these discussions need setting in a broader political context. If the agenda does indeed make a breakthrough into the mainstream, it remains unclear what form this will take. Will the OGD agenda make a breakthrough by conforming with, and reinforcing, prevailing neoliberal interests? Or will the agenda stretch the fabric of government, the economy and society, and transform the relationship between citizens and the state? 

If you are interested you are interested in reading more about the research underpinning this blog the published paper can be found here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1944-2866.POI367/abstract  or do drop me an email requesting a copy (chris.martin@open.ac.uk).

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^[1]The Open Knowledge Foundation define Open Government Data as: data produced or commissioned by government or government controlled entities that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone.

Challenging the cultural values embedded in technologies: an opportunity for social innovation?

This blog was originally published by Nesta as part of a series of reflections on the issues raised at this year's Social Frontiers conference in Vancouver. To explore the blogs, or find out more information about the conference, visit the event page.

The nexus where social innovation and culture interact is a massively complex, inherently political and relatively uncharted research space. Thus, it comes as no surprise that challenging questions around the interrelationships between social innovation and culture remain to be addressed.

Some of the questions that have preoccupied me of late include: how does culture constrain, mediate and enable the processes of social innovation? How do actors immersed in different cultures relate to the concept of social innovation? How do contrasting cultures across the public and private sector and civil society influence the nature of social innovations?

In this blog I’m going to further complicate matters, by bringing technology into the discussion and posing a further question. How do the cultural values embedded within technologies shape the opportunities for social innovation? Let’s use the example of the smart energy meter to unpack this question a little.

In the UK, £10.9 billion is being invested in the roll out of smart energy meters to every home by 2020, in a top-down technologically driven initiative which the government hopes will enable citizens to “better manage...energy use, save money and reduce emissions”. A cursory examination of government policy reveals some of the cultural values embedded within smart meter technology.

First, rational decision-making is wrongly taken as a given. Once presented with information about their energy use (via a smart meter) people are expected to just change their energy consumption behaviour accordingly. Secondly, the smart meter is one more closed box of consumer electronics in the home. Policy-makers do not anticipated that people will want to customise or develop their smart meters.

So the question arises, can the smart meter be more than a technology, can it be part of a social innovation that reduces energy demand? Personally I’m not sure if this question can be answered yet. Rather I believe that we must await evidence of the subtle balance of positive and negative impacts made by the large scale rollout of such smart meters. Although the participative and empowering features that we would expect to see in a social innovation are far from prominent in current policy.

In the meantime, pending such evidence, it is interesting to explore alternative interpretations of the smart energy meter, which may sit more comfortably with our concept of social innovation. Here we can turn to the open source movement, and the grassroots community of 3000 technologists and environmental activists who are developing and using an Open Energy Monitor (OEM). A distinct set of cultural values, shaped by an open source philosophy, are embedded within an OEM.

First, the development of technologies is a collaborative enterprise, so anyone with the inclination and appropriate skills can contribute to the design and development of the monitor’s software and hardware. Secondly, technologies are designed to be customised, for example the owner of an OEM can determine if the energy consumption data they collect is shared. So is the OEM a social innovation?

Again I am unsure, but in this case I tend towards a yes, as the participative and empowering features that we would expect to see in a social innovation are prominent. Members of the community form new social relationships, they share expertise to address shared challenges, and they learn about the technology that mediates their daily lives.

So where does this brief discussion of social innovation, technology and culture leave us? I believe that it highlights the need for the emerging research agenda around culture and social innovation to embrace a technological dimension. Such an agenda might highlight the opportunities to conduct detailed empirical investigations, exploring how emerging social innovations challenge the cultural values embedded in prevailing technological paradigms.

More generally, we should further examine the intersection of social and technological forms of innovation, and seek to uncover problematic assumptions that technologies are mere instruments of social innovation.

Funding Digital Social Innovation

Sometimes we forget that social innovation is just as much about improving existing solutions to social problems as it is about creating new ones. Policymakers and funders of digital social innovation are due a reminder of this fact too.

That's not to deny the importance of new digital enabled approaches to tackling social issues. Working on a research project, at the Open University, studying digital social innovation we have spent days talking to truly inspirational people; who with the help of the Internet are working to solve some of the toughest problems we face.

Like many others, we have been happily swept along on a wave of enthusiasm for the novel, the emerging, and the high-tech. However, a nagging feeling remains that advocates of digital social innovation need to temper such enthusiasm. That in our rush to celebrate the latest example of Internet-powered progressive social change we are missing a trick or two.

Talking to volunteers involved in Freegle, a website that enables people to directly give unwanted items to others in their local area, really brings this home.

Freegle (a UK off shoot from Freecycle) is a huge, but often overlooked, success story of digital social innovation. A non-profit organisation with more than 1.6 million members, Freegle is run almost entirely by volunteers on an annual budget of £10,000, and saves 13,000 tonnes of potential waste from landfill each year.

Yet Freegle faces huge challenges when seeking funding to improve the service it offers. Edward Hibbert, a volunteer director of Freegle, believes that; “In the current climate it's extremely hard to win funding unless you employ professional fundraisers, or you invent a project just because it fits funding criteria.” 

“Sustaining and developing the core work of existing organisations with a proven track record too often takes second place to funding glamorous but ultimately doomed startups.  Given the spectacular impact Freegle has with such limited resources, we could do so much more, but we have effectively given up on the formal funding route as a waste of time - and we hate waste.” 

It seems Edward has point, in 2011 the Cabinet Office announced £10 million of funding to the support innovators develop the next Freecycle or JustGiving.

The focus on supporting start-ups, at the expense of more established innovations, may be a result of the dominance of Silicon Valley thinking in the world of digital social innovation.

The Silicon Valley model - start-up companies securing venture capital investment, establishing a business model, and scaling up – is not the only way to address social problems using the Internet though. This model often overlooks the persistent and complex nature of social problems, and the important role played by grassroots movements.

Of course we could be wrong. Maybe grassroots organisations would benefit from becoming more like an internet start-up. Freegle could certainly become more entrepreneurial, and find a Silicon Valley solution to its funding challenges. It could easily create a revenue stream by charging its members a small subscription fee.

It feels as though that this would undermine the grassroots principles of the organisation by excluding those with the least financial resources from the free reuse movement. 

So as our initial Internet optimism fades we are developing a more balanced and critical perspective on digital social innovation. A perspective which hopefully helps the digital social innovation community grapple with the tricky dilemmas of this era of enthusiasm for using the Internet to solve social problems. 

This blog was written jointly by Dr. Chris Martin (Research Fellow at the Open University) and Patrick Truss (Freelance Science and Technology Writer) 

A bit more thinking on social innovation and digital technologies: developing a critical perspective

It is very tempting to talk about the unprecedented opportunities for social innovation that have been opened up by the technologies of the digital era. It is tempting to go further, to gaze upon Wikipedia with wonder and to speculate how we can use the wiki approach to address a myriad of social problems (how about new forms of Wiki government?). However, both social innovation and digital technologies are hugely complex phenomena and any exploration of the relationship between the two requires a more critical perspective. Digital technologies can be considered as tools used to increase the impact and scale of social innovation, but they are not merely tools. These technologies even when used with the best of intentions create a subtle and ever changing balance of positive and negative impacts. Consider the Grameen Bank Village Phone programme which sought to empower women in deprived Bangledeshi communities by providing them with the tools (mobile phones) to become entrepreneurial microcredit brokers. Much debate remains over the impacts of this initiative both positive, e.g. creating new employment opportunities and improving the standing of women within their communities, and negative e.g. the appropriation of the profits of the entrepreneurial activity by men within the communities. Further complicating the picture, we live in a world pervaded (or even invaded) by digital technologies, they are integral to our day-to-day lives, they are embedded within the structures of society, and so they shape the opportunities available to social innovators and entrepreneurs. Digital technologies also directly create social needs which in turn necessitate further social innovation, indeed we now know that we need social innovations to help strike a better balance between the individual’s right to privacy and state surveillance on the Internet. So how do we start to deal with these complexities and move beyond the sense that digital social innovation is a somewhat vague but rather exciting idea?

First, as a society we need to better navigate the middle ground between techno-optimism and techno-phobia, to develop a more refined understanding of the role of digital technologies in social innovation. So rather than proclaiming that the data, captured by digital technologies, is “the 21^st century’s new raw material” which will catalyse the “innovation and enterprise that spurs social ... growth”, policymakers could seek to understand and address the contradictory impacts of digital social innovations. Instead of taking social problems as given and applying technological tools to address them, technologists could develop a deep understanding of the problem at hand. Accenture applied this approach in Copenhagen, where they employed a team of local ethnographers to understand the routines and lives of citizens before developing digital tools to improve quality of life within the city. Whilst social innovators and entrepreneurs could create spaces, such as Social Innovation Labs, for people to share and explore visions of better ways to live in a world pervade by digital technologies.

Secondly, we need to go to greater lengths to acknowledge and engage in the politics of digital social innovation. The political nature of social innovation is more readily apparent, as where innovation is orientated to addressing a social need we implicitly or explicitly challenge established interests, create conflicts, and call for redistribution of social and economic resources. The politics of digital technologies more often remain unseen and unquestioned in the form of values that are embedded within the design of these technologies, for example the advertising sidebar in Facebook tells us much about the efforts to monetise all aspects life. So where digital technologies are involved in social innovations and are considered as solely as enabling tools, we overlook some of the politics involved. We look for the positive in the technology and overlook the potential downsides, and so run the risk of pursuing an ill-fated technological fix to a political issue. Rather we could be inspired by emerging digital social innovations which engage citizens in the design and use of digital technologies to create more sustainable cities, such as the Smart Citizen Toolkit and Open Energy Monitor. Acting on upon this inspiration we could seek to democratise the politics of digital social innovation by enabling citizens to participate in both its social and technological aspects.

Social innovation and digital technologies - taking a critical perspective

Digital technologies tend to be talked about as enablers of social innovation, possessing a potential for creating disruptive and transformative change. For me this perspective is exemplified by simplistic arguments that social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, have transformed communication and so can now be used to help solve the major challenges faced by society (e.g. climate change and sustainability, demographic change, social exclusion …). By viewing digital technologies solely as enablers of social innovation we are only considering part of the picture.  Rather as a digital technology develops and is used by people a subtle and ever changing balance of positive and negative impacts also develops. So whilst digital technologies can help social entrepreneurs and innovators to address pressing social needs, we also need to recognise that these same technologies also create social needs. For example, the infrastructure of digital devices (smartphones, tablets etc.) can indeed enable social innovation, but only thanks to the unsustainable and often exploitive use of rare earth metals in the manufacture of these devices (which in turn of course contributes to other social needs).

The contradictory impacts of digital technologies are also important considerations in the design and development of specific social innovations. Here we can explore and talk about the balance of positive and negative impacts on individuals and their day-to-day experiences. As an illustrative example we can consider a social innovation that requires the more widespread use of digital technologies within school classrooms and seeks to improve educational outcomes. In such a case can space be created for students, teachers and parents to influence the balance of impacts, by exploring questions such as: how does the use of the technology help students to mindfully engage with the learning process? How does the technology act to increase the potential for digital distraction and information overload? How does the technology change the posture of children within the classroom? And is this likely to contribute to adverse health impacts? Ultimately I am suggesting that, in some very small way, a social innovation enabled by digital technology should prompt individuals, groups and institutions to consider a very large and challenging question. How can we live well in a world pervaded by digital technologies? By doing so we challenge the prevailing narrative that technologies are a social good and that any negative impacts are just the inevitable and necessary consequences of the onward march of technological progress.

When we talk about social innovation it is critical to recognise that it is an inherently political process. Where innovation is orientated to addressing a social need we challenge established interests, create conflicts, and call for redistribution of social and economic resources. Where digital technologies are involved in social innovations and are considered as solely as enabling tools, we mask and overlook some of the politics involved. We look for the positive in the technology and overlook the potential downsides, and so run the risk of pursuing an ill-fated technological fix to a political issue.

Digital Social Innovation: Understanding business models across private sector, social enterprise and non-profit organisations

In this post I briefly outlines my plans for a research study of the business models that support and enable digital social innovation, as part of my broader ESRC funded fellowship project. As ever I am seeking to work in open and transparent manner, and I will continue to post updates on my blog as my research develops. I very much welcome feedback on this research outline, so please do get in touch with thoughts, comments and suggestions. Also if you are working on a digital social innovation and would be interested in participating in the research it would be great to hear from you.

Digital Social Innovation

Rapid advances in digital technologies are opening up new possibilities to catalyse social change, or in other words there are rapidly growing opportunities for digital social innovation. At its heart a digital social innovation is the novel application of digital technologies to better address a social need and to empower members of society[1] (The Young Foundation, 2012). Digital social innovations can emerge from any sector of the economy or from civil society, and seek to address major social needs such mitigating climate change, reducing social exclusion, improving education and access to knowledge etc. Examples include Wikileaks, Raspberry Pi and Kickstarter, but in a short research outline it impossible to do justice to breadth of innovative activity currently taking place.  Rather the Nominet Trust’s list of 100 of “The World’s Most Inspiring Social Innovations Using Digital Technology” remains an excellent resource for exploring the current and potential impact of the digital social innovation.

Research scope

In this research study I will explore the business models that underpin and enable the development of digital social innovations; defining a business model as describing how and why an organisation creates, delivers and captures social (and in some cases economic) value. The study will focus on the business models of private sector, social enterprise and non-profit organisations, and explore four interrelated themes as follows.

• Motivations for and mechanisms of social value creation - seeking to understand how organisations: formulate their social and customer value propositions, make the trade-offs (e.g. between social value creation and the financial position of the organisation), respond to competitive and collaborative dynamics, and evaluate and manage their social impact (including any potential downsides of their activities). 
• The system of activities orchestrated by organisations (Zott and Amit, 2010) - seeking to understand: which activities organisations include within their business models (e.g. developing web platforms, developing communities of users ...); how collaborators, customers and co-producers are involved in these activities; and which activities are central to business models for digital social innovation.
• The resources models of organisations – seeking to understand how organisations develop and draw up on financial, social (e.g. networks of contacts), cultural (e.g. skills and knowledge) and symbolic resources (e.g. the social purpose of the organisation) to develop digital social innovations.
• Patterns in business model design – seeking to understand the dominant drives of value creation in digital social innovation, and how business models designs vary with organisational scale and across sectors.

Research outputs

The research programme outlined in this document will deliver three key outputs: (1) two academic journal papers reporting the findings of the research; (2) a report for policy-makers and funders with interests in promoting digital social innovation, presenting evidence on the types of business models that enable digital social innovations to emerge, become sustainable and scale up; (3) a toolkit to support organisations and entrepreneurs engaged digital social innovation to review, design or re-design their business models.

Research approach

The research approach consists of two phases: first, a pilot project, the findings of which will inform the design and execution of a second larger scale phase research activity. The table below provides a high-level view of the timescales for the research. The pilot project will focus on better understanding the business models of organisations engaged in digital social innovation, which in turn will inform the design of the 2^nd phase of research. During the pilot project I will conduct semi-structured interviews with members of organisations engaged in the practice of digitally-mediated social innovation.  

Phase 1: pilot study
Research design for the pilot research project	March 2014
Data collection (approx. 5-10 interviews with members of organisations)	April – May
Data analysis	June
Reporting findings of pilot phase	July
Phase 2: larger-scale study	August 2014 – May 2015

References

THE YOUNG FOUNDATION 2012. Social Innovation Overview: A deliverable of the project: “The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe” (TEPSIE), European Commission - 7th Framework Programme Brussels.

ZOTT, C. & AMIT, R. 2010. Business Model Design: An Activity System Perspective. Long Range Planning, 43, 216-226.

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[1] This description of the nature of digital social innovation draws upon the work of the TEPSIE project that seeks to establish empirical and theoretical foundations for the study of social innovation.