The business case for an Open Data Strategy

Last week Steve Dungworth and Kate Davies CBE FRICS both published posts exploring the benefits that an open data strategy can provide. Certainly the call for transparency and open data is getting ever louder and is even now being demanded within certain governance requirements.

Over the coming days I will publish a number of posts exploring the need for open data, the benefits and how to best take advantage of it. ?

What is Open Data?

Open data is data anyone can freely access and use. It can inspire innovation, create greater efficiencies, provide benefits to citizens and generate more transparency.

An important point however is that data security, GDPR and confidentiality requirements must be observed, so there is an ‘Open Data Spectrum’ that covers the different levels of open data. I will cover this in another post shortly.

The UK Governments National Open Data Strategy

The Government has published an Open Data Strategy Framework. The header diagram attached summarises what is trying to be achieved. ?

The key principles are:

1. Unlocking the value of data across the economy. Ensuring data is usable, accessible and available to all.
2. Securing a pro-growth and trusted data regime.?Data should benefit everyone, no matter the business size, while ensuring people have confidence and trust in how data is used.
3. Transforming government’s use of data to drive efficiency and improve public services.?Data should be shared to help and protect people. As a result, the government is overhauling how it efficiently manages, uses and shares data.
4. Ensuring the security and resilience of the infrastructure on which data relies.?The data infrastructure needs protection against security risks and concerns, ensuring information remains safe and secure.
5. Championing the international flow of data.?The flow of information across borders has significant economic and societal benefits. Since leaving the EU, the UK has greater scope to establish itself as a leader and can continue demonstrating the opportunities that data can deliver.

This all works together to ensure data allows for growth across every sector — providing jobs, improving public services and society, and fuelling future research.

Open Data in the Social Housing Sector

A quick review of new legislation and governance requirements (see my posts from just before Christmas) clearly show that the Government is looking to the social housing sector to embrace open data in order to help improve services, to ensure tenant’s live in safe homes and that their relationship with their landlord is one of respect.

One of the primary recommendation from last years Better Social Housing Review was that “Housing associations should work together to conduct and publish a thorough audit of all social housing in England” utilising the HACT UK Housing Data Standards across the entire sector (I will also overview this standard in another post shortly).

By making such data open it will align with the National Open Data Strategy and has the potential to provide huge benefits for tenants, landlords, regulators and suppliers. Such benefits have already been summarised by others, but I will explore them in more detail in my post tomorrow. ???

In summary, every organisation needs to incorporate a data (knowledge and information) strategy as an essential part of both corporate strategy and governance strategy. Within this the case for open data needs to be considered. This post highlights why this is so important to the UK Government, so we now need to explore and understand why open data is important to the social housing sector and how to best take advantage of it.

I will explore this further in the coming days, so please keep watching.