Beyond Publishers and Consumers: Some Example Ecosystems

Yesterday I wrote a post suggesting that we should move beyond publishers and consumers and recognise the presence of a wider variety of roles in the open data ecosystem. I suggested a taxonomy of roles as a starting point for discussion.

In this post I wanted to explore how we can use that taxonomy to help map and understand an ecosystem. Eventually I want to work towards a more complete value network analysis and some supporting diagrams for a few key ecosystems. But I wanted to start with hopefully simple examples.

As I’ve been looking at it recently I thought I’d start by examining Copenhagen’s open data initiative and their city data marketplace.

What kind of ecosystems do those two programmes support?

The copenhagen open data ecosystem

The open data ecosystem can support all of the roles I outlined in my taxonomy:

• Steward: The city of Copenhagen is the steward of all (or the majority of) the datasets that are made available through its data platform, e.g. the location of parking meters
• Contributor: The contributors to the dataset are the staff and employees of the administration who collect and then publish the data
• Reuser: Developers or start-ups who are building apps and services, such as I Bike CpH using open data
• Beneficiary: Residents and visitors to Copenhagen

Examples of the tangible value being exchanged here are:

• (Steward -> Reuser) The provision of data from the Steward to the Reuser
• (Reuser -> Beneficiary) The provision of a transport application from the Reuser to the Beneficiary

Examples of the intangible value are:

• (Contributor -> Steward) The expertise of the Contributors offered to the Steward to help manage the data
• (Beneficiary -> Reuser) The market insights gained by the Reuser which may be used to create new products
• (Reuser -> Steward) The insights shared by the Reuser with the Steward into which other datasets might be useful to release or improve

In addition, the open licensing of the data enables two additional actors in the ecosystem:

• Intermediaries: who can link the Copenhagen data with other datasets, enrich it against other sources, or offer value added APIs. Services such as TransportAPI.
• Aggregators: e.g. services that aggregate data from multiple portals to create specific value-added datasets, e.g. an aggregation of census data

In this case the Intermediaries and Aggregators will be supporting their own community of Reusers and Beneficiaries. This increases the number of ways in which value is exchanged.

The copenhagen city data marketplace

The ecosystem around the city data marketplace is largely identical to the open data ecosystem. However there are some important differences.

• Steward: The city of Copenhagen is not the only Steward, the goal is to allow other organisations to publish their data via the marketplace. The marketplace will be multi-tenant.
• Intermediary: the marketplace itself has become an intermediary, operated by Hitachi
• The ecosystem will have a greater variety of Contributors, reflecting the wider variety of organisations contributing to the maintenance of those datasets.
• Reusers and Beneficiaries will be present as before

In addition, because the marketplace offers paid access to data, there are other forms of value exchange, e.g. exchange of money for services (Reuser -> Intermediary).

But the marketplace explicitly rules out the Intermediary and Aggregator roles. Services like TransportAPI or Geolytix could not build their businesses against the city data marketplace. This is because the terms of use of the market prohibit onward distribution of data and the creation of potentially competitive services.

In an effort to create a more open platform to enable data sharing, the result has been to exclude certain types of value exchange and value-added services. The design of the ecosystem privileges a single Intermediary: in this case Hitachi as operator of the platform.

Time will tell whether this is an issue or not. But my feeling is that limiting certain forms of value creation isn’t a great basis for encouraging innovation.

An alternative approach would be to have designed the platform to be part of the digital commons. For example, by allowing Stewards the choice of adding data to the platform under an open licence would give space for other Intermediaries and Aggregators to operate.

Let me know if you think this type of analysis is useful!