Category: Data

A letter from the future about numbers

It’s an odd now looking at early 21st century content in the Internet Archive. So little nuance.

It feels a little like watching those old black and white movies. All that colour which was just right there. But now lost. Easy to imagine that life was just monochrome. Harder to imagine the richer colours.

Or at least hard for me. There are AIs that will imagine it all for you now, of course. There have been for a while. They’ll repaint the pictures using data they’ve gleaned from elsewhere. But it’s not the film that is difficult to look at. It’s the numbers.

How did you manage with just those bare numerals?

If I showed you, a 21st century reader, one of our numbers you wouldn’t know what it was. You wouldn’t be able to read it.

Maybe you’ve seen that film Arrival? Based on a book by Ted Chiang? Remember the alien writing that was so complex and rich in meaning? That’s what our numbers might look like to you. You’d struggle to decode them.

Oh, the rest of it is much the same. The text, emojis and memes. Everything is just that bit richer, more visual. More nuanced. It’s even taught in schools now. Standardised, tested and interpreted for all. It’d be familiar enough.

You struggle with the numbers though. They’d take much more time to learn.

Not all of them. House numbers. Your position in the queue. The cost of a coffee. Those look exactly the same. Why would we change those?

It’s the important numbers that look different. The employment figures. Your pension value. Your expected grade. The air quality. The life-changing numbers. Those all look very different now.

At some point we decided that those numbers needed to be legible in entirely different ways. We needed to be able to see (or hear, or feel) the richness and limitations in the most important numbers. It was, it turned out, the only way to build that shared literacy.

To imagine how we got there, just think about how people have always adapted and co-opted digital platforms and media for their own ends. Hashtags and memes.

Faced with the difficulty of digging behind the numbers – the need to search for sample sizes, cite the sources, highlight the bias, check the facts –  we had to find a different way. It began with adding colour, toying with fonts and diacritics.

5—a NUMBER INTERPOLATED.

It took off from there. Layers of annotations becoming conventions and then standards. Whole new planes and dimensions in unicode.

42—a PROJECTION based on a SIGNIFICANT POPULATION SAMPLE.

All of the richness, all of the context made visible right there in the number.

27-30—a PREDICTED RANGE created by a BAYESIAN INTERPOLATION over a RECENT SAMPLE produced by an OFFICIAL SOURCE.

180—an INDICATOR AUTOMATICALLY SELECTED by a DEEP LEARNING system, NO HUMAN INTERVENTION.

Context expressed as colour and weight and strokes in the glyphs. You can just read it all right off the digits. There and there. See?

Things aren’t automatically better of course. Numbers aren’t suddenly to be more trusted. Why would they be?.

It’s easier to see what’s not being said. It’s easier to demand better. It’s that little bit harder to ignore what’s before your eyes. It moves us on in our debates or just helps us recognise when the reasons for them aren’t actually down to the numbers at all.

It’s no longer acceptable to elide the detail. The numbers just look wrong. Simplistic. Black and white.

Which is why it’s difficult to read the Internet Archive sometimes.

We’ve got AIs that can dream up the missing information. Mining the Archive for the necessary provenance and add it all back into the numbers. Just like adding colour to those old films, it can be breathtaking to see. But not in a good way. How could you have deluded yourselves and misled each other so easily?

I’ve got one more analogy for you.

Rorschach tests have long been consigned to history. But one of our numbers – the life-changing ones – might just remind you of a colourful inkblots. And you might accuse use of we’re just reading things into them. Imagining things that you just aren’t there.

But numbers are just inkblots. Shapes in which we choose to see different aspects of the world. They always have been. We’ve just got a better palette.

Four types of innovation around data

Vaughn Tan’s The Uncertainty Mindset is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read this year. It’s an exploration of how to build R&D teams drawing on lessons learned in high-end kitchens around the world. I love cooking and I’m interested in creative R&D and what makes high-performing teams work well. I’d strongly recommend it if you’re interested in any of these topics.

I’m also a sucker for a good intellectual framework that helps me think about things in different ways. I did that recently with the BASEDEF framework.

Tan introduces a nice framework in Chapter 4 of the book which looks at four broad types of innovation around food. These are presented as a way to help the reader understand how and where innovation creates impact in restaurants. The four categories are:

  1. New dishes – new arrangements of ingredients, where innovation might be incremental refinements to existing dishes, combining ingredients together in new ways, or using ingredients from different contexts (think “fusion”)
  2. New ingredients – coming up with new things to be cooked
  3. New cooking methods – new ways of cooking things, like spherification or sous vide
  4. New cooking processes – new ways of organising the processes of cooking, e.g. to help kitchen staff prepare a dish more efficiently and consistently

The categories are the top are more evident to the consumer, those lower down less so. But the impacts of new methods and processes are greater as they apply in a variety of contexts.

Somewhat inevitably, I found myself thinking about how these categories work in the context of data:

  1. New dishes analyses – New derived datasets made from existing primary sources. Or new ways of combining datasets to create insights. I’ve used the metaphor of cooking to describe data analysis before, those recipes for data-informed problem solving help to document this stage to make it reproducible
  2. New ingredients datasets and data sources – Finding and using new sources of data, like turning image, text or audio libraries into datasets, using cheaper sensors, finding a way to extract data from non-traditional sources, or using phone sensors for earthquake detection
  3. New cooking methods for cleaning, managing or analysing data – which includes things like Jupyter notebooks, machine learning or differential privacy
  4. New cooking processes for organising the collection, preparation and analysis of data – e.g. collaborative maintenance, developing open standards for data or approaches to data governance and collective consent?

The breakdown isn’t perfect, but I found the exercise useful to think through the types of innovation around data. I’ve been conscious recently that I’m often using the word “innovation” without really digging into what that means, how that innovation happens and what exactly is being done differently or produced as a result.

The categories are also useful, I think, in reflecting on the possible impacts of breakthroughs of different types. Or perhaps where investment in R&D might be prioritised and where ensuring the translation of innovative approaches into the mainstream might have most impact?

What do you think?

Increasing inclusion around open standards for data

I read an interesting article this week by Ana Brandusescu, Michael Canares and Silvana Fumega. Called “Open data standards design behind closed doors?” it explores issues of inclusion and equity around the development of “open data standards” (which I’m reading as “open standards for data”).

Ana, Michael and Silvana rightly highlight that standards development is often seen and carried out as a technical process, whereas their development and impacts are often political, social or economic. To ensure that standards are well designed, we need to recognise their power, choose when to wield that tool, and ensure that we use it well. The article also asks questions about how standards are currently developed and suggests a framework for creating more participatory approaches throughout their development.

I’ve been reflecting on the article this week alongside a discussion that took place in this thread started by Ana.

Improving the ODI standards guidebook

I agree that standards development should absolutely be more inclusive. I too often find myself in standards discussions and groups with people that look like me and whose experiences may not always reflect those who are ultimately impacted by the creation and use of a standard.

In the open standards for data guidebook we explore how and why standards are developed to help make that process more transparent to a wider group of people. We also placed an emphasis on the importance of the scoping and adoption phases of standards development because this is so often where standards fail. Not just because the wrong thing is standardised, but also because the standard is designed for the wrong audience, or its potential impacts and value are not communicated.

Sometimes we don’t even need a standard. Standards development isn’t about creating specifications or technology, those are just outputs. The intended impact is to create some wider change in the world, which might be to increase transparency, or support implementation of a policy or to create a more equitable marketplace. Other interventions or activities might achieve those same goals better or faster. Some of them might not even use data(!)

But looking back through the guidebook, while we highlight in many places the need for engagement, outreach, developing a shared understanding of goals and desired impacts and a clear set of roles and responsibilities, we don’t specifically foreground issues of inclusion and equity as much as we could have.

The language and content of the guidebook could be improved. As could some prototype tools we included like the standards canvas. How would that be changed in order to foreground issues of inclusion and equity?

I’d love to get some contributions to the guidebook to help us improve it. Drop me a message if you have suggestions about that.

Standards as shared agreements

Open standards for data are reusable agreements that guide the exchange of data. They shape how I collect data from you, as a data provider. And as a data provider they shape how you (re)present data you have collected and, in many cases will ultimately impact how you collect data in the future.

If we foreground standards as agreements for shaping how data is collected and shared, then to increase inclusion and equity in the design of those agreements we can look to existing work like the Toolkit for Centering Racial Equity which provides a framework for thinking about inclusion throughout the life-cycle of data. Standards development fits within that life-cycle, even if it operates at a larger scale and extends it out to different time frames.

We can also recognise existing work and best practices around good participatory design and research.

We should avoid standards development, as a process, being divorced from broader discussions and best practices around ethics, equity and engagement around data. Taking a more inclusive and equitable approach to standards development is part of the broader discussion around the need for more integration across the computing and social sciences.

We may also need to recognise that sometimes agreements are made that don’t provide equitable outcomes for everyone. We might not be able to achieve a compromise that works for everyone. Being transparent about the goals and aims of a standard, and how it was developed, can help to surface who it is designed for (or not). Sometimes we might just need different standards, optimised for different purposes.

Some standards are more harmful than others

There are many different types of standard. And standards can be applied to different types of data. The authors of the original article didn’t really touch on this within their framework, but I think its important to recognise these differences, as part of any follow-on activities.

The impacts of a poorly designed standard that classifies people or their health outcomes will be much more harmful than a poorly defined data exchange format. See all of Susan Leigh Star‘s work. Or concerns from indigenous peoples about how they are counted and represented (or not) in statistical datasets.

Increasing inclusion can help to mitigate the harmful impacts around data. So focusing on improving inclusion (or recognising existing work and best practices) around the design of standards with greater capacity for harms is important. The skills and experience required in developing a taxonomy is fundamentally different to those required to develop a data exchange format.

Recognising these differences is also helpful when planning how to engage with a wider group of people. As we can identify what help and input is needed: What skills or perspectives are lacking among those leading standards work? What help or support needs to be offered to increase inclusion. E.g. by developing skills, or choosing different collaboration tools or methods of seeking input.

Developing a community of practice

Since we launched the standards guidebook I’ve been wondering whether it would be helpful to have more of a community of practice around standards development. I found myself thinking about this again after reading Ana, Michael and Silvana’s article and the subsequent discussion on twitter.

What would that look like? Does it exist already?

Perhaps supported by a set of learning or training resources that re-purposes some of the ODI guidebook material alongside other resources to help others to engage with and lead impactful, inclusive standards work?

I’m interested to see how this work and discussion unfolds.

FAIR, fairer, fairest?

“FAIR” (or “FAIR data”) is an term that I’ve been bumping into more and more frequently. For example, its included in the UK’s recently published Geospatial Strategy.

FAIR is an acronym that stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. It defines a set of principles that highlight some important aspects of publishing machine-readable data well. For example they identify the need to adopt common standards, use common identifiers, provide good metadata and clear usage licences.

The principles were originally defined by researchers in the life sciences. They were intended to help to improve management and sharing of data in research. Since then the principles have been increasingly referenced in other disciplines and domains.

At the ODI we’re currently working with CABI on a project that is applying the FAIR data principles, alongside other recommendations, to improve data sharing in grants and projects funded by the Gates Foundation.

From the perspective of encouraging the management and sharing of well-structured, standardised, machine-readable data, the FAIR principles are pretty good. They explore similar territory as the ODI’s Open Data Certificates and Tim Berners-Lee’s 5-Star Principles.

But the FAIR principles have some limitations and have been critiqued by various communities. As the principles become adopted in other contexts it is important that we understand these limitations, as they may have more of an impact in different situations.

A good background on the FAIR principles and some of their limitations can be found in this 2018 paper. But there are a few I’d like to highlight in this post.

They’re just principles

A key issue with FAIR is that they’re just principles. They offer recommendations about best practices, but they don’t help you answer specific questions. For example:

  • what metadata is useful to publish alongside different types of datasets?
  • which standards and shared identifiers are the best to use when publishing a specific dataset?
  • where will people be looking for this dataset to ensure its findable?
  • what are the trade-offs of using different competing standards?
  • what terms of use and licensing are appropriate to use when publishing a specific dataset for use by a specific community?
  • …etc

Applying the principles to a specific dataset means you need to have a clear idea about what you’re trying to achieve, what standards and best practices are used by the community you’re trying to support, or what approach might best enable the ecosystem you’re trying to grow and support.

We touched on some of these issues in a previous project that CABI and ODI delivered to the Gates Foundation. We encouraged people to think about FAIR in the context of a specific data ecosystem.

Currently there’s very little guidance that exists to support these decisions around FAIR. Which makes it harder to assess whether something is really FAIR in practice. Inevitably there will be trade-offs that involve making choices about standards and how much to invest in data curation and publication. Principles only go so far.

The principles are designed for a specific context

The FAIR principles were designed to reflect the needs of a specific community and context. Many of the recommendations are also broadly applicable to data publishing in other domains and contexts. But they embody design decisions that may not apply universally.

For example, they choose to emphasise machine-readability. Other communities might choose to focus on other elements that are more important to them or their needs.

As an alternative, the CARE principles for indigenous data governance are based around Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics. Those are good principles too. Other groups have chosen to propose ways to adapt and expand on FAIR.

It may be that the FAIR principles will work well in your specific context or community. But it might also be true that if you were to start from scratch and designed a new set of principles, you might choose to highlight other principles.

Whenever we are applying off-the-shelf principles in new areas, we need to think about whether they are helping us to achieve our own goals. Do they emphasise and prioritise work in the right areas?

The principles are not about being “fair”

Despite the acronym, the principles aren’t about being “fair”.

I don’t really know how to properly define “fair”. But I think it includes things like equity ‒ of access, or representation, or participation. And ethics and engagement. The principles are silent on those topics, leading some people to think about FAIRER data.

Don’t let the memorable acronym distract from the importance of ethics, consequence scanning and centering equity.

FAIR is not open

The principles were designed to be applied in contexts where not all data can be open. Life science research involves lots of sensitive personal information. Instead the principles recommend that data usage rights are clear.

I usually point out that FAIR data can exist across the data spectrum. But the principles don’t remind you that data should be as open as possible. Or prompt you to consider about the impacts of different types of licensing. They just ask you to be clear about the terms of reuse, however restrictive they might be.

So, to recap: the FAIR data principles offer a useful framework of things to consider when making data more accessible and easier to reuse. But they are not perfect. And they do not consider all of the various elements required to build an open and trustworthy data ecosystem.

What kinds of data is it useful to include in a register?

Registers are useful lists of information. A register might be a list of countries, companies, or registered doctors. Or addresses.

At the ODI we did a whole report on registers. It looks at different types of registers and how they’re governed. And GDS built a whole infrastructure to support them being published and used across the UK government.

Registers are core components of some types of identifier systems. They help to collect and share information about some aspect of the world we’re collectively interested in. For that reason it can be useful to know more about how the register is governed. So we know what it contains and how that list might change over time.

When those lists of things are useful in many different contexts, then making those registers open helps us to connect together different datasets and analyse them in new ways. They help to unlock context.

How much information should we put in a register? What information might it be useful to capture about the things ‒ the countries, the companies, or the addresses ‒  that are in our shared lists? Do we record just a company number and a name? Or also include the address of the company headquarters and the date it was founded?

When I’ve been designing registers and similar reference datasets, there’s some common categories of a information that I usually think about.

Identifiers

It’s useful if the things in our list have a unique identifier. They might have other identifiers assigned by different systems.

By capturing identifiers we can do things like:

  • clearly refer to items in the register, so we can find their attributes
  • use that identifier to link together different datasets
  • map between datasets that use different identifiers

Names and Labels

Things in the real world aren’t often referred to by an identifier. We give things names. Sometimes they may have several names.

Including names and labels in our identifiers allows us to do things like:

  • use a consistent, canonical name for things wherever they are referenced
  • link to things from a webpage
  • provide a way for a human being to recognise and find things in the register
  • turn a name into an identifier, so we can find more information about something

Relationships

Things in the real world are related to one another. Sometimes literally: I am your father (not, really). Sometimes spatially (this thing is here, or next to this other thing). Sometimes our world is organised into hierarchies or connected in other ways.

Including relationships in our register allows us to do things like:

  • visualise, present and navigate the contents of the list in a variety of ways
  • aggregate and report data according to the relationships between things
  • put something on a map

Types and categories

The things in our list might not all be the same. Or there may be differences between them. For example different types of companies. Or residential versus business addresses. Things might also be put into different categories. A register of companies might also categories businesses by sector.

Having types and categories in a list allows us to do things like:

  • extract part of the list we are interested in, sometimes we don’t need the whole thing
  • visualise, present and navigate the contents of the list in a greater variety of different ways
  • aggregate and report data according to how things are categorised

Lifecycle information

Things in the real world often have a life cycle. So do many digital things. Things are built, created, updated, revised, republished, retracted and demolished. Sometimes those events are tied to the thing being added to the register (“a list of registered companies”), sometimes they’re not (“a list of our current customers”).

Recording lifecycle information can help us to do things like:

  • understand the current state or status of something, which can help drive business and planning decisions
  • visualise, present and navigate the contents of the list in an even greater variety of ways
  • aggregate and report data according to where things are in their lifecycle

Administrative data (relating to the register)

It’s useful to capture data about when the information in a register has changed. For example when was something added to, or removed from a register? When did we last update its attributes or check that the information is current?

This type of information can help us to:

  • identify when information has been changed, so we can update our local copy of what’s in the register
  • extract part of the list we are interested in, as maybe we only want current or historical entries. Or just the recent additions
  • aggregate and report on how the data in the register has changed

Everything else

The list of useful things we might want to include in a register is potentially open ended. The trick in designing a good register is the working out of which bits are useful to be in the register, and which bits should be part of separate databases.

A good register will contain the data that is most commonly used across systems. Centralising that data can reduce the work, costs and also risks of collecting and maintaining it. If you put too much into the register you may end up increasing costs as you may have more to maintain. Or users have to spend more time pruning out what they don’t need.

But, if you are already maintaining a register and are planning to share it for others to use, you can increase its utility by sharing more information about each entry in the list.

Open UPRNs, a worked example

The UK should have an openly licensed address register. At the ODI we’ve long argued for the need for an open address register. But we don’t have that yet.

We do have a partial subset of our national address register available under an open licence, in the form of OS Open UPRNs product. It contains just the UPRN identifier and some spatial coordinates. Through the information in the related Open Identifiers product, we can also uncover some relationships between UPRNs and other spatial objects and administrative areas.

Drawing from the above examples this means we can do things like:

  • increase use of UPRNs as a common machine-readable identifier across datasets
  • identify a valid UPRN
  • locate them spatially on a map
  • relate those UPRNs to other things of interest, like administrative areas

With a bit of extra data engineering and analysis, e.g to look for variations across versions of the dataset we can also maybe work out a rough date for when a UPRN has been added to the list.

This is more than we can do before, which is great.

But there’s obviously clear much, much more we still can’t do:

  • filter out historical UPRNs
  • filter out UPRNs of different types
  • map between addresses (the names for those places) and the identifiers
  • understand the current status of a UPRN
  • aggregate and report on them using different categories
  • help people by building services that use the names (addresses) they’re familiar with
  • …etc, etc

We won’t be able to do those things until we have a fully open address register. But, until then, even including a handful of additional attributes (like a status code!) would clearly unlock more value.

I’ve previously argued that introducing a bit of product thinking might help to bring some focus to the decisions made about how data is published. And I still stand by much of that. But we need to be able to evaluate whether those product design decisions are achieving the intended effect.

Cooking up a new approach to supporting purposeful use of data

In my last post I explored how we might better support the use of datasets. To do that I applied the BASEDEF framework to outline the ways in which communities might collaborate to help unlock more value from individual datasets.

But what if we changed our focus from supporting discovery and use of datasets and instead focused on helping people explore specific types of problems or questions?

Our paradigm around data discovery is based on helping people find individual datasets. But unless a dataset has been designed to answer the specific question you have in mind, then it’s unlikely to be sufficient. Any non-trivial analysis is likely to need multiple datasets.

We know that data is more useful when it is combined, so why isn’t our approach to discovery based around identifying useful collections of datasets?

A cooking metaphor

To explore this further let’s use a cooking metaphor. I love cooking.

Many cuisines are based on a standard set of elements. Common spices or ingredients that become the base of most dishes. Like a mirepoix, a sofrito, the holy trinity of Cajun cooking, or the mother sauces in French cuisine.

As you learn to cook you come to appreciate how these flavour bases and sauces can be used to create a range of dishes. Add some extra spices and ingredients and you’ve created a complete dish.

Recipes help us consistently recreate these sauces.

A recipe consists of several elements. It will have a set of ingredients and a series of steps to combine them. A good recipe will also include some context. For example some background on the origins of the recipe and descriptions of unusual spices or ingredients. It might provide some things to watch out for during the cooking (“don’t burn the spices”) or suggest substitutions for difficult to source ingredients.

Our current approach to dataset discovery involves trying to document the provenance of an individual ingredient (a dataset) really well. We aren’t helping people combine them together to achieve results.

Efforts to improve dataset metadata, documentation and provenance reporting are important. Projects like the dataset nutrition label are great examples of that. We all want to be ethical, sustainable cooks. To do that we need to make informed choices about our ingredients.

But, to whisk these food metaphors together, nutrition labels are there to help you understand what’s gone into your supermarket pasta sauce. It’s not giving you a recipe to cook it from scratch for yourself. Or an idea of how to use the sauce to make a tasty dish.

Recipes for data-informed problem solving

I think we should think about sharing dataset recipes: instructions for how to mix up a selection of dataset ingredients. What would they consist of?

Firstly, the recipe would need to based around a specific type of question, problem or challenge.  Examples might include:

  • How can I understand air quality in my city?
  • How is deprivation changing in my local area?
  • What are the impacts of COVID-19 in my local authority?

Secondly, a recipe would include a list of datasets that have to be sourced, prepared and combined together to explore the specific problem. For example, if you’re exploring impacts of COVID-19 in your local authority you’re probably going to need:

  • demographic data from the most recent census
  • spatial boundaries to help visualise and present results
  • information about deprivation to help identify vulnerable people

Those three datasets are probably the holy trinity of any local spatial analysis?

Finally, you’re going to need some instructions for how to combine the datasets together. The instructions might identify some tools you need (Excel or QGIS), reference some techniques (Reprojection) and maybe some hints about how to substitute for key ingredients if you can’t get them in your local area (FOI).

The recipe might ways to vary the recipe for different purposes: add a sprinkle of Companies House data to understand your local business community, and a dash of OpenStreetMap to identify greenspaces?

As a time saver maybe you can find some pre-made versions of some of the steps in the recipe?

Examples in the wild

OK, its easy to come up with a metaphor and an idea. But would this actually meet a need? There’s a few reasons why I’m reasonably confident that dataset recipes could be helpful. Mostly because I can see this same approach re-appearing in some related contexts. For example:

If you have examples then let me know in the comments or on twitter.

How can dataset recipes help?

I think there’s a whole range of ways in which these types of recipe can be useful.

Data analysis always starts by posing a question. By documenting how datasets can be applied specific questions will make them easier to find on search engines. It just fits better with what people want to do.

Data discovery is important during periods where there is a sudden influx of new potential users. For example, where datasets have just been published under an open licence and are now available to more people, for a wider range of purposes.

In my experience data analysts and scientists who understand a domain, e.g population or transport modelling, have built up an tacit understanding of what datasets are most useful in different contexts. They understand the limitations and the process of combining datasets together. This thread from Chris Gale with a recipe about doing spatial analysis using PHE’s COVID-19 data is a perfect example. Documenting and sharing this knowledge can help others to do similar analyses. It’s like a cooking masterclass.

Discovery is also difficult when there is a sudden influx of new data available. Such as during this pandemic. Writing recipes is a good way to share learning across a community.

Documenting useful recipes might help us scale innovation across local areas.

Lastly, we’re still trying to understand which datasets are a most important part of our local, national and international data infrastructure. We’re currently lacking any real quantitative information about how datasets are combined together. In the same way that recipes can be analysed to create ingredient networks, dataset recipes could be analysed to find out how datasets are being used together. We can then strengthen that infrastructure.

If you’ve built something that helps people publish dataset recipes then send me a link to your app. I’d like to try it.

How can you help support the use of a dataset?

Getting the most value from data, whilst minimising its harmful impacts, is a community activity. Datasets need to be governed and published well. Most of that responsibility falls on the data publisher. Because the choices they make shapes data ecosystems.

But other people have a role to play too. Being a good data user means engaging with that process.

Helping others to find data and find the value in it, feels particularly important at the moment. During the pandemic there are many new datasets becoming available. And there are lots of questions to be answered. Some of them can be answered through better use of data.

So, how can communities work together to support use of data?

There are a lot of different ways to explore that question. But there’s a framework called BASEDEF, created by the open source community, which I find helpful.

BASEDEF stands for Blog, Apply, Suggest, Extend, Document, Evangelize and Fix. It describes the different types of contributions that can support an open source project. It can also be applied to help organise a small team in doing that work. Here’s a handy cheat sheet.

But the framework can also be applied to the task of supporting the use of an openly licensed dataset. Let’s run through the framework with that in mind.

Blog

You can write about a dataset to help others to discover it. You can help explain the potential value of applying the dataset to specific problems. Or perhaps you can see some downsides that others should consider.

Writing about how a dataset has been useful to you, by describing how you’ve successfully applied it in a project, will also help others see its potential value.

Apply

You can show how a dataset can be used, by creating something with it. You might do a detailed analysis of the data, but some simpler contributions can also be helpful.

For example you might create a simple visualisation. Or write and publish some code that illustrates how the dataset can be accessed and used. You could publish a quick demo showing how the dataset can be imported and used in some frequently used tools and platforms.

At the moment everyone is a bit tired of charts and graphs. And I agree with the first principle in the visualisation design principles for the pandemic. But a helpful visualisation can do a range of things. Visualisation can be exploratory rather than explanatory.

A visualisation could support other people in understanding the shape of a dataset, to inform their analysis and interpretation of it. It can help identify outliers, gaps, or highlight some of the richness in the data. I’d recommend making it clear when you’re doing it type of visualisation, rather than trying to derive specific insights.

Suggest

Read the documentation. Download and explore the dataset. Ask questions. Give feedback.

Make suggestions to the publisher about changes they could make to publish the data better. Rather than just offer academic critique, be clear about how suggested changes will support your needs or that of your community.

Extend

The freedoms granted by an open licence allow you to enrich and improve a dataset.

Sometimes the smallest changes can have the most impact. Convert the data into other common or standard formats. Extracting data from spreadsheets into CSV files. Convert data published in more complex formats or via APIs into simpler tabular data to make it more accessible to analysts rather than programmers.

Or maybe you can enrich a dataset by adding identifiers that will allow it to be linked to other sources. Do the work of merging with other datasets to bring in more context.

The downside here is that if the original data changes your extended version will get out of date. If you can’t commit to keeping your version up to date, then be sure to share your code and document your methods.

Allow others to repeat the steps you’ve taken. And don’t forget to suggest the improvements to the publisher.

Document

Write additional documentation to fill in gaps where the publisher has not provided sufficient background or explanation. Explain technical concepts or academic terms to a non-specialist audience.

As a user of the data, you’re able to write that documentation from a perspective that reflects the needs and questions of your specific community and the kinds of questions you need to ask. The original publisher might not have all that context or understand those needs, so this work can be really helpful.

Good documentation can be a finding aid. There are structured ways that you can go about writing documentation, such as this tool for writing civic data guides. (Check out some of the examples).

Evangelise

Email people that might have a need for the data. Tweet about it to a wider community. Highlight it in a presentation. Talk about it over coffee Zoom.

Fix

If the dataset is collaboratively maintained then go ahead and fix errors and omissions. If you’re not confident about making a fix, then submit an error report. In addition to fixing errors you might be able to help verify that data is correct.

If a dataset isn’t collaboratively maintained then, when you find errors, be sure to flag them to the publisher and highlight the issue for others. Or consider publishing an enriched version with fixes applied.

This framework isn’t perfect. The name is a bit clunky for a start. But there’s a couple of things that I like about it.

Firstly, it recognises that not all contributions need to be technical. There’s room for others to use different skills and in different ways.

Secondly, the elements overlap and reinforce one another. Writing documentation and blogging about how you’ve used a dataset helps to evangelise it. Enriching a dataset can help demonstrate in a practical way how a publisher can improve how data is published.

Finally, it serves to highlight some important aspects of community curation which aren’t always well supported in existing data platforms and portals. We can do better here.

If you’re interested in working on adapting this further then happy to chat!. It might be useful to have a cheat sheet that supports its application to data and more examples of how to do these different elements well.

How can publishing more data decrease the value of existing data?

Last month I wrote a post looking at how publishing new data might increase the value of existing data. I ended up listing seven different ways including things like improving validation, increasing coverage, supporting the ability to link together datasets, etc.

But that post only looked at half of the issue. What about the opposite? Are there ways in which publishing new data might reduce the value of data that’s already available?

The short answer is: yes there are.  But before jumping into that, lets take a moment to reflect on the language we’re using.

A note on language

The original post was prompted by an economic framing of the value of data. I was exploring how the option value for a dataset might be affected by increasing access to other data. While this post is primarily looking at how option value might be reduced, we need to acknowledge that “value” isn’t the only way to frame this type of question.

We might also ask, “how might increasing access to data increase potential for harms?” As part of a wider debate around the issues of increasing access to data, we need to use more than just economic language. There’s a wealth of good writing about the impacts of data on privacy and society which I’m not going to attempt to precis here.

It’s also important to highlight that “increasing value” and “decreasing value” are relative terms.

Increasing the value of existing datasets will not seem like a positive outcome if your goal is to attempt to capture as much value as possible, rather than benefit a broader ecosystem. Similarly, decreasing value of existing data, e.g. through obfuscation, might be seen as a positive outcome if it results in better privacy or increased personal safety.

Decreasing value of existing data

Having acknowledged that, lets try and answer the earlier question. In what ways can publishing new data reduce the value we can derive from existing data?

Increased harms leading to retraction and reduced trust

Publishing new data always runs the risk of re-identification and the enabling of unintended inferences. While the impacts of these harms are likely to be most directly felt by both communities and individuals, there are also broader commercial and national security issues. Together, these issues might ultimately reduce the value of the existing data ecosystem in several ways:

  • Existing datasets may need to be retracted, have their scope changed, or have their circulation reduced in order to avoid further harm. Data privacy impact assessments will need to be updated as the contexts in which data is being shared and published change
  • Increased concerns over potential privacy impacts might lead to organisations to choose not to increase access to similar or related datasets
  • Increased concerns might also lead communities and individuals to reduce the amount of data they are willing to share with previously trusted sources

Overall this can lead to a reduction in the overall coverage, quality and linking of data across a data ecosystem. It’s likely to be one of the most significant impact of poorly considered data releases. It can be mitigated through proper impact assessments, consultation and engagement.

Reducing overall quality

Newly published data might be intended to increase coverage, enrich, link, validate or otherwise improve existing data. But it might actually have the opposite effect because its of poor quality. I’ve briefly touched on this in a previous post on fictional data.

Publication of poor quality data might be unintended. For example an organisation may just be publishing the data it has to help address an issue, without properly considering or addressing underlying problems with it. Or a researcher may publish data that contains honest mistakes.

But publication of poor quality data might also be deliberate. For example as spam or misinformation intended to “poison the well“.

More subtly, practices like p-hacking and falsification of data which might be intended to have a short-term direct benefit to the publisher or author, might have longer term issues by impacting the use of other datasets.

This is why understanding and documenting the provenance of data, monitoring of retractions, fixes and updates to data, and the ability to link analyses with datasets are all so important.

Creating unnecessary competition or increasing friction

Publishing new datasets containing new observations and data about an area or topic of interest can lead to positive impacts, e.g. by increasing confidence or coverage. But datasets are also competing with one another. The same types of data might be available from different sources, but under different licences, access arrangements, pricing, etc.

This competition isn’t necessarily positive. For example, the data ecosystem might not benefit as much from the network effects that follow from linking data because key datasets are not linked or cannot be used together. Incompatible and competing datasets can add friction across an ecosystem.

Building poor foundations

Data is often published as a means of building stronger data infrastructure for a sector, or to address a specific challenge. But if that data is poorly maintained or is not sustainably funded, then the energy that goes into building the communities, tools and other datasets around that infrastructure might be wasted.

That reduces the value of existing datasets which might otherwise have provided a better foundation to build upon. Or whose quality is dependent on the shared infrastructure. While this issue is similar to that of the previous one about competition, its root causes and impacts are slightly different.

 

As I noted in my earlier post. I don’t think this is an exhaustive list and it can be improved by contributions. Leave a comment if you have any thoughts.

How can publishing more data increase the value of existing data?

There’s lots to love about the “Value of Data” report. Like the fantastic infographic on page 9. I’ll wait while you go and check it out.

Great, isn’t it?

My favourite part about the paper is that it’s taught me a few terms that economists use, but which I hadn’t heard before. Like “Incomplete contracts” which is the uncertainty about how people will behave because of ambiguity in norms, regulations, licensing or other rules. Finally, a name to put to my repeated gripes about licensing!

But it’s the term “option value” that I’ve been mulling over for the last few days. Option value is a measure of our willingness to pay for something even though we’re not currently using it. Data has a large option value, because its hard to predict how its value might change in future.

Organisations continue to keep data because of its potential future uses. I’ve written before about data as stored potential.

The report notes that the value of a dataset can change because we might be able to apply new technologies to it. Or think of new questions to ask of it. Or, and this is the interesting part, because we acquire new data that might impact its value.

So, how does increasing access to one dataset affect the value of other datasets?

Moving data along the data spectrum means that increasingly more people will have access to it. That means it can be used by more people, potentially in very different ways than you might expect. Applying Joy’s Law then we might expect some interesting, innovative or just unanticipated uses. (See also: everyone loves a laser.)

But more people using the same data is just extracting additional value from that single dataset. It’s not directly impacting the value of other dataset.

To do that we need to use that in some specific ways. So far I’ve come up with seven ways that new data can change the value of existing data.

  1. Comparison. If we have two or more datasets then we can compare them. That will allow us to identify differences, look for similarities, or find correlations. New data can help us discover insights that aren’t otherwise apparent.
  2. Enrichment. New data can enrich an existing data by adding new information. It gives us context that we didn’t have access to before, unlocking further uses
  3. Validation. New data can help us identify and correct errors in existing data.
  4. Linking. A new dataset might help us to merge some existing dataset, allowing us to analyse them in new ways. The new dataset acts like a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
  5. Scaffolding. A new dataset can help us to organise other data. It might also help us collect new data.
  6. Improve Coverage. Adding more data, of the same type, into an existing pool can help us create a larger, aggregated dataset. We end up with a more complete dataset, which opens up more uses. The combined dataset might have a a better spatial or temporal coverage, be less biased or capture more of the world we want to analyse
  7. Increase Confidence. If the new data measures something we’ve already recorded, then the repeated measurements can help us to be more confident about the quality of our existing data and analyses. For example, we might pool sensor readings about the weather from multiple weather stations in the same area. Or perform a meta-analysis of a scientific study.

I don’t think this is exhaustive, but it was a useful thought experiment.

A while ago, I outlined ten dataset archetypes. It’s interesting to see how these align with the above uses:

  • A meta-analysis to increase confidence will draw on multiple studies
  • Combining sensor feeds can also help us increase confidence in our observations of the world
  • A register can help us with linking or scaffolding datasets. They can also be used to support validation.
  • Pooling together multiple descriptions or personal records can help us create a database that has improved coverage for a specific application
  • A social graph is often used as scaffolding for other datasets

What would you add to my list of ways in which new data improves the value of existing data? What did I miss?

Three types of agreement that shape your use of data

Whenever you’re accessing, using or sharing data you will be bound by a variety of laws and agreements. I’ve written previously about how data governance is a nested set of rules, processes, legislation and norms.

In this post I wanted to clarify the differences between three types of agreements that will govern your use of data. There are others. But from a data consumer point of view these are most common.

If you’re involved in any kind of data project, then you should have read all of relevant agreements that relate to data you’re planning to use. So you should know what to look for.

Data Sharing Agreements

Data sharing agreements are usually contracts that will have been signed between the organisations sharing data. They describe how, when, where and for how long data will be shared.

They will include things like the purpose and legal basis for sharing data. They will describe the important security, privacy and other considerations that govern how data will be shared, managed and used. Data sharing agreements might be time-limited. Or they might describe an ongoing arrangement.

When the public and private sector are sharing data, then publishing a register of agreements is one way to increase transparency around how data is being shared.

The ICO Data Sharing Code of Practice has more detail on the kinds of information a data sharing agreement should contain. As does the UK’s Digital Economy Act 2017 code of practice for data sharing. In a recent project the ODI and CABI created a checklist for data sharing agreements.

Data sharing agreements are most useful when organisations, of any kind, are sharing sensitive data. A contract with detailed, binding rules helps everyone be clear on their obligations.

Licences

Licences are a different approach to defining the rules that apply to use of data. A licence describes the ways that data can be used without any of the organisations involved having to enter into a formal agreement.

A licence will describe how you can use some data. It may also place some restrictions on your use (e.g. “non-commercial”) and may spell out some obligations (“please say where you got the data”). So long as you use the data in the described ways, then you don’t need any kind of explicit permission from the publisher. You don’t even have to tell them you’re using it. Although it’s usually a good idea to do that.

Licences remove the need to negotiate and sign agreements. Permission is granted in advance, with a few caveats.

Standard licences make it easier to use data from multiple sources, because everyone is expecting you to follow the same rules. But only if the licences are widely adopted. Where licences don’t align, we end up with unnecessary friction.

Licences aren’t time-limited. They’re perpetual. At least as long as you follow your obligations.

Licences are best used for open and public data. Sometimes people use data sharing agreements when a licence might be a better option. That’s often because organisations know how to do contracts, but are less confident in giving permissions. Especially if they’re concerned about risks.

Sometimes, even if there’s an open licence to use data, a business would still prefer to have an agreement in place. That’s might be because the licence doesn’t give them the freedoms they want, or they’d like some additional assurances in place around their use of data.

Terms and Conditions

Terms and conditions, or “terms of use” are a set of rules that describe how you can use a service. Terms and conditions are the things we all ignore when signing up to website. But if you’re using a data portal, platform or API then you need to have definitely checked the small print. (You have, haven’t you?)

Like a Data Sharing Agreement, a set of terms and conditions is something that you formally agree to. It might be by checking a box rather than signing a document, but its still an agreement.

Terms of use will describe the service being offered and the ways in which you can use it. Like licences and data sharing agreements, they will also include some restrictions. For example whether you can build a commercial service with it. Or what you can do with the results.

A good set of terms and conditions will clearly and separately identify those rules that relate to your use of the service (e.g. how often you can use it) from those rules that relate to the data provided to you. Ideally the terms would just refer to a separate licence. The Met Office Data Point terms do this.

A poorly defined set of terms will focus on the service parts but not include enough detail about your rights to use and reuse data. That can happen if the emphasis has been on the terms of use of the service as a product, rather than around the sharing of data.

The terms and conditions for a data service and the rules that relate to the data are two of the important decisions that shape the data ecosystem that service will enable. It’s important to get them right.

Hopefully that’s a helpful primer. Remember, if you’re in any kind of role using data then you need to read the small print. If not, then you’re potentially exposing yourself and others to risks.