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?

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” (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.

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.