Mine your data: open data, digital strategies and entrepreneurial governance by code

Abstract

Investment in the release of open data has become increasingly central to the implementation of smart city programs by governments around the world. Though originally arising out of a push towards “open government” and the pursuit of more transparent decision-making by public authorities at multiple scales, open data programs have more recently been adopted by municipal governments to support entrepreneurial goals of enhanced competitive positioning and attracting investment. As urban scholars now subject the smart city project to critical scrutiny for its role in advancing urban entrepreneurialism, this article considers the relevance of the open data agenda as it shapes wider understandings of the smart city. In particular, I address the collection of policy practices, aspirations, stakeholders and entrepreneurs active in framing the opportunities and values of open data for urban governments. Both the momentum of support for open data, along with a recent shift in the rhetorical aspirations of the open data movement away from the values of openness and transparency and towards a more confined focus on value generation, raise important critical questions for urban geographers concerned with the nature of urban governance in an age of big data.

Keywords:

• Smart cities
• open data
• urban entrepreneurialism
• policy mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In simple terms, big data can be defined as data sets with sizes beyond the ability of common software tools to capture, curate, manage and process the data within a specified elapsed time (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou, & Venkatraman, 2013, p. 476).

2. Discussions about the definitions of “open data” are widely accessible online and reflect the growing importance of integrating both legal and technical dimensions of openness. Example discussions referenced in this article include Emily Shaw’s “History and How-To of Open Data” published at datasmartcitysolutions.com (Shaw, 2015) and “Open Data: What is It and Why Should You Care” by Jason Shueh on govtech.com (Shueh, 2014).

3. The Open Data Census can be found at http://us-city.census.okfn.org.4.

4. Application programming interface.

5. Socrata has clients that also include the World Bank, however, the majority of companies using the service are city governments.

6. In 2015, two new additions were Harvard Professor Stephen Goldsmith, former Deputy Mayor of New York and David Eaves, an open innovation expert.

7. Based on informal conversations with users of Socrata at various industry events and fora. Within the industry, Socrata is sometimes described as “the new Microsoft” of open data publishing. While any government can use open APIs to exit the proprietary platform and adopt another solution, for many the time involved in migrating acts as a major deterrent.

8. Discussion on internet forum website “Stack Exchange” 2014. Accessed 15 January 2015 at http://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/1517/ckan-vs-socrata.

9. A useful resource for tracking the introduction of open data programs across US cities is “Open Data Policy Comparison: Best Practices” accessible here as a Google Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_0Dm9cmooFAPZCM-LebLX343Ktejciiwn803suM8jS0/edit#gid=0.

10. City of Melbourne Open Data Newsletter of January 2015. Subscriber access only.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme.