DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL:IT IS ESTIMATED that public sector bodies across the EU are sitting on a treasure trove worth up to €27 billion in the form of the data they hold on a variety of areas including planning, traffic and transport and environmental protection.
In an initiative led by Dublin City Council, Dublin’s four local authorities have come together to form Dublinked – a membership network involving businesses, technologists, app developers, researchers and entrepreneurs to mine, exploit and utilise public data to generate new revenue streams and address regional challenges.
The Dublinked initiative sees previously unreleased public operational data being made available online for others to research or reuse. The information is curated by NUI Maynooth to ensure ideas can be commercialised as easily as possible and to minimise legal or technical barriers that can be impediments for small and medium businesses (SMEs) seeking to develop and prove business ideas.
“We started looking at this about two years ago and everyone said we couldn’t do it,” says assistant Dublin city manager Michael Stubbs. “We said we wanted to do it and we decided to find a way around the problems. We were told that we would be giving unfair competitive advantage to the private sector by allowing it access to this data – but we are allowing everyone access to it so there is no unfair advantage. The whole point is to stimulate economic activity thereby creating jobs.”
The initial release of data in October consisted of over 100 environmental, traffic and planning datasets, including planning application data from across the Dublin region: water flow, rainfall and energy monitoring; air, water pollution and noise maps; a wide array of usable mapping from development plans, river catchment and drainage; and parking, residential and disabled parking as well as detailed traffic volumes.
The key to Dublinked is its “build it and they will come” approach. The local authorities and other public bodies involved do not attempt to direct the work that will be done with the data.
“We are making the data available to try to engage entrepreneurs and create a framework for the development of apps, middleware and so on,” explains Deirdre Ni Raghalligh of Dublin City Council.
“We are trying to create new commercial opportunities. We don’t know how people will use the data but it will be very interesting to find out.”
The first datasets were made available last October and already a software application to alert citizens to planning applications and decisions in their local area has been developed as a result.
“I am an engineer and have been involved in planning construction projects for the past 12 years so I have a good handle on how the local authorities work,” says Ciaran Gilsenan, chief executive of developer Mypp. “We had been working on the web front end of the application since February of 2011 so we were ready to go with it when the planning data became available from Dublinked in October.”
The Mypp application has just been launched and Gilsenan and his team plan to develop a smartphone app next, before looking at new markets. “The software application is very exportable,” he explains. “We have built a platform which can be used for any other city in the world once the open data is available.”
It is this potential which excites Irish Internet Association chief executive Joan Mulvihill. “Wind and wave energy is our great untapped natural resource, to power the country, but what of data – our untapped non-natural resource?” she asks. “In an information age, where knowledge is power and where Ireland is arguably the European HQ of all things digital, we should be leading the way in open data.”
She sees huge commercial opportunities arising out of the Dublinked initiative. “Our developer community will have access to an invaluable raw material that they can fashion into a plethora of citizen and state applications. Open data provides resources to our internet innovators and enhances our international reputation as the European digital capital. Many of these applications and systems can be scaled and monetised, benefiting the economy as a whole.”
Dublinked is unique in providing both open data and an additional membership zone. Members can access additional datasets in the research zone and participate in regular member events. “We have to safeguard this data which is an asset to the community,” Michael Stubbs explains. “We have divided Dublinked into two pieces. One is open to anyone with an internet connection while the other is a research zone open to members only for a nominal fee. This is because we have to be careful with any data which has any degree of sensitivity attached to it, such as personal information. Our intention is to provide a safe enclosed area for people involved in research to use this data for the creation of applications which will be useful to citizens.”
More datasets will be made available over the coming months and it is also hoped that more partners will come on board. “We are gradually introducing new datasets over time,” says Stubbs. “One of the things we learned from London and San Francisco is that if you flood people with data you switch them off. You need to give people time to reflect on what you are giving them. The only way to find out what can be done with the data is to make it available. People will come and play with the data and work with it. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response to the datasets so far and it’s going to go on and on.”
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