This week, I read and shared a notable Wall Street Journal article on the value of government data in that bears highlighting: hedge funds are paying for market intelligence using open government laws as an acquisition vehicle.
What’s left unclear by the reporting here is if there’s 1) strong interest in data and 2) deep pocketed hedge funds or well-financed startups are paying for it, why aren’t agencies releasing it proactively?
Tracking inbound FOIA requests from industry and responding to this market indicator as a means of valuing “high value data” is a strategy that has been glaringly obvious for years. Unfortunately, it’s an area in which the Obama administration’s open data policies look to have failed over the last 4 years, at least as viewed through the prism of this article.
If data sets that are requested multiple times are not being proactively posted on Data.gov and tracked there, there’s a disconnect between what the market for government data is and the perception by officials. As the Obama administration and agencies prepare to roll out enterprise data inventories later fall as part of the open data policies, here’s hoping agency CIOs are also taking steps to track who’s paying for data and which data sets are requested.
If one of the express goals of the federal governments is to find an economic return on investment on data releases, agencies should focus on open data with business value. It’s just common sense.