We are living in a new world. This world is driven by connection to one another and data that we generate. As a result we have opportunities to collaborate and find innovative solutions to long standing challenges. A key ingredient to this collaboration is open data. Understanding where we are now and what we have done to date it crucial in understanding what to do next. This empirical open collaborative process is the opportunity open data presents. It is the reason why Barack Obama issued an Executive Order — Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.
Accurate well maintained open data shows us where we are now and invites collaboration and participation in getting to where we want to be.
What is open data?
“Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.” OpenDefinition.org
- open data is a list of pharmaceuticals accessed by procurement officers in Southern Africa
- open data is the Geolocation of schools, hospitals and health clinics
- open data is the Geolocation of places and things in Openstreetmap
- open data is the Geolocation of recycling plants in Delphi, Kolkata or London
- open data is the arrival and departure times of aeroplanes landing at Cape Town International airport
A Health Care specialist or rehabilitation worker visiting a patient in a township community has insights about her patient and the community. These insights together
with the open data collected through her mobile device can spark the development of valuable products and services by social entrepreneurs. At this point we have established #opendatademand.
How do we spark engagement by Social Entrepreneurs?
Social Entrepreneurs can be incentivised by social bonds. A social bond works in a similar way to Kickstarter. A Bond is paid out when the social target is reached. Let’s say the number of women in an area who have enrolled their children at the local school. A baseline is established and then the intervention is made. The number is measured and when reached the bond is paid.
When you combine this with an open development approach where knowledge is shared you have a potent combination for communities to act.
Recently I attended the Global Conference on Citizen Engagement for Enhanced Development Impact #engagevoices
Some of the learnings from the day included the following barriers to citizen engagement:
- Citizens lack incentives to participate – bring on the social bond and allow me to engage
- Citizens lack meaningful opportunity to participate – allow me to participate through my phone
- Governments lack capacity to listen – make it easy for us to see what you are saying
- Governments lack incentives to change – show us how you improve our business case to deliver services
The Internet and social media allows us to share knowledge and insight at the click of a button. Social organisations sharing their knowledge and insights allow social entrepreneurs to engage. By linking Social Bonds to development outcomes social entrepreneurs can find innovative methods to make use of open data and achieve development goals and the needs of the community instead of waiting for service delivery from the Government and aid organisations.
When Primary health care organisations release service and outcome data it can be linked and analysed in ways that will better inform the delivery of care and services. Patients, academics, data intermediaries and other organisations can access the data and make comparisons that enable more informed choices.
To achieve this collaboration organisations need to release their data under an open data licence. Once the data is published under an open data license it is interoperable with other open data.
A great example of this is that of the The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). Using credible medicines forecasting models and open data on pricing and suppliers, CHAI has been able to pre-negotiate significantly lower pricing deals on antiretroviral (ARV) medicines that countries are able to access. This information is being used to set ceiling prices for the South Africa ARV Tender and this is expected to reduce the total cost of ARVs to the South African Government by up to $100 million per annum. By publishing open data the ARV purchasing officers of Southern African countries were able to achieve economies of scale and a competitive market price.
Opportunities for mhealth
Primary health care organisations that publish knowledge and open data regarding the communities they serve have an opportunity to:
- identify social needs
- improve service delivery
- support innovation
- create employment
Open data offers the following opportunities
- Transparency and democratic control
- Participation
- Self-empowerment
- Improved or new private products and services
- Innovation
- Improved efficiency of government services
- Improved effectiveness of government services
- Impact measurement of policies
- New knowledge from combined data sources and patterns in large data volumes
Summary – What is Open data?
Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
Reuse and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit reuse and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.
Next steps
- As a Primary health care organisation get an open data policy established
- Identify what you should/could be publishing and make it available
- Define your objectives through a development dashboard and publish your results
- Establish a Social Bond element to the organisation that incentivises social entrepreneurs
As June Jordan wrote in her poem for South African women We are the ones we’ve been waiting for
Sources and links
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/116341375754355594168
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/we_need_open_data_to_change_th.html
http://tendai.medicinesinfohub.net/page/home/
http://www.slideshare.net/mangamonk/os-processes-forsocialentrepreneurs
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-government-
https://opendata.go.ke
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12pskm7wyFOQbgw_t4H7MrW4l2wWNosKdlKPO29JFvIQ/edit
http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/