Making the overall Open Data ecosystem more useful and accessible isn’t only a technological issue. If we publish only Linked Open Data stuff out there, we aren’t solving the problem at all.

We need to think about the overall user experience, and more about our potential users, our data remixers. And, on the other hand, how we can make this concept of remixing data visible on mainstream channels?

We need two different things: firstly, be sexier and easier to understand. And secondly,** be closer to the people** real agenda settings.

The starting point is having more context around data: not only speaking about the contextual geographic information system. I’m speaking about merging different worlds, and different data silos, hiding the way you’re doing that. From mobility data, to Internet of Things sensors data. Citing an article published on GigaOm:

“So while it is true that we have access to more information than ever before, we are not experts on every subject. Thus, it is very difficult to digest it. My concern is that over-information the new way of hiding information. The best way to fight mainstream media disinformation is to demand more context for all the data: we need the “fact-checking journalism” promoted by sites like Gapminder or Open Knowledge. Visualizing.org strives to make sense of issues through data and design with a collection site where designers and all sorts of organizations can upload and share open data sets”.

Demanding more context from our information systems means finding better ways to have the information that we are really looking for. Querying Open Data portals with only one click, for example, improves the usability and the overall user experience. Hiding this querying process another step in the right direction, like Google has done with its Knowledge Graph concept. I’ve also seen some signals during my daily job: [full disclosure: I’m the community manager at SpazioDati]

• Students are really thinking out of the box: during a hackathon inside the Hack4Med project, one of the winning teams ‘Veneto’ had simplified the way you access and find an Open Data dataset you’re looking for. I mean, hiding the metadata stuff, and finding correlations and connections inside the data using semantic text APIs like Dandelion API. We need to think about more events and more ways to be contaminated with their ideas;

Years ago I read a beautiful book, written by Steven Johnson, titled “Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software”

I found it very insightful, with some ideas of what are now common modern day concepts (such as crowdsourcing or collective intelligence) being explained in a clear and documented way. The main concept was the following, taken from Wikipedia:

Emergence refers to the ability of low-level components of a system or community to self-organize into a higher-level system of sophistication and awareness. Johnson notes that this self-reorganizing stems from the bottom up rather than directed by an external control factor. Johnson gives examples of feedback, self-organization and adaptive learning.

Sometimes, when thinking of how Italy is managing the overall Open Government process, I’m convinced that we are a good example of a chaotic emergence system (yes, I know, I’m optimistic). There are some good signals, but only a few.

In my last blog post I described Wikitalia as an association inspired by Code For America and MySociety. We are working to develop Wikitalia in several ways. Currently, we’re focused on building capacity in local public administrations to adopt open data and open government practices.

It’s not so simple, but we are trying to find a sustainable business model to survive. It’s one of our goals for this year, and it isn’t the only one. We are working to simplify the association and to focus more on projects and less on process. We Italians love bureaucracy, don’t we?

I’ve heard that “less is more” and I believe it’s a truth that we often forget. As you can see from our projects, several of them are connected directly to the idea of a “wiki-town” or something similar.
The idea belongs to Alberto Cottica, who wrote a book titled “Wikicrazia“. Based on this idea, we are developing a model to manage how Wikitalia itself works in every single city, in a more scalable way. We use direct experiences as sources for the model. After our work with the municipality of Florence in 2012, we are now focused on Matera.

Open Matera: Supporting Open Data projects at the municipal level

One of the projects I’m working on now is Open Matera: if you don’t know Matera, it is a beautiful town in the south of Italy. If you have ever seen “The Passion of the Christ“, directed by Mel Gibson, it was filmed on location in Matera (here is an article with more information about the town).