We have gone to sleep. Not even dead dolphins have caused us to blink. A few press reports of events, the odd official voice about a study somewhere. This should be a smack in the head for us all- wake up!
The world needs our care. We have the ability to preserve, or destroy this patch of paradise. To care for our country we need to make decisions, daily. To make good decisions we need good data and access to that data. Decisions without facts are probably bad decisions. What gets measured, gets managed. However, it is difficult to get to the facts around our lives.
Things are changing. I believe that it is important that we measure these changes so we know what is happening and how to respond. Today we read that the past decade was the warmest on record. If we are to respond usefully we really need to know about what else is happening, in detail
We talk about open government. We congratulate ourselves when we fill our web sites with annual reports, budgets and attractive graphics. Here in Western Australia we are just not good enough at collecting data and making it available. If I want to see how much dieldrin, or petrol, or copper is in the Swan River water, and what that level has been each year, I just can’t get it. The best I find is some PDFs or departmental reports.
However, pictures of information are not actually data. To get a time series of say the water use of my city over twenty years I have to find and open up twenty separate documents and collate the data. This is not good enough.
The USA has developed a web site called data.gov where vast amounts of data are totally open for public access. Even our national databases are available at data.australia . Here in the West we have nothing like it.
Some things we might like to know about could include:
- traffic on the freeway
- energy use hour by hour for each year
- number of staff employed by the City
- number of single- parent households
- pollution indicators in the Swan River, e.g. chromium, phosphate, pesticides
The data is important and the time series of data sets is vital. Innovative people can use this sort of data to suggest useful ways to adapt to the changes we see and measure. By constructing ‘mash- ups’ of data sets, new insights can appear.
Let’s really live the values of open government. Let’s have the facts, out there, so we don’t have to guess what is happening!
2 comments:
I think the problem you raise is most valid and an excellent proposal. Most people in the community would agree I think given we need to know the actual scope of a situation is before we know what are the best strategies to adopt to approach it. How do you propose the address the inadequacy though? You have highlighted the problem well - how can this be transformed into action and a result? What are your suggestions?
This blog tends to lay the 'blame' for information not being available at the feet of the state government but have you ever tried to get access to information that is being held at local government level! Why doesn't South Perth City Council set an example, release all information it collects, and spend time collecting/distributing more about the area (some innovative Councils have their own research staff members to do this sort of tasks). Access is greater to "hidden" government documents at this level which could then be brought to the public's attention.
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