Open Data

by LibCognizance in Data, New Trends, Open data

Open Data

Open data has the similar goals as to those of Open access, Open education, Open science, Open Source software, and many more terms starting with the word “Open” that opposes the restrictions of copyright or any other mechanism of control that puts barriers between user and data/ service/software, etc. The term Open data has become the buzzword recently with the launch of Open-data government initiatives in different countries like Data.gov of US Government, data.gov.uk of UK government and Data.gov.in( launched in October 2012) of Indian Government with the aim of providing access to the government generated data sets, services, and applications of high value to the public.

Before defining the Open data, it is good to define or understand the definition of the word “Open” which prefix the above-mentioned words common to all.

In other words, we can say that it is the word Open that needs to be clearly defined that, in what sense it is being used, and its definition makes the meaning of all the terms clear.

“Open” definition:

“Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose(subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness).”¹

“Open data” Definition:

“Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose.”²

Few points to be noted:

Data which is open to all must be non-personal data means personal data of an individual cannot be shared, it should be in compliance of GDPR. Similarly, data related to national security and integrity cannot be shared.

Data must be easily accessible in the convenient format to modify and use so that the inter-operability of data, i.e. the ability to combine and intermixing of different data sets together and thereby to develop more and better applications and services which indirectly enhances more openness of data.

Data must be provided freely without any copyright laws, which restricts the reuse, redistribution of data and intermixing with other data.

Data must be available to all without any discrimination, i.e. to a certain group of people, or people of certain fields or data can be used only for a certain purpose.