Top-down vs. bottom-up
Wow, good debate. Mind If I step in?
I have been looking with much interest at the development of the open data scene in different countries. I see two models: top-down and bottom-up. The top-down one is incarnated by President Obama signing his famous memorandum on open government four hours after moving into the Oval Office. By doing so, he was sending a powerful message down the hierarchy tree: the President wants this done, deal with it. This method is fast and can command a lot of resources, but is prone to “bubbles” - and in fact, later, the administration reconsidered and slashed the opengov budget by half.
The bottom-up model is incarnated by Spaghetti Open Data in Italy: a handful of enthusiasts (some will be civic hackers, some well-meaning civil servants) with no money but some technical skill and some maneuvering space. This model is slow and can’t command resources: projects are built painstakingly one by one, on spare time. And yet, it is more sustainable, because the shift towards open data is “pure”, not driven by contractors trying to catch fat government contracts or by yes-men trying to please the leader. Also, it means that - if ever it becomes a government policy - open data will find skilled people to work on it, need fewer resources (because the community has learned to make do with free software and no marketing), and - above all - count on a community that knows how to reuse the data being released, and wants to do so.
You don’t really get to choose a model: each country develops according to its own deep governance structure. I know nothing about the UAE, but from Ibrahim’s report it seems that the Sheikh himself is playing a role. People look up to him, apparently; by going over to Twitter he is leading the civil society to take social media seriously. In Italy, the Prime Minister is perceived as a follower: he or she will adopt Twitter only after civil society leaders have opened the way, tested its utility and proved that it works even in a public policy context. This is not because the Prime Minister is weak or conservative (the one we have now is a brilliant economist, anything but slow), it is just the way our society is wired.
What we can say is that each country would probably do well to make the most of its deep wiring. Maybe in the UAE you can just leapfrog everybody else, because the Sheikh can mobilize society quickly and effectively. In Italy, I am devoting my effort to developing the demand side of open data - teaching students and journalists to use Scraperwiki, Google Refine and visualization techniques - in the hope that will lead to a small but viable “open data economy”, that will keep going even if the next Prime Minister is not interested.
Ibrahim, I would be interested: does this make any sort of sense to you?