Dear O’Reilly Media: Please produce more of these lovely bite-sized, thought-provoking short report/monographs!
Data for the Public Good by Alex Howard is a concise and hard-hitting 22 pages long. I saw it as 100% long as I read it on met eReader between home and my morning coffee and porridge. 22 pages really works! It is just the right amount of superbly editing and curated data to engage with an absorb in a session in a fast-paced world. Reflect here on how we package and deliver information today.
The iterative open data process is at the heart of revolution in any of the sectors touched: data drives demand -> public demand drives better data –> version control (and fluidity of release) adds dimension to this data.
The book itself is a succinct survey of examples and principles supporting more open sharing of data (both public and private) for the service of citizens and citizenry. Although much of of this book focuses on open government data, it is the public good served by both public and private data that is in discussion and doesn’t shrink from broaching the sensitive areas of privacy and economic value. Alex Howard admits readily that ‘accountability and transparency are important civil goods, but adopting open data requires grounded arguments for a CFO to support these.’ Data for the Public Good explores the political, financial, transportation and health systems rapidly identifying the key points of friction, challenge and benefit that can be derived by open-minded consideration of how both the availability of data and our perceptions of our data-informed lives are changing how we see and govern ourselves. Continue Reading
There are some telling lessons for today’s larger organisations by looking into the history of the organisation. Big data is not a new phenomenon — it is entirely relative and all too strikingly familiar. Over time individuals and organisations have been constantly challenged by what seemed to be mountains of data containing a prospective valuable nugget of knowledge. In a recent McKinsey Quarterly article,

Well, time to come to grips with what has been a wonderful journey, a great read and a thought provoking diversion.
I’m working on a review of
Content Everywhere by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
calls it a swindle and abhors the 
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