Bon j'ai ouvert certaines données, et maintenant ?

Nous avons examiné les moyens légaux et techniques de rendre les information gouvernementales réutilisables. La prochaine étape est d’encourager l’utilisation de ces données.

Cette section propose des idées supplémentaires qui permettent de promouvoir la réutilisation des données.

Dites au monde!

En tout premier lieu, prenez soin de promouvoir le fait que vous vous soyez engagé dans une campagne de promotion des :term:”données ouvertes” dans votre domaine de responsabilité.

si vous ouvrez un nombre conséquent de datasets, il est toujours utile de vérifier que le grand public est au courant (ou a les moyens de le faire).

En plus des éléments comme les communiqués de presse, annonces sur votre site web, et ainsi de suite, vous pouvez envisager:

• Contacter les organisations de premier plan ou des individus qui travaillent / sont intéressés dans ce domaine
• Contacter les listes de diffusion ou les groupes de réseaux sociaux pertinents.
• Directly contacting prospective users who you know may be interested in this data

Comprendre votre auditoire

Like all public communication, engaging with the data community needs to be targeted. Like all stakeholder groups, the right message can be wasted if it is directed to the wrong area.

Les communautés numériques sont en général heureuses de partager de nouvelles informations, mais elles celles-ci sont rapidement consommées. Écrivez comme si votre message allait être lu en diagonale, plutôt que faire l’objet d’une lecture critique détaillée.

Members of the tech community are less likely than the general public to use MS Windows. This means that you should not save documents in MS Office formats which can be read offline. There are two resons for this:

• La première est que ces documents seront moins accessibles. Plutôt que le document que vous voyez sur votre écran, les lecteurs peuvent voir une copie imparfaite d’une alternative.
• Deuxièmement, votre agence envoie un message implicite qu’elle n’est pas prête à faire un pas en direction des développeurs. Au contraire, vous montrez que vous attendez que la communauté technologique vienne à vous.

Poster votre matériel sur des sites tiers

Many blogs have created a large readership in specialised topic areas. It may be worthwhile adding an article about your initiative on their site. These can be mutually beneficial. You receive more interest and they receive a free blog post in their topic area.

Rendre vos communications plus amicale sur les réseaux sociaux.

It’s unrealistic to expect that officials should spend long periods of time engaging with social media. However, there are several things that you can do to make sure that your content can be easily shared between technical users. Some tips:

• Provide unique pages for each piece of content

Quand un message est partagé avec d’autres, le destinataire de la saisine sera à la recherche d’un contenu pertinent rapidement.

• Avoid making people download your press releases

  Press releases are fine. They are concise messages about a particular point. However, if you require people to download the content and for it to open outside of a web browser, then fewer people will read it. Search engines are less likely to index the content. People are less likely to click to download.

• Consider using an Open license for your content

  Apart from providing certainty to people who wish to share your content that this is permissible, you send a message that your agency understands openness. This is bound to leave an impression far more significant to proponents of open data than any specific sentence in your press release.

Media social

It’s inefficient for cash-strapped agencies to spend hours on social media sites. The most significant way that your voice can be heard through these fora is by making sure that blog posts are easily shareable. That means, before reading the next section, make sure that you have read the last. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions:

• Discussion fora

Twitter s’est imposé comme la plate forme de choix pour diffuser rapidement de l’information. Tout sujet tagué avec #opendata (ndt : #donneesouvertes ?) sera immédiatement visible par plusieurs milliers de personnes.

LinkedIn propose un vaste choix de groupes qui sont ciblés vers les données ouvertes.

Alors que Facebook est excellent pour le grand public, il n’est pas très utilisé au sein de la communauté des données ouvertes.

• Link aggregators

Envoyer votre contenu sous forme de dépêches pour les geeks. Reddit et Hacker news sont les deux plus grands dans ce domaine pour le moment. Dans une moindre mesure, Slashdot et Digg sont également des outils utiles dans ce domaine.

These sites have a tendency to drive significant traffic to interesting material. They are also heavily focused on topic areas.

Obtenir des gens dans une salle: non conférences, rencontre et barcamp

Face-à-face des événements peut être un moyen très efficace pour encourager les autres à utiliser vos données. Les raisons que vous pouvez envisager de proposer lors d’un évènement comprennent:

• Finding out more about prospective re-users
• En apprendre plus concernant la demande pour différents ensembles de données
• Finding out more about how people want to re-use your data
• Enabling prospective re-users to find out more about what data you have
• Permettre aux utilisateurs potentiels de se rencontrer (par exemple pour qu’ils puissent collaborer)
• Exposer vos données à un large public (par exemple de blogue ou la couverture médiatique que l’événement peut contribuer à générer)

There are also lots of different ways of running events, and different types of events, depending on what aim you want to achieve. As well as more traditional conference models, which will include things like preprepared formal talks, presentations and demonstrations, there are also various kinds of participant driven events, where those who turn up may:

• Guide ou définition de l’ordre du jour de l’événement
• Se présenter, parler de ce qui les intéresse et de ce sur quoi ils travaillent, sur une base ad hoc
• Improviser de courtes présentations sur l’objet de leur travail
• Dirigez des sessions sur des sujets qui les intéressent

There is plenty of documentation online about how to run these kinds of events, which you can find by searching for things like: ‘unconference’, ‘barcamp’, ‘meetup’, ‘speedgeek’, ‘lightning talk’, and so on. You may also find it worthwhile to contact people who have run these kinds of events in other countries, who will most likely be keen to help you out and to advise you on your event. It may be valuable to partner with another organisation (e.g. a civic society organisation, a news organisation or an educational institution) to broaden your base participants and to increase your exposure.

Faire les choses! Jours du hack, prix et prototypes

The structure of these competitions is that a number of datasets are released and programmers then have a short time-frame -running from as little as 48 hours to a few weeks - to develop applications using the data. A prize is then awarded to the best application. Competitions have been held in a number of countries including the UK, the US, Norway, Australia, Spain, Denmark and Finland.

Exemples de compétitions

Show us a better way was the first such competition in the world. It was initiated by the UK Government’s “The Power of Information Taskforce” headed by Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson in March 2008. This competition asked “What would you create with public information?” and was open to programmers from around the world, with a tempting £80,000 prize for the five best applications.

Apps for Democracy, one of the first competitions in the United States, was launched in October 2008 by Vivek Kundra, at the time Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the District of Columbia (DC) Government. Kundra had developed the groundbreaking DC data catalog, http://data.octo.dc.gov/, which included datasets such as real-time crime feeds, school test scores, and poverty indicators. It was at the time the most comprehensive local data catalog in the world. The challenge was to make it useful for citizens, visitors, businesses and government agencies of Washington, DC.

The creative solution was to create the Apps for Democracy contest. The strategy was to ask people to build applications using the data from the freshly launched data catalog. It included an online submission for applications, many small prizes rather than a few large ones, and several different categories as well as a “People’s Choice” prize. The competition was open for 30 days and cost the DC government $50,000. In return, a total of 47 iPhone, Facebook and web applications were developed with an estimated value in excess of $2,600,000 for the local economy.

The Abre Datos (Open Data) Challenge 2010. Held in Spain in April 2010, this contest invited developers to create open source applications making use of public data in just 48 hours. The competition had 29 teams of participants who developed applications that included a mobile phone programme for accessing traffic information in the Basque Country, and for accessing data on buses and bus stops in Madrid, which won the first and second prizes of €3,000 and €2,000 respectively.

Nettskap 2.0. In April 2010 the Norwegian Ministry for Government Administration held “Nettskap 2.0”. Norwegian developers – companies, public agencies or individuals – were challenged to come up with web-based project ideas in the areas of service development, efficient work processes, and increased democratic participation. The use of government data was explicitly encouraged. Though the application deadline was just a month later, on May 9, the Minister Rigmor Aasrud said the response was “overwhelming”. In total 137 applications were received, no less than 90 of which built on the re-use of government data. A total amount of NOK 2.5 million was distributed among the 17 winners; while the total amount applied for by the 137 applications was NOK 28.4 million.

Mashup Australia. The Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce invited citizens to show why open access to Australian government information would be positive for the country’s economy and social development. The contest ran from October 7th to November 13th 2009. The Taskforce released some datasets under an open license and in a range of reusable formats. The 82 applications that were entered into the contest are further evidence of the new and innovative applications which can result from releasing government data on open terms.

Conférences, Barcamps, jours du hack

One of the more effective ways for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to demonstrate to governments the value of opening up their datasets is to show the multiple ways in which the information can be managed to achieve social and economic benefit. CSOs that promote re-use have been instrumental in countries where there have been advances in policy and law to ensure that datasets are both technically and legally open.

The typical activities which are undertaken as part of these initiatives normally include competitions, {term:open government data} conferences, “unconferences”, workshops and “hack days”. These activities are often organised by the user community with data that has already been published proactively or obtained using access to information requests. In other cases, civil society advocates have worked with progressive public officials to secure new release of datasets that can be used by programmers to create innovative applications.