Data is a Product

It's finally happened. After the rise and fall of empires, the UK has created a republic of the people. No, we haven't asked the Windsors to move on - what's actually happened is Open Addresses. For anyone who hasn't read this blog before, I'll give you a one paragraph overview of the problem we've faced.. The UK is seen as a leader in Open Data. However, as virtually every decision made by government and businesses involves a 'place', the lack of an open list of places (an address dataset) has been a major problem. We have lots of commercial datasets such as Royal Mail PAF, Ordnance Survey AddressBase and a variety of local gazetteers and other datasets owned by government bodies. While choice is good, in this case the choice and (more importantly) the cost have created issues with uptake of accurate data, problems with matching and in short, chaos. Now, finally, the issues caused by a lack of a free, open and accurate address source for gov...

If you're a follower of my Open Data shenanigans then you may like to know that I'm happily continuing with my work on the Open Data User Group . This year is an important one for the Transparency agenda. We will end with an election but in the mean time, we'll be looking to create the National Information Infrastructure . I won't repeat all of the content that's out there - check out the links provided for the latest. What I will do though is give you a view on what I hope will happen between now and May 2015. NII - A framework for the future The National Information Infrastructure (NII) is intended to be the mechanism, rules, list (and whatever else) that provides us with our national data backbone. Think of it like any other national infrastructure such as roads, rail, phone or water - these are the key services that enable business, government and society to operate. Without them, we're in trouble! Data is just the same - the NII will define whic...

Business Rates - not exactly a sexy topic but as highlighted by this BBC News article , it's something of huge importance to the UK economy and many businesses both old and new trying to grow in a world of online retailers and a slowly recovering economy. As detailed helpfully on the gov.uk site , business rates are basically the non-residential equivalent of Council Tax. Premises are taxed annually to pay for services like rubbish collection, street lights and so on. While some types of property are exempt, the rates affect offices and shops with some types of organisations and areas subject to various forms of discounts . Complicated! Now, with rates calculated by the Valuation Office Agency (in England & Wales at least) based upon the value of the property (similar to the Council Tax banding process with the occasional re-assessment) and a multiplier set by central Government (linked to inflation); there are inevitably going to be some businesses get better value fo...

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably know that I live in East London and have a passing interest in Open Data(!). After getting to know the guys at Locatable during my visits to the Open Data Institute and Open Government Partnership conference, they asked me to write a guest blog on my personal experience of the property market in East London. The result of this is here and as always reflects my personal opinions (based upon some basic evidence) and in no way reflects upon the views of Locatable or my employer. Anyway, I hope it's interesting! While you're there, take a good look at Locatable as this company represents all that is good about open data and owning your information.

Well 2013 is over and 2014 is upon us. What does it mean? What are the trends going to be this year? I'm not going to join in that game but I am going to spend a little time talking about something that's been on my mind for a while, namely Data Visualisation. This is the term used to describe graphics that communicate facts and figures. These are used by a variety of "data people" from finance departments to marketing managers, journalists and beyond. This article will look at a few of the common tools and good examples to see how data visualisation is being used to change the way data is used to bring value to businesses and people. A wordle of this blog

As the title indicates, it's been far too long since I last wrote a post. Terrible I know. A lot has changed since my last post. I've moved to a new role responsible for B2B Marketing products. My focus is now very much on helping SMEs grow and cut the risks associated with this. This lends itself superbly to the aims of the Open Data movement which is reaching a major milestone this week. On Tuesday 29th October, the Open Data Institute held their first annual summit to celebrate the first 12 months of this superb organisation. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend but followed the event closely on Twitter using the tag #ODIsummit. The major announcement made was the formation of 13 global 'nodes' to help further the cause and bring the collaborative way of working between data owners, start-ups and society to a wider audience. These new nodes include two national trials in the USA & Canada, eight regional/city nodes in Dubai, Chicago, North Carolina, Par...

Hi all, As regular readers will know, I have a hobby: Open Data. As a member of the Open Data User Group I work with a like-minded community to gather requests and produce business cases to encourage public bodies to release more of their data to benefit UK PLC and society. So far, we've had some successes and have also published our first tranche of business cases for datasets such as the VAT Register, river centre lines and historic Met Office observations. These can all be found here and I'd encourage you to comment on them to add your support and further evidence to get this data made available to everyone, for free. Most important of all, we are pushing the UK Government to make available an Open Address Register for the UK. Currently, a number of files exist which are managed and licensed commercially by the likes of the Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey. If you know anything about my day job at Experian QAS, you'll also know that I have an intimate knowledge ...

Well I've officially missed the 'window' to say Happy New Year! So instead, I'll say Hello. After a long and interesting Christmas break, I'm back and focussing on all things data. The first thing on my list this year is curating the fantastic Product Tank (www.producttank.com), which this month is all about data (well it would be wouldn't it!). Without wishing to blow my own trumpet, it's nice to see that 250 other product managers (plus a growing waiting list) are super excited to hear from the likes of Duncan Ross (@duncan3ross), Heather Savory (@saturnsa4) and Prof Nigel Shadbolt (@nigel_shadbolt). It promises to be a fantastic event on the 23rd in Old Street. For more information, visit the website above. Also on my January 'hit list' is the potential release of the UK VAT register as Open data. If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know all about my work with the Open Data User Group. If you would like to support th...

On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to attend the official launch of the Open Data Institute (ODI) at their HQ in Shoreditch, London. For the uninitiated, the ODI has been championed by founder of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and eminent data scientist Prof. Nigel Shadbolt with the aim to create a world-leading centre of open innovation for government, academics and businesses of all sizes. With support from the UK government of £10 million over 5 years, the ODI have wasted no time in recruiting a cracking leadership team including the founder of green supply chain pioneers AMEE (Gavin Starks) and my Open Data User Group colleague Jeni Tennison. The ODI have a few simple aims which can be summarised as: - Creating education programmes to train the next generation of data scientists. - Assist and advise the public sector on the best ways to release and use open data. - Work with small & large businesses to improve skills, foster innovation and boost economic gain in the field o...

Hello there! As some of you may know, I'm a member of the Open Data User Group that's been set up to help the UK Government understand the requirements for more public owned data to be released to all. One of the most common requests received by us and various public bodies is for an open address file. Today, many organisations use Royal Mail PAF or other files from the likes of the Ordnance Survey. Most of these cost money and have various license conditions attached. On top of this, the fact that there are lots of alternatives is plainly confusing. Today, the Open Data User Group have called for the Open release of Royal Mail PAF, OS AddressBase Plus and the National Street Gazetteer to form the backbone of an open and accurate national address register for the UK. More information on our work can be found on the Guardian and the Governments' Open Data site. I'm sure this will kick off a fascinating debate and hopefully will lead to changes in the address da...

This week, I attended the first meeting of the Cabinet Office's new Open Data User Group . This is a new body that has been set up to help advise the Government on which datasets to provide in an open form to the general public. In essence, it will look at which ones can achieve the greatest economic and social value for the most appropriate cost to the body that produces it (mainly the four trading funds that make up the Public Data Group ). I was very lucky to be chosen (from over 75 applicants) to represent big business and bring my take on product management, building the business case and of course the compliance and security issues around data to the table. I join some truly influential people on this Group and I'm delighted to be playing my part. I'll obviously keep using my blog to share my own personal thoughts on data and product management so it's again worth a quick mention that my views do not represent those of my employer or the ODUG. Anyway, I...

Following on from my excited picture post last week, I've now digested the Government White Paper on Open Data: Unleashing the Potential. My thoughts are below and I'm sure they will be similar to the thoughts of many other people around the industry. For a nice run down, check out this article at the Guardian. In short, the White Paper gives an update on progress made so far and the plans for the future. One of the most significant things here is the apparent passion for the movement shown by Francis Maude MP. In fact, during his launch he spoke many times of his team of 'Guerrillas' and 'Zealots' who are running round Whitehall, encouraging their colleagues (apparently in many different ways) to get behind Transparency and take the risk. A few key points for you: Over 9,000 datasets have been made available on www.data.gov.uk . The site has been redesigned to make it easier to search for data and use it. Every department has now published it's Ope...

I'm here at PA Consulting this morning with Francis Maude and all of the great and the good in the open data movement. I'll give a complete run down of the event later but just wanted to point out the excellent use of the alphabet in the the attendee list.

As part of my on-going quest to find out everything I can about Open Data, I've decided to dedicate 3 weeks of my annual leave to researching sources of Open Data in the Far East. I'll be slogging around Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to locate the best Open transport stats, postal address files and maps that I can to bring back to the UK to build new products with. Actually, that's partly a lie. I am going to the Far East but I'm actually heading to beaches, temples and bars to find cultural enlightenment and cheap Pad Thai. So while I'm off, I thought I'd leave you with some interesting links to Open Data sources and stories from around the World. To start with, some interesting thoughts on why Open Data should be about more than transparency. This article also features detail on how UK Doctors have improved survival rates in heart surgery using Open data over seven years to the point that the UK is now leading Europe. The Doctor heading this up (Sir ...

Or 'How to turn a Hack Day into something commercial' Anyone who has worked in an IT company or has been a developer will have been involved in a 'Hack Day' at one time or another. For the uninitiated, these are events that involve the 'techies' and usually involve them spending the day 'off project' working on some kind of tool that will help them develop more easily. Now, before I get loads of comments from you lovely development people, I'm certainly not trying to belittle the work you do on these days as I know the results can be valuable to you and in turn, to us Product Managers. So, as a Product Manager, I'm going to be far more interested in a Hack Day if I can get involved and come out of it with something properly useful to me. During normal projects, I never get chance to mess around with new ideas as all of my projects have to be done to deliver a commercial product on a tight budget and carefully considered commercial requireme...