Data is a Product

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...

So after 2 and a bit years as a Product Manager looking after some data products, I got the call to step up and manage a team. Exciting hey!? Well yes, being promoted is a fantastic thing and comes with obvious benefits for a career. But as a Product Manager, is this actually a good thing? Talking to a few people who've been through the same process, I found some contrasting views. Some people missed the day-to-day cut and thrust of managing a set of products, building requirements and dealing with issues. Others found the people management and less reactive approach as a really positive change.

Hi everyone! Now that the Olympics is over, I’ve been left with nothing to watch on TV.. until now! Being a fan of stuff like Lost, I thought I’d give ‘ Person of Interest ’ a go. Shown on CBS in the US; the first episode was aired here in the UK by Channel 5 on Tuesday. It’s got a good pedigree with people like Jonathan Nolan and J. J. Abrams involved and stars Jim Caviezel (the guy who played Jesus in that film about Jesus) and Michael Emerson (Ben from Lost). Now, I’m not going to review the show itself here.. All I’ll say is that Jim Caviezel wore an obviously fake beard, acted a little robotic and Michael Emerson had a fantastic fake limp. Anyway, the show is set in modern day America with an ex-CIA agent (Caveizel) being picked up by a strange Billionaire (Emerson) who offers him a job. The pitch went something like this: “Imagine if you knew that something bad was going to happen to someone. It could be a terrible accident or murder or something else. ...

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...

Since starting this Blog I've been ribbed constantly by some friends that the title should be 'Data Are a Product' rather than Data is a Product. It goes back to the question on whether Datum is the singular and Data is the plural for what most people generally just call data. It was therefore nice to see this Wall Street Journal blog that tried to answer the question once and for all. Happilly for me, it seems to say 'who cares?' and just decides to use data for both singluar and plural. Now I'm a bit of a stickler for grammar (apart from this one example) so I'm obviously relieved that I won't be losing any more sleep over this conundrum.

Some of you may know me quite well and know a little about the company I work for. Yes, we deal with a lot of data and offer a lot of services around the intelligent use of data across an organisation. One of these is helping companies create what is generically known as a Single Customer View (or Single Citizen View in the Public Sector). I wanted to spend a little time looking at what a Single Customer View (SCV) is and what it could be in the future as the effects of Big Data enable us to do more.