Andrea DiMaio

While Tina Nunno and I were preparing the interview to Vivek Kundra for Gartner Symposium in Orlando, we discussed about a question we did not have time to ask him; what is the cost of transparency?

Nobody would argue that making public data easier to find and consume is not a good thing. However making data available, keeping it fresh and up-to-date, does cost money. The actual cost of making data available (ensuring it is de-identified, accurate and up-to-date) is not difficult to determine for an agency. However the cost of tracking related mashups, managing comments and requests for data availability and improvement, getting extra capacity to manage data that are very frequently accessed, all these are more difficult to predict.

A conversation with a federal client on Monday about this last aspect was illuminating. He observed that certain data may allow businesses to create services that they charge for and profit from. If successful, these services, irrespective of whether they are useful to the public, would put a significant demand on the government infrastructure. The question then would be how to strike a fair balance between providing data transparency and access to the public, and ensuring that taxpayer money is not being used to subsidize businesses. It would seem fair to have those businesses contribute to the cost of the infrastructure that allows them to be profitable. On the other hand there do not seem any provisions in the current “open data” initiatives.

The supporters of open data will clearly say that this is a desirable problem to have to deal with, as it would be the proof that the approach works. On the other hand, it is important that open government proponents ask themselves these questions, together with others about the possible downside of transparency, as this will help them anticipate issues that may derail these important initiatives.

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