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Jeni Tennison @JeniT Technical Director, ODIThe Data ReformationToday I am, not surprisingly, going to be talking about open data. But in particular I'm going to be talking about the impact that open data will have on our society, a change which I'm calling the Data Reformation.1

almost 500 years ago an open BibleLet's first rewind about 500 years. This picture is of the German Language Bible, translated by Martin Luther. The fact that this Bible was written in German was literally revolutionary. Before Martin Luther, Bibles were written in Latin, they could only be read by scholarly monks. They were closed, available only to restricted sets of people. Martin Luther made his Bible open. He translated the Bible into German, the language that people actually spoke.2The ReformationThe German Language Bible was a crucial part of a massive social change that we now term The Reformation.3BibledoctrineBefore The Reformation, the Bible was walled off behind doctrine: essentially what monks and priests said the Bible said. Everything that normal people knew about what the Bible said was received second hand. Which of course meant that the monks and priests had tremendous power. They could ignore some bits of the Bible and emphasise others, and no one would ever know. The opening of the Bible, through its translation into the language that they spoke, enabled lay people to directly engage with the word of God.

4The laity, now able to read and examine traditional creedal content, was encouraged to test its fidelity to Scriptures; the Bible began to take on the character of an ur-text for faith; and a new emphasis on personal piety resulted. This required a different kind of internal balance between the new, wider accessibility of texts, and the need for informed interpretation of the Scriptures: attendance at public preaching and lecturing events grew. It also allowed individual ownership of a previously more contained theological process, so that individuals found themselves more invested in understanding and living out their faith.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_ThesesAnd the effects of that were enormous. Wikipedia identifies three particular effects that I wanted to highlight. The first is that people were able to test the fidelity of what monks and priests told them against what the Bible actually said. And naturally that led to changes in the power dynamic between the people and the church. The second point is that there was still the need for informed interpretation. It wasn't the case that everyone sat and studied the Bible (although they could). There were lots of new interpretations. Some of them were slightly nuts. But the important thing was that because the Bible was open for everyone to read, there could be educated and informed arguments about these interpretations. And the third thing was that the availability of the Bible to individuals made them want to know more. They engaged more with what the Bible said, because they could read it themselves. And they changed their behaviour as a result, becoming more invested in and interested in what religion was to them.5

today open dataObviously you're not here to listen to a lecture about religious events from 500 years ago. You're here to learn about digital stuff! So what's all that got to do with us, here and now? Well, the same changes that arose 500 years ago because of the publication of an open Bible are happening now because of open data.6dataanalysisThere is the same dynamic at play. Currently, most data is locked behind a wall of analysis. We are reliant on statisticians and analysts to perform analyses, creating reports that tell us what the data says, in just the same way as lay people were reliant on monks and priests. We are reliant on them asking the questions that we are interested in and providing us with the summaries and visualisations that make sense of it for us. But some organisations are starting to open up their data. They are making their data legally available for everyone to use and reuse and do with what they will. I think that this will have dramatic effects on our society, just as the Reformation did. Which is why I've decided to call this7The ReformationDataThe Data Reformation. Now there are all sorts of things going on with data right now, all sorts of interesting things that Big Data can tell us. All sorts of issues and concerns about the collection of personal data. There were all sorts of changes going on through the Protestant Reformation too. But to me it was the opening up of the Bible that was the most subtly revolutionary part. It was that crucial step that turned the academic arguments within the church into a global movement, into a revolution. And I think the same is true in the Data Reformation. We need data to be open to enable everyone to be involved in the conversations that we need to have about what data should be collected and what data should be shared. Because the Data Reformation will change our society, and we need everyone to be involved in that change.

I've been quite abstract so far, so let's have a look at what that means.8

"encouraged to test its fidelity"http://prescribinganalytics.comThis slide shows the results of a study that was done around the prescribing of statins. Statins have fairly recently come out of patent, which means that as a GP you have a choice: you can prescribe a cheap, generic statin, or you can prescribe an expensive proprietary statin. And all the tests show that these will have exactly the same effects. So you would have thought that all GPs would prescribe generic statins and save the NHS money, right? Wrong. The NHS has known for some time that GPs continue to prescribe expensive proprietary statins, usually just because they know the brand name. So there have been various efforts to try to change GP's behaviour. But all of this has happened behind closed doors and with no real public engagement.

The study shown above, Prescribing Analytics, took open data about GP prescribing behaviour and analysed the percentage of statin prescriptions that were for proprietary statins, testing what academics were saying about the kinds of prescribing behaviours that were going on. They found that 200m could be saved each year if GPs were to switch their prescribing habits. But they didn't just give that top-line figure, they also provided the tools to enable anyone to dig into the data. So you can see where you have really successful drug reps, like in the East Midlands or the South East. And you can see what your GPs prescribing behaviours are like, and maybe if you are being prescribed statins yourself have a conversation with them about switching.

By opening up data, there is an opportunity for those who are interested to test hypotheses, to provide new interpretations, new visualisations, bring understanding to the public and maybe even change behaviour.9"a different kind of balance"http://www.opencorporates.com

Open data can challenge existing power relationships. This visualisation uses OpenCorporates data. OpenCorporates aims to be an open database of all the companies in the world. They take publicly available data, usually published by different governments, and bring it together in ways that individual countries can't or don't do. The particular data shown in this visualisation is about the companies that are directly and indirectly owned by Goldman Sachs. Each dot is a different company. The lines show, for the highlighted company (in this case Shire UK Limited), what companies it's owned by and what companies it owns. So in this case you can see that Shire UK Limited is owned by Goldman Sachs Plc which is registered in the US, and owns a whole bunch of companies which are registered in this massively outsized country here: the Cayman Islands. You can view this as a map of the world as seen by Goldman Sachs. You can see that the tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Ireland and Luxembourg are very important to them.

Now, do you trust this data and this interpretation that I've just told you? Does the fact that this analysis is coming from OpenCorporates make it any more trustworthy than an analysis done by the government, or by the press? All data should be questioned. We should have debates about whether it's fair or accurate to visualise data in these ways. What OpenCorporates does which is great in this regard is that it captures and makes available the full provenance trail for all the data that it holds. So you can find out, for each fact, where it came from, and you can decide whether you trust it or not.10"more invested individuals"

http://london-fire.labs.theodi.orgThis third example highlights the third change that came out of the Protestant Reformation: more invested individuals. A little while ago, London needed to close some fire stations. They did the usual thing that's done in this case, which is to commission a company who is good at doing this kind of thing to perform an analysis to recommend which fire stations should be closed. So they did that and they produced a report which said what to do but didn't really say why. And of course there was then lots of debate and campaigns to keep local fire stations, as there should be, but none of the response to those campaigns could point to the data, because it was all locked away behind a report.

The visualisation here uses open data about the fires in London and the fire engines and other appliances that were sent to each fire to produce a map that shows the impact of closing particular fire stations. It turns out, as you'd hope, that the ones that they chose to close were those that had least impact on fire response times. But having access to the data helps to ground the debate. Different people will interpret the figures differently, or argue that response times aren't the thing that you should be measuring, or that fire station X should remain open because of the other benefits that it brings to the local area. But these are the right kind of debate to have: informed debate that is rooted in facts and values.

I think that all consultations that involve data analysis should be opening up that data for others to look at, to use to support their case, to make for a more constructive dialog and for more engaged citizens.11

So I've talked about the Data Reformation as if it's something inevitable. And as with most things it is and it isn't. This image is a picture of Martin Luther and the Heroes of the Reformation. The Data Reformation needs heroes too. It relies on people publishing open data, and on people using the open data that is published. It relies on debate, on experimentation, and on evolving practice. In short, it relies on you.12government datahttp://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/

When we say "open data" we tend to think of government data, because it's really been governments that have led the way on open data. This map shows two datasets from government for example: areas that are prone to flooding from the Environment Agency, in purple, and areas where there's lots of new development, from Land Registry data, in blue. Where they overlap is where there are new builds of flood plains, which isn't really a good idea.

The state has been very entrepreneurial with respect to open data, to use Mariana Mazzucato's phrase. In some ways it's easy for the state to open up data because the data is collected for public good, using public funds, so should be public. But government data isn't the only kind of open data.13philanthropic datahttp://ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/

Philanthropic organisations are also opening up data. This visualisation shows which donors are opening up data about their international aid programmes. There is huge scope for the philanthropic sector to open up data to enable more efficient working between philanthropic organisations, not least knowing which projects are already being funded, and for due diligence to understand which recipients make best use of their money.14

private sector datahttp://smtm.labs.theodi.orgThe private sector's use of open data is the least evolved, but at the Open Data Institute we find that there are a growing number of businesses who recognise that you can sometimes unlock more value from data by opening it up than by selling it. This visualisation brings together data from several peer-to-peer lenders to look at how money is being flowing from lenders to borrowers through the peer-to-peer market. They are interesting in opening up this data because it helps the regulators to understand what they're doing, and lowers their reporting requirements. Plus being open is a marked differentiator between peer-to-peer lenders and the big banks. All organisations, including the private sector, can benefit from opening up some of the data they hold or capture. They can benefit from being seen as a transparent and accountable organisation. They can benefit from having easier flows of information between them and their customers, suppliers and partners, and even internally. And they can benefit from encouraging innovative uses of their data, and adopting those innovations.15data created in partnership

http://openstreetmap.orgFor me, the open data that is most interesting though is the data that we create in partnership with each other. We can do more together and this is fundamentally enabled through the data being open. This screenshot is from Open Street Map, which is like a Wikipedia for maps. Open Street Map is a crowd-sourced map, and the community around Open Street Map does amazing things together, like mapping Haiti after the earthquake there, and the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, to aid the relief efforts there. Like open source, the real power of open data is in the collaboration that it enables.

So no matter what you do or what kind of organisation you work in, I would like you to think about the data that you could open up for everyone to use.16a new era in which people can use open data to generate insights, ideas, and servicesto create a better world for allG8 Open Data Charter 201317I'm going to end with the words from the G8 Open Data Charter. We are entering "a new era in which people can use open data to generate insights, ideas, and servicesto create a better world for all". This is the Data Reformation, and it's going to change our world.Jeni Tennison @JeniT Technical Director, ODI18