{"id":1274,"date":"2013-02-23T10:31:51","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T10:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2013-02-24T14:29:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T14:29:50","slug":"open-data-a-closed-book-to-most-civil-servants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=1274","title":{"rendered":"Open data a closed book to most civil servants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theodi.org\/blog\/guest-blog-how-make-open-data-more-open-close-gaps\">Open Data Insitute blog post<\/a> of the first ever survey* into civil servants&#8217; awareness of open data reveals an astonishing level of ignorance.<\/p>\n<p>Among the survey&#8217;s main findings were the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>78% of civil servants do not know about government plans for open data and the benefits that follow;<\/li>\n<li>75% say they don\u2019t know where to find useful data to help their decision making;<\/li>\n<li>57% do not know how to access data sets, how to interpret them or how to best apply data standards;<\/li>\n<li>Only 52% recognised that ready access to data and data standards will generate new enterprises, jobs and services in the public and private sectors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sir Humphrey and his Whitehall mates (<em>plus their counterparts in local government. Ed.<\/em>) are essentially saying that they find it too difficult to access and reuse the right data and &#8211; more importantly &#8211; that they do not have the technical knowledge and expertise to exploit what data is available.<\/p>\n<p>What implications does this have for the UK government&#8217;s aspirations to be a world leader in open data &#8211; aspirations that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bristolwireless.net\/2011\/11\/open-data-measures-in-the-chancellors-autumn-statement\/\">Chancellor George Osborne voiced in his 2011 autumn statement<\/a>? Negative ones probably, unless better skills, training and communication are introduced across government departments, local government and the public sector in general.<\/p>\n<p><em>* The research was conducted in December 2012 on behalf of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.listpoint.co.uk\/media\">Listpoint<\/a> and involved over 1,000 responses received from central and local government, non-departmental bodies, the NHS and the police.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Open Data Insitute blog post of the first ever survey* into civil servants&#8217; awareness of open data reveals an astonishing level of ignorance. Among the survey&#8217;s main findings were the following: 78% of civil servants do not know about government plans for open data and the benefits that follow; 75% say they don\u2019t know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,15,9],"tags":[29,20,23],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-data","category-politics","category-tech","tag-open-data","tag-politics-2","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1293,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions\/1293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}