Data for the Public Good

From healthcare to finance to emergency response, data holds immense potential to help citizens and government.

Can data save the world? Not on its own. As an age of technology-fueled transparency, open innovation and big data dawns around the world, the success of new policy won't depend on any single chief information officer, chief executive or brilliant developer. Data for the public good will be driven by a distributed community of media, nonprofits, academics and civic advocates focused on better outcomes, more informed communities and the new news, in whatever form it is delivered.

Advocates, watchdogs and government officials now have new tools for data journalism and open government. Globally, there's a wave of transparency that will wash over every industry and government, from finance to healthcare to crime. In that context, open government is about much more than open data — just look at the issues that flow around the #opengov hashtag on Twitter, including the nature of identity, privacy, security, procurement, culture, cloud computing, civic engagement, participatory democracy, corruption, civic entrepreneurship or transparency...