Open data, open practice, open profits?

This is one of those posts that my PHD supervisor charmingly refers to as throat clearing – its the piece you have to write before you can write the piece you want to write.

I have been doing a lot of internal mulling about the nature of collaboration and leadership in networked organisations. This is all mixed in with more thinking around how we create open practice in our organisation. I have written a bit about this here.

I think at the centre of these threads is a discussion about what data you should share about your organisation when the shareholders are private individuals rather than taxpayers and where accountability is delivered via the board room not the ballot box.

“Should” – as ever there is a mix here of moral imperative and practical necessity. As I’ve said before I know that my own belief in the importance of open practice is partly an ethical one but I also think that its the way in which we will make business fit for purpose as we start to operate in a more digital and networked environment.

I am impatient for the open data discussion to start addressing the cultural effects of a more open environment as I think that only by looking at this are we going to unlock the really transformative potential of open data and also how we will put more pressure on corporates to open up the data which will form an important part of the overall picture and ultimately the business case.

However there is something in this discussion of information sharing which also relates to how you go about working in a more networked and collaborative way.

At Public-i we are starting to properly work in networked collaboration with a couple of other organisations (more on that later) and this is working because we have a lot of trust, respect and openness with each other. We are all small organisations and so it is possible to form working relationships throughout all three organisations to make sure that this works. Its really exciting actually doing this networked organisation thing and not just talking about it.

Open data should be the basis on which Government organisations are able to collaborate more effectively but if we want this to extend this to more effective collaboration with the private sector (ad I think we do) then there needs to be some reciprocity in this openness.

The elephant in the room here may be a conversation about acceptable levels of value exchange and profit but I will keep my mind open on this point. Wrapped within this is the a need for an increase in levels of balance sheet literacy in the audience in the same way that participatory budgeting requires an increase in budget literacy. We know from the debacle of so many outsourcing arrangements that if you get this wrong you get terrible services and terrible value – a more open conversation and agreement of what’s acceptable may help avoid this in the future.

At this stage I am just trying to form good questions to help find good answers. I think the questions I need to ask are around understanding the levels of reciprocity in terms of openness that is needed to effect strong working relationships between the public and private sector – and how do we make these robust enough to create organisational rather than individual trust. I’ll be asking these questions of some of our clients and discussing it internally – as well as with collaborators – and I will also need to talk to shareholders about this as its important not to forget that they are a vital part of this discussion. As ever though I would really value comments here as well – so let me know what you think if you have time.