1. Open data, implications for
teaching and learning
Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design & Technology
Robert Griffin
EdTech 2013

2. 1.Background
2.Implications for teaching
and learning

3. The public create 2.5 Quintillion
bytes of new data per day
That is
• 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube
• 47 seven thousand apps downloaded
• 570 new websites created
• 2 million Google searches
Every minute (Zikopoulos, 2012)

4. The public sector also creates a lot
of data
The European Commission in 2011 estimated economic gains from public data to be
worth €140bn throughout the EU (Vickery, 2011).

5. Why Keep all this valuable data
locked up?

6. The Lisbon Treaty
eGovernment 2012-2015 Reform plan
The European Commission
The Open Government Partnership

7. The Open Government Partnership

8. Open Data
Three criteria
1. Accessible, preferably on the Internet
2. Machine readable in non proprietary
formats
3. Free to use with no restrictions

9. Implications for teaching and learning
1. Resources
2. What we teach
3. Academic Publishing

10. Resources

11. Property Price Index + Google Fusion
=
+?

12. Google Fusion

13. Fingal County Council

14. Dublinked.ie

15. A National Data Portal?

16. What we teach
Digital literacy
The ability to identify, retrieve, evaluate and
use information to both ask and answer
meaningful questions.

18. Research about Open Data
• The economic impact of open government data
(Vickery, 2011; Pollock, 2009; Arzberger et al., 2004;
Uhlir, 2009)
• The democratic potential of open data (Mayo and
Steinberg 2007).
• Open Data can be used for making better government
decisions.(Puron-Cid, Gil-Garcia, & Luna-Reyes, 2012).
• Transparency and open data can increase trust in
government (O'Hara, 2012).
• Open data can be used to improve the effectiveness of
aid (Linders. 2012)

19. Academic Publishing
• Open data offers new ways of disseminating academic
knowledge called “open access”.
• All research papers that describe work paid for by the
British taxpayer will be free online by 2014
(Willetts, 2012).
• The United States announced that federally funded
research will be available to the public for free within a
year (Felsenthal, 2013)

20. Find out More
• The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in Galway
is an internationally recognised institute in semantic web
research, education and technology transfer.
• OpenData.ie : The Open Data group meets on a monthly
basis to bring together people who are passionate about
sharing, learning, using and progressing Open Data in Ireland
together. The meetings consist of guest speakers and
networking opportunities.

21. Conclusions
• The open data movement is gathering momentum worldwide.
• Ireland is well placed to capitalise upon the opportunity that it presents, with a strong technology
sector and being home to many of the companies involved in big data, cloud computing and
application development.
• Membership of the OPG will bring many benefits such as more transparency, public
participation, collaboration opportunities and economic benefits.
• Open Data is undoubtedly a driver for economic growth which is sorely needed in Ireland at the
moment. The eGovernment 2012-2015 Reform Plan needs to be followed and the proposed
actions implemented.
• A central portal for publishing data needs to be created.
• A standardised format for data needs to be agreed upon which is open and non-proprietary.
Ireland needs an open data licence which will make the data available free to use for any purpose.
Awareness of what is available and what can be done with the data is needed.
• Educators need to be trained in the required skills to use this data and programmes and modules
need to include them in their curriculums.
• As shown above there is a lot of public sector data which is valuable but being underutilised.
Ireland is behind other countries in the amount, quality and availability of this data. Publishing it
should become automatic and the norm. If the experience of the other OGP countries can be
replicated here it could be of great benefit for the economy and civic society.

22. Thank You
Any Questions?