The State of Queensland is ramping up activities in preparation for the G20 summit to be held in Brisbane in November 2014.  According to the official  G20 charter, its purpose is to be a premier forum for international cooperation on the most important issues of the global economic and financial agenda. From an open data viewpoint, the summit is an opportunity for the G20 to endorse the Open Data Charter. The Charter was approved by the G8 in June 2013 so it appears to be a logical progression to expand it to the G20.

The Omidyar Network is a major global philanthropic funder of activities that catalyse openness (including OKF UK). Omidyar Director of Policy, Martin Tisné, helped cultivate the G8 Open Data Charter and he is currently in Australia drumming up support for it to be considered by the G20.  On Tuesday 3 December, shortly after arrival in Australia from London he spent the afternoon in discussion with key members of the Queensland Public Service Executive, followed by attendance at the Queensland Premier’s Open Data Awards – where he informally was introduced to Ray Stevens (Queensland Minister for eGovernment), Ian Walker (Queensland Minister for Science and ICT) and the Premier, Campbell Newman. All three are vocal supporters of Open Data. The OKF warmly thanks Zoe Wilson of the Premier’s Department for opening the doors to the Queensland Government for Martin. He is also visiting Canberra and Sydney to meet with G20 and Federal Government representatives there.

But back to the Open Data Charter, it consists of principles and guidelines to be implemented by 2015. The principles are:

1. Open Data by Default
2. Quality and Quantity
3. Useable by All
4. Releasing Data for Improved Governance
5. Releasing Data for Innovation

The Charter recognises the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services. This was reinforced recently by global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. who estimate open data can potentially add US$3-5 trillion in economic value per annum to seven sectors within the global economy. And that’s just a starting point. To unlock that value we need to open our data and to do that perhaps the Australian government, as a member of the G20, should consider the Open Data Charter. Or as McKinsey put it, the use of open data:

requires governments to play a central role by developing and implementing policies to mitigate consumer and business concerns about the misuse of open data and to help set standards that will allow the potential economic and social benefits to materialize.

Opening government data can improve fiscal transparency, potentially minimising negative impacts and building economic resilience to future shocks, which are all issues of relevance to the G20. The general multi-lateral open data focus is on: government budgets; revenues relating to aid, extractives, illicit financial flows and tax data; and government spending and contracts. Many of these Australia does well such as the Open Budget, but here’s a small opportunity as an example: wouldn’t it be great if the public had free access to the reports on ASIC companies register (rather than paying a fee per report), and if the reports were supplied in open data formats? The dataset could then be fed into the global opencorporates Project – the world’s largest openly licensed database of companies, that contains very little Australian data. Chris Taggart of OpenCorporates said earlier this year:

Company registers are the fundamental public record of the creation and existence of companies. Today we live in a world where large corporations can consist of opaque networks of thousands of interlinked companies, avoiding scrutiny and competition. Criminals, money launderers, corrupt officials and fraudsters routinely use networks of front companies to hide and move money. In this context it is essential that access to the statutory information is not just freely available, but available under an open licence and as machine-readable data.

Again, it’s not to say Australia are laggards in open data, we compared favourably to global peers in a recent open census of countries, and in April 2014 Australia will join 61 other countries in the Open Government Partnership to develop and implement ambitious reforms to escalate the openness, accountability, and responsiveness of our government to citizens. The forthcoming G20 summit meetings in Australia present an opportunity to propose the consideration of the Open Data Charter by the G20. To achieve that there’s much work to do. Should OKF play a role and how? Please add your comments and we welcome your thoughts