Friday 11th February I attended a meeting ESADE on what is called Open Data, or Catalan, the data open. That is, all the data to be open to the general public from any organization. This is an increasingly popular trend. I was struck that there are different trends.
On one hand, Americans, with a total deregulation, as is standard in them and the basis of its society, are able to open everything and show all data. But not only from businesses, but also to all administrations. For example, we showed an application in real time, and running on the GPS, showing the danger zone for which we are circulation, calculated on the number of robberies and thefts that are occurring. Obviously, the data have been hung directly by the police. When we asked why she did this because in Catalonia it may seem alarmist to create a form, the speaker said he was not a way to make more credible the information of the police, but was to democratize data. They are very clear that some taxpayers and tax administrations are obliged to show the reality of what is either good or not. And everyone should act accordingly.
The speaker also expressed U.S. concern for everyone who hangs data does a very personal and believe you should find the formula to unify criteria when uploading data, so that if circulating in New York or Paris, we are either similar or easily identifiable by the user. Now, like any emerging issue, this is not so.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in Europe, things look differently if we northern Europeans and southern Europeans. Speakers spoke of Helsinki and Berlin on one hand, and the Catalans on the other. As for the U.S. European showed a similar trend for Americans, but with some precautions. The Finns, for example, have no problem displaying all data. So they commented that there is no problem in knowing who has had revenues last year of the third third neighbor. But they tend to socialize more data, meaning that the data are made available to everyone as soon as the demographic. In Helsinki you can find details of any neighborhood and its demographic composition: average age of the population, immigration data, population studies, ... because they believe that when a person decides to live in a place that should know what you'll see.
The Germans, however, also believe that the data should socialize but for now just hang data that provide services directly to the population. For example they talk about a tool that allows deaf-mutes have the information of any building in sign language using a mobile phone application.
Both Finns and Germans are very respectful of the taxes collected from taxpayers and consider these applications very attractive for its low cost. Both explained that called contests of ideas among young students, who are the biggest users of these technologies, with about 1000 euros prize, but which help to generalize and fashionable use.
At the other end of it all is we are Catalans, and by extension, the English. It turns out that we have a law that protects privacy rights of individuals greatly regarding the publication of certain data. Everyone agrees that this is considered an exaggeration because the speaker replied that the U.S. would be able in two hours, through all that is published on the net to give any complete profile that extended to room. And if someone Facebook users have teenage children, then we could give half-hour to the faith of baptism.
My opinion is that the world towards a democratization of data, but of course governments can not skip the current regulations. But we have to start thinking about how we use the Internet puts at our disposal to provide information to help people make decisions. And that will not make people more confidence in the administration, but certainly will be placed more clearly in the environment where he lives.
At the other extreme situation is the Party that gets to ask the obligatory in Spain have servers containing personal data of people in Spain. Bless me, that really is anachronistic. In a world with a mobile phone is able to overthrow a dictatorial regime in ten days than 30 years, and someone requests it. And if you do not believe it, look it up .
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