Over the past 10ish years I’ve often spoken critically of the hand-wavy open data love fest. Stumbled across an article today that does a great job of putting into context the rhetoric v reality. Centering on toilet usability data, Giuseppe Sollazzo makes a solid argument for rethinking the definition of value in opening data to the world.
The problems are numerous–government officials not knowing what the public deems as useful, political motivations for the release/delay of certain data, the obsession with the meaningless term “data set” and profound challenges in data normalization and technology/distribution are several reasons why many are scratching their head trying to determine some kind of ROI (a flawed way of measuring, but for another time).
Post-employment 