Open Community Mapping and Open Data

obscuring transparency, or shifting the balance of power?

Mikel Maron
mikel@groundtruth.in @mikel

GroundTruth http://groundtruth.in/

HOT http://hot.openstreetmap.org

IOGDC

July 11, 2012

Hi. I want to talk briefly about wh, my name is Mikel Maron. I wear many hats, I'm co-director of GroundTruth Initiative and President of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Now, new, open source approaches to creating geographic maps are generating lots of excitement ... this is not just a new technology, but also a new methodology. And I wonder, open community mapping ... why this excitement and to what purpose? What are the range of ideas of what community mapping actually means, and how ultimately, can we all shape this practice to be of greatest benefit to the "community"? And as Korea is upheld as a worthy economic model, what elements of this open approach may be worth keeping in mind in different contexts of today's developing countries?

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OpenStreetMap

free and open mapping community

OpenStreetMap, the cornerstone of Map Kibera and I believe, any open community mapping, is a free and open map of the entire world, created by anyone, used by anyone. Tens of thousands of volunteers create geographic data, in a way similar to Wikipedia. Amazing data source, amazing community. OSM serves so many needs, including business. Companies like Foursquare and Apple are using OSM data in their maps because the data is of tremendous quality AND it gives them the maximum freedom to make maps to fit their needs..... Building databases of financial global data - Not as easy as creating @openstreetmap (Which is not that easy either) (why it works ... totally open and transparent, not particular to geodata, every kind of data has its pecularities)

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Map Kibera

slum dwellers edit the same database as you

(they work in same database as anyone)

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Kibera according to the government

officially a forest

(they work in same database as anyone)

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Kibera according to Kibera

a community

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For centuries, data tools only belonged to the powerful


now anyone can see like a state

This marks a departure from centuries of practice. Traditionally, maps, data, and mass media are tools of the powerful. They provide means to bring legibility to the domain, reading and writing the details of people's lives in order to enable the activities of the State, we hope, to benefit the people. These data and stories carried authority and absolute information. But in just the past few years, this has been completely upended, giving literally anyone the potential to make their own world legible, for their own purposes ... and we are only just starting to see what kind of political system or development relationships may result from that.

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Kibera's census figures

170700, 250000, 1 million....

rufus nailed it ... issue tracking for open data. better slide

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Data Imports

open govt data flowing one way

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South Africa

listening to the community

Chief Directorate: National Geo-Spacial Information ("CD:NGI") (part of the South African Department of Rural Development and Land Reform) to make some of their mapping datasets available to the project. The agreement does not include data collected and held by municipalities. In terms of the agreement we have to let CD:NGI know of any inaccuracies in their data or changes to the data imported from CD:NGI. All data we use must be tagged with "source=CD:NGI".

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Surrey Heath

govt is part of the community

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WhiteHouse

govt leverages the community

http://www.whitehouse.gov/mapping_service

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Open Data Licenses

proprietary wolves in sheep clothing

OpenStreetMap, the cornerstone of Map Kibera and I believe, any open community mapping, is a free and open map of the entire world, created by anyone, used by anyone. Tens of thousands of volunteers create geographic data, in a way similar to Wikipedia. Amazing data source, amazing community. OSM serves so many needs, including business. Companies like Foursquare and Apple are using OSM data in their maps because the data is of tremendous quality AND it gives them the maximum freedom to make maps to fit their needs.

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Tandale

institutional and community collaboration. story telling.

http://tandale.ramanitanzania.org/ushahidi/

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Communities are not Crowds

There are risks, but to me, probably not the same ones you imagine. Those mappers are not a "crowd". Crowd-sourcing is a term which distorts much of what happens with new technologies. We are not a faceless, wild mob ... this image is what sets up the confusion you hear again and again about trustworthiness of community data. Really, successful open projects are communities, complex communities of people who have real, trusted relationships, both online and offline, people who care about their common endeavor in a considered way. That doesn't describe a crowd.

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Fundamental Power Shift

people can improve their lives themselves

Essentially, the excitement of community mapping is beyond the data that's being created, but the possibility of a fundamental shift in the power dynamics of how government is practiced. If people know the facts about their own lives, and the means turn information into action, they have more power to call to account those institutions which are supposed to serve them, and ultimately, to improve their lives themselves.

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Thank you

Mikel Maron

http://groundtruth.in/

mikel@groundtruth.in

@mikel

Thank you for listening, and I look forward to building from this talk into conversation over the next two days.

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