You’ve no doubt heard of or even confronted stubborn resistance by data “owners.” Some of them can say “no” faster than Italian bureaucrats. You want what? Some of my data? This seems so pervasive that would-be data users might stand a better chance at winning the California lottery.
But as soon as you think the game’s over, there’s a surprise. This month I heard a formerly high ranking American intelligence official talk about, of all things, open data. She seemed to say that we should let our very clever people benefit us all by finding what they can in it. She also seemed to like publicly produced data, which is much cheaper than the homemade stuff.… Read the rest “Even some spooks like open data”