It is in the Information Warfare battke space that opportunities to use and project false and misleading information in order to generate whatever outcome or trigger some asymmetric event to support or achieve whatever nation state/organization/individual goal or objective that is desired.

You can make the list more persuasive by adding hyperlinks to examples when possible. Examples tend to find their way into emails and conversations, and can be influential as a result.

I’m not sure that is particularly what “Uses for open data” should be. the borisbike apps is canonical and done to death, but it is an excellent example of things that make the service more useful.

Hopefully when spending data starts coming out, there’ll be some consideration given to why some areas spend huge amounts on something, and others little, when you’ve controlled for the different types of area. There are a few (there was one from the taxpayer’s alliance which looked at road salt prices – some disparities are expected, but some were just bad contracts).

legislation.gov.uk is probably another example of transparency being useful to a group, and highly useful to a specific subset (lawyers).

but in summary, I’ve read this a few times, and I’m still not sure that this is necessarily the best of examples.

It’s all about the what, and nothing about the why. I’m not sure that you necessarily answer the question you asked, or the question you meant to ask.

I think there are two questions in here. One is what reasons do people give for being interested in open data. The other is what impacts does it have.

Focussing on the civic uses of open data (i.e. ignoring economic benefits) I found three broad ways open data has impacts here: http://practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/report/2010/4-3-civic-uses-of-ogd/

Those aren’t necessarily ‘benefits’ of open data – but at least spaces it affects things (See also some of the less obvious ways it affects things: http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/2011/01/four-other-places-to-look-for-the-impact-of-open-government-data/ ).

Trying to use that to refine your categories, I think you would need to narrow the current ‘Transparency’ category which seems to mix timetables / traffic information / potholes for an app (data for utility to citizens), with transparency for accountability.

I’d suggest categories of:

– Transparency and accountability (data can let people hold government to account; more actors can enter the scrutiny process; councillors and officers can be empowered as well as citizens)

– Internal efficiency for government (data flows better inside the organisation, and with outside partners; co-creation works better; serendipitous connections can be made; procurement can be more effective; innovations can be easier shared when working from standard open data; the market for provision of services to government is changed; feedback loops help improve data – and highlight data that is or isn’t needed; government can use consumer tools for analysing data outside the firewall)

– Utility for citizens / consumers (new and better interfaces on public service are created; entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs can build on government data to provide useful things that people need; long-tail solutions can emerge that the state could never have supported)

– Innovation and economic growth (people can economically exploit data for competitive advantage; data can help target marketing; enterprises can create new services with data, or add value by combining data with existing services; a focus on linked data stimulates the UK to take a leading role in this growing technological area – data acts as the catalyst for new skills and businesses) etc.