Apps are sexy and the thing you can see (versus the often more ominous, murky world of raw data) However, the overall success of the entire “big data” market (which, to link to Gartner’s age-old framework, may mean velocity of fast data, volume of massive data, or variety of data sources and formats) depends on *apps* to grow in power and adoption, the plethora of *data* sources big, small, public, and private to be at your fingertips, and *developer* knowledge, buy-in, open-source + proprietary contributions, and budgets -> to all be applied, nurtured, and expanded in unison.

IMO, an important focus that doesn’t get enough attention is making data “use-able.” raw data is not use-able. we need to take the methodologies developed making user interfaces use-able and apply that to the data itself.

Data is not truely Open until it is Use-able.

However, I think that in this particular chicken and egg situation you need to have the shiny in order to make the potential of open data real to those who might need to make the decisions.

At Hull City Council we’re really keen to see our publication of open data become a product of having systems that are fit for purpose and which help us to shape our internal decision making just as much as giving local developers the chance to get their hands dirty.

Had one of my colleagues not used our published spending data and some open sourced code to build http://www.upnorthauditor.com then it’s unlikely that this approach would have been supported. But because it took something managers usually saw in spreadsheets and turned it into something more visual they began to get a sense of what’s possible.

Those of us in the public sector choir who get why opening data is important and appreciate the wide variety of ways it can be used need ways of sharing that with others. Apps can do that.

In Hull we’re building relationships so that when the obvious apps emerge we can still foster conversations, interest and opportunity to reveal the less obvious secrets hidden within our massive data.

Gosh, this turned into an epic comment!