The State of Open Con 2023 has just kicked off in London and the EM360 team was there to interview business leaders and industry experts about everything open data. 

Yesterday, we spoke to Lisa Allen, Director of Data and Services at the Open Data Institute, about the latest trends and biggest challenges for the open-source industry and the future of open-source software within the enterprise landscape. 

We must create a standard to make the most of data

When asked about the current trends in open source data, Ms Allen explains that organisations need to establish a standard for data so they can better understand how to manage, maintain and protect their data. 

“We want to make sure it's as easy to book an activity as it is to book a hotel room. If [data] is published in a common open standard, then actually, then people can pick that up.

“Aggregators can make it available to people. So that's why it's really important that it's open and in that standardized way to maximize the benefit of it.” In relation to the Open Data.

The benefits of open data are endless

There are multiple benefits and use cases for open data, and Ms Allen gives multiple examples of how open data has benefited society over the past few years. 

“I led the release of 2000 datasets as Open from the Environment Agency back in 2015, and that was part of a release of 8000, where it ended up with 10,000 datasets released as open.”

“We saw some amazing benefits from open data from that. So we saw an archaeologist that found 17 Roman roads that he didn't know existed, he'd been spending his whole career looking for. We found our data on a 3D map of London. We saw it in Minecraft.” 

Ms Allen adds that open data is needed to solve some of society’s greatest challenges in 2023, such as climate change. 

“The release of that Environment Agency data was open really did lead to lots of innovation. So I think actually it's a continuum now. I think then it was big and it's coming back in because actually, you need it,” Ms Allen explains.

To read more about open data, visit our dedicated Data Management page.