I was at the OpenDataHACK PACA this last weekend and I ended up being quite disappointed and frustrated. Disappointed because I thought that a hackathon is about just having fun together and that event looks closer to a startup weekend with a final jury and questions about business models. Frustrated because after a few months without coding actively I was very motivated and most of the projects presented didn't provide any line of code or even use OpenData (from PACA) for real.

In hindsight, I discovered the discomfort I have with OpenData (at least in France): it's hard to have fun for a developer.

• the nature of data is very limited and you can't do anything but a service about transportation or tourism.
• the quality of data is so bad that you lost a lot of energy just being able to use it programmatically.
• the freshness of data is incredibly inconsistent and can't be predicted.

That being said, here are some ideas for data providers:

• we reached the limits of public data, it's time for companies to expose some of their private data in order to make pertinent and various services, don't forget the first-mover advantage here! (by private I mean internal, not data related to privacy of course).
• we need to work on the way providers open their data, releasing files — whatever the format — is not an option anymore, developers used to work with APIs for a good reason. Take care of your data, that's your responsibility.
• we invest time with your data, give us guarantees, document your data, give informations about the releases' frequency, future released data, interoperability with others' data and so on.

As a citizen, I want to be involved in the life of my city/county but I'll need some help from your side, providers.

Original post of David Larlet.Votez pour ce billet sur Planet Libre.