Funding Open Data

Abstract

Open government data are fast becoming entrenched in our society. However, even though open government data may be “free”, it is not “gratis”. It takes substantial human and financial resources not only to collect and maintain government data, but also to process the data to be suitable for distribution as open data. Those resources need to be funded. In this chapter, we identify potential funding models for open data.We also explore the costs of implementing open data policies, and the benefits of open data, both for the open data organisation and for society. We demonstrate that the once-off operational costs of open data supply are marginal compared to the total operational costs of the open data organisation. Open data leads to efficiency gains within the open data organisation and to societal benefits. However, to reap those benefits, it is essential that organisations switching to open data, receive compensation, at least in the short-term. The compensation may be found in a new paid role in the information value chain.