Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Innovation and entrepreneurship through Open Data

Publishing data from local government is useful in itself. However, the real power of the data and what it can tell you about a local area is usually most appreciated when other organisations develop tools and applications to present the data in ways that make it easy for other people to understand.

Once data is made available, it is open to businesses (often small and medium enterprises, SMEs) to analyse it and then create revenue from selling their analysis, or by developing and selling tools that use the data. Such innovation and entrepreneurship can help to drive the improvement of local government services, with little or no cost to an administration other than that of releasing the data for public consumption. Governments in many partner countries are seeking to promote innovation by organising activities such as hackathons, developing case studies and encouraging local governments to increase the amount of data they make available. Some examples of how open data has been or could be used in innovative ways through entrepreneurship in partner countries and municipalities are described in the rest of this document.