Too Long; Didn't Read
Governments and other public institutions have always collected data about their populations, land, weather, etc. for reasons of administration, better governance, planning and strategy among others. Until a few decades ago, most of the general population had access to this type of data through fairly primitive formats like paper, and in rare cases, in the form of something like an excel table. The uses of this data are varied, ranging from research in social sciences, high school projects to for profit services and strategy making (like planning real estate projects). The open data handbook defines open data as ‘the idea that certain data should be freely available for everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control’. In a sense, government data like the census information, land use studies, budget, etc. are all forms of Open Data. As you can notice, Open Data has always been there. What makes the idea so groundbreaking now?