Looking back on the webinar “Data Doesn’t Drive, People Do”

On 26 January, the European Data Portal (EDP) hosted a final episode for the first season of the Future of Open Data Portals series. The team was joined by Lucy Knight from The Data Place for a session titled: “Data doesn’t drive, people do”. The motto of the session was: “Go ugly, early”.

In the talk, Lucy advocates for the idea that it is the people, not the data, that define the problems data can help solve, set the assumptions, and draw conclusions.  In doing so, she drew from her experiences at the Devon County Council, where she works on various consulting and data science projects, currently focusing on a project around geospatial data, care service, and hospital data. Centred around three main points, Lucy highlighted what (open) data portals can learn from successful data communities:

1. Starting light and gradually building up is essential. Here, she quoted digital expert Emer Coleman saying “Go ugly, early”, meaning that it is crucial to create something that works, even if it is not perfect or covers all problems from the start.
2. In working with data, people should be open to feedback. That is, being able to put oneself in a position where people can reach you easily, where one is visible as well as at the centre of the discussion.
3. When designing, keep diversity in mind. For (open) data portals, it is crucial that people are able to access a wealth of different information, all in one place.

Interested to learn more? Listen to the recording of the event on the EDP YouTube channel.

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