FutureEverything

Manchester Open Data City

Image ©Aaron Koblin

FutureEverything is among the organisations leading the charge towards Open Data Cities in the UK. We were funded in November 2009 by the Manchester Innovation Investment Fund* to work to make Manchester the UK's first Open Data City. In January 2010, the office of Boris Johnson will announce that London will take a massive step towards making its data systems open by creating the London Data Store. The signs are that change is now inevitable.

The cities in which we exist are vast repositories of information, endlessly collecting and archiving data. Following the example set by cities such as San Francisco, Vancouver and Edmonton, we are championing a global movement calling for the opening up of publicly held datasets (Data acquired by government and their agencies in order to carry out their function).

The scale and accessibility of large datasets is expected to have a transformational impact on society. The benefits for citizens, digital business and public bodies are huge. Freely available data can enable social change around transparent governance and so help to reconnect people to the democratic process.

FutureEverything is exploring how Open Data environments can also spark innovation and the potential for more innovative and novel interpretations of this landscape by creative invention, social innovation and technological intervention.

Through advocacy, artworks, toolkits, development support and public discussion we aim to enable Manchester to become an exemplar of Open Data practice. By identifying data that can be made available, and looking at issues of data interoperability, quality and management, FutureEverything aims to make Manchester a city at the forefront of the OpenData movement.

The opening up publicly held datasets will create enormous benefit for Manchester - It's citizens, it's digital community and it's image. The potential is huge but the challenges are equally sizeable. Whilst most organisations understand the benefits of making this data available, many don't have the systems in place and others don't know what data they hold. It is to this end that FutureEverything will develop ways for organisations to identify and standardise the data for release to the community.

The FutureEverything Festival and Conference will explore the potential and consequence of the move to a data-based, Open Data society.

* Manchester Innovation Investment Fund is a partnership between NESTA, Manchester City Council and the RDA, managed by Manchester Knowledge Capital.