Most of the open data sites that governments have created during the last decade still deliver data as sets of links to tables, or links to other sites that are also hard to comprehend. In the best cases, data is delivered through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which are simple data query languages that require a user to have a basic knowledge of programming. So understanding what is inside each dataset requires downloading, opening, and exploring the dataset in ways that are extremely taxing for users. So says César A. Hidalgo, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a blog post on the Scientific American site.

The consensus among those who have participated in the creation of open data sites is that current efforts have failed and we need new options. Most open data sites are badly designed with regard to the conceptual model used to organise and deliver data to users. The design of most open data sites follows a throwing-spaghetti-against-the-wall strategy, where opening more data, instead of opening data better, has been the driving force.

Issues

Hidalgo identifies several problems with the current open data sites:

• datasets that are more important, or could potentially be more useful, are not brought into the surface of these sites or are not properly organised;
• most sites deliver data in the way in which it is collected, instead of used;
• most open data sites bury data in what is known as the deep web, i.e. the part of the Internet not accessible through search engines.

Storytelling

A possible solution to these issues has been implemented by Deloitte, Datawheel and MIT in the Data USA portal This portal leans heavily on visualisations and storytelling, which provide an accessible, attractive and representative layer on top of the datasets. The text is mainly targeted to search engines, bringing the most important basic numbers of a dataset into the light.

According to Hidalgo, this approach has proven itself to be effective. The Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) now receives more than half a million visitors every month.