Important concepts explained
Open source
"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
Linus's Law is the quintessence of the Bazaar model of open source software development. The source code is accessible openly, with the intention to get more people to look at the code and test it in order to find bugs and improve the product through the contributor / maintainer community over time.
Linus’s Law also constitutes the guiding principle of OpenStreetMap or Wikipedia, two prevalent crowdsourced data platforms, that consistently grow over time, improve and stay updated as the world changes.
The open source concept for software tools has many benefits, such as cost-effectiveness, better code, lower barriers of entry, flexibility, and continual innovation. There's also common misconceptions, but a recent study by Worldbank and OpenDRI confirmed a 200% return on investment (RoI) for the organization leading an open source software project.
Crowdsourced data collection
Crowdsourcing information via participatory online tools has greatly changed the way cities can interact with their constituents. While these tools are wonderful solutions and make participation in civic issue for many constituents easier than ever before, the challenge lies in ensuring digital inclusion. It’s important to consider how community members that may not have access to online platforms can be included. For that matter results of crowdsourced data collection processes have to be taken with a grain of salt.
A good example for crowdsourced data collection on top of OpenStreetMap is the Chennai floodmap which was used as a quick and efficient response to extensive flooding.
Open data
“Open data refers to publicly available data structured in a way that enables the data to be fully discoverable and usable by end users.”
Some more definitions of Open Data via GovLab
Transparency, the potential social and commercial value of data and citizen engagement are popular arguments for releasing open data. However the common solution to make data available on an open data portal is less than ideal. In many cases, the formats open data is provided in, are too complicated for untrained individuals, while the argument for open data is that it belongs to the taxpayers that paid for it. The public sector is expected to not only open datasets to the public, but justify the dollars spent on making the data available. This can be achieved by actively communicating useful applications of their data built by engaged individuals or community initiatives.
The ideal situation would be that data is visually accessible, and can be downloaded in a format that can interface with many different tools & solutions. OpenStreetMap as a platform represents a standardized and visual way to present geospatial data, and as a bonus comes with an active community, interested in keeping the data up-to-date. The common pain point keeping data updated can in some cases be delegated to the community.
More information in the Open Data Handbook by the Open Knowledge Foundation.