In 2009, Tim Berners-Lee — the inventor of the World Wide Web — took the TED stage and made a plea: "Raw data now!". His argument was that data collected by governments with taxpayers' money should be open and accessible to everyone. Not processed or interpreted data: raw data, in open formats, reusable by anyone. It was the beginning of the open data movement.
Open data is the idea that certain data — those produced by public administration, publicly funded scientific research, public services — are a common good. Like air or water, they must be accessible to all without restrictions. The fundamental principles are: openness (non-proprietary formats), accessibility (downloadable for free), reusability (licences permitting free use).
Open data's successes are impressive. In Kenya, the government's open data portal allowed citizens to monitor public spending, reducing corruption. In Italy, portals like dati.gov.it and soldipubblici.gov.it allow tracking every euro spent by the state. Globally, OpenStreetMap — the Wikipedia of maps — has become a critical infrastructure used by humanitarian organisations during emergencies.
But open data is no magic wand. Data without context can be misleading. Data without the skills to interpret them remains a dead letter. And there is a paradox: making data open requires resources (standardisation, cleaning, documentation) that many administrations lack. The result is that often the most important data — on pollution, public health, state contracts — remain closed or are published in unusable formats.
The real challenge of open data is not technical: it is political. Who decides which data to open and which to keep closed? Who funds the necessary infrastructure? And above all: how do we ensure open data becomes a tool of empowerment for everyone, not just those with the technical skills to use them?