Data is social power

September 17, 2012 by
Filed under: Education Matters 

RSA is working with the Open Public Services Network to explore whether data on schools can be opened up and communicated to parents and others in ways that  are most useful to them. It’s a fascinating proposition, and OPSN has gathered together some terrific number crunchers, headteachers and other thinkers to help us think through the process. The statistical issues makes my liberal-arts head hurts at times, but the project could help government, schools and all those organisations between them to create and transmit different kinds of data that really matter in different ways.

And yet… the OPSN grew out of RSA’s Public Services 2020 Commission, whose final report centred on the notion of social productivity – that public services aren’t reducible to consumer propositions, but are social exchanges.  Brilliant public services can only be created with their users. This education data project, and possibly all of this government’s worthwhile attempts to make data more open transparent, concentrate on data as a way to make parents better informed consumers of schools. Better information will lead to better choice (or at least, better ‘preferences’), and these choices might drive improved school performance.

But what if this is just the start, and the potential power of data is much greater? Are there ways to use data that will encourage and help consumers of public services to become participants, citizens, co-creators of better outcomes, not just for themselves, but for the wider public good? To borrow from Matthew’s annual lecture, opening up data might be transferring power directly from hierarchical authority to individual aspiration, bypassing possibilities for social solidarity.

I can’t think of any examples in education, let alone in other public services. Perhaps the recent National Pupil Data Hack Day will produce some answers. Or maybe there are examples already out there, and I am boldly going where lots of people already are.

 

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Comments

  • Irene Combs

    I wish you good luck! I am a school board member, and at one point a parent using a FOIA request was able to get student data that we had been asking for for years! We still are not sure what our administration is afraid will be revealed by giving us the raw data. I just see it as opening the data up to a number of different interpretations – some of which might open up new opportunities for students and teachers!

  • http://www.pearsoncpl.com Louis M M Coiffait

    A really key area. We did some work on this last year with Fiona Millar / Family Lives and it’s often hard to get learners and parents to think about the hypothetical future of open education data… http://thepearsonthinktank.com/research/a-new-conversation-with-parents/
    I’m hoping to make that a bit more real, identify the barriers and good examples, then sketch out a national strategy in an upcoming project.