Many years ago I built a FOSS Android application for our local
bike sharing system. After realizing global bike sharing information
was not publicly available we ended up going after the task of solving
the problem for once and for all: a free and open API for others to
create applications, visualizations and research on bike sharing data.
Fast forward today and thanks to the community, the CityBikes project
supports more than 400 cities all around the world and our API powers
most bike sharing transportation apps on all platforms.
The CityBikes project is a good example of the benefits on the
so-called "open data". When data is made available, the community is
eager to contribute to and improve public services. We are usually
regarded as an "open data project", even though less than 10% of our
data feeds come from properly licensed, documented and machine
readable feeds. Our project showcases the need of a better policy than
the PSI Directive [2] regarding re-use of public sector information,
and some common misconceptions between representation and data.
The main problem with the PSI Directive is that it does not take into
account Public-Private partnerships (PPP). If data ownership or re-use
is left out of the deal, the company kidnaps the data and leaves both
the city council and its citizens at the mercy of the company
providing the service. That is, only the company (or any other company
in agreement with the "umbrella company") is to provide applications
to use their systems. We as citizens should demand that any project
that comes as a result of a public-private partnership should put the
data right where it belongs: the public.
When I started this project on the year 2010 little did I know I
would end up battling city councils and companies to release their
data as public feeds, nor I could imagine pybikes [3] was going to
help create apps for all platforms [4] without having to code a single
line.