Open data, what does it mean and why do we need it?
What is open data?
I prefer to refer to opening up data, an action, rather than open data, a noun. This is because open data suggests an absolute state, while openness is relative to the environment and user. I.e. data is not either open or not, it exists along a spectrum depending who you are, what you would like to do with the data and where we are in the timeline of the data.