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A Chat with Hal Varian on Open Data

and Gov 2.0
Luigi Reggi

Professor Hal Varian - in Italy to meet Minister Sacconi - gives economic

sense to the open data paradigm: Government as data wholesaler and
the public as retailers. He also comments on the recent criticisms of the
US initiatives for open data: “There is enough momentum behind this
effort, and we will see progress”

Professor Hal Varian is one of my personal idols. As a student, I studied

microeconomics from his famous manual which is used in almost every
University in the world. Recently, I used Microeconomic Analysis again in
my own Economics course at La Sapienza University in Rome, and I
rediscovered the clarity and rigor of this text.
But my life literally changed after reading Information Rules, a
groundbreaking book he wrote with Carl Shapiro in 1999. This book led me
to study innovation and technology and to make the study of innovation a
profession.

Many of you might know he is now Chief Economist at Google, and his
job is analyzing economic trends by exploiting the potential of Google
Search and the tons of queries people make every day. A very exiting job
indeed. He is certainly the master of web 2.0 data.

Professor Varian is now touring Europe for a series of meetings that will
culminate with the WTO Forum in Geneva tomorrow. Last Thursday he was
over in Rome to meet the Italian Minister of Labour Maurizio Sacconi at a
public meeting organized by the lobbying and media company Reti entitled
“Web Economy: Internet for economic development”.
How could I have passed up the opportunity of being there and asking him
a couple of questions about open data and gov 2.0?

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Professor Varian, what do you think about this kind of global fever
for open data and Gov 2.0? Is it all hype or does have a future?

I think that this model is very attractive. You can think of the government
as the wholesaler of data, that puts it up in bulk form. Then this data can
be downloaded, refined and improved for retail and distribution. There are
a lot of reasons to think that that model might be attractive, because the
role that the Government would play would be quite specifically defined:
make the raw data available. Then people can extract from that what
they want, and polish it, beautify it, crack it and a lot of other things. So
that is a model which I think could be attractive to Italy, the US and the
other Countries. The problem of managing the data from end to end is that
it’s very expensive and a very big challenge. The most important step is to
make the data available even if it’s in a raw and unfinished form.

Two days ago, at Gov 2.0 Summit 2010 in Washington DC Ellen

Miller of Sunlight Foundation strongly criticized the availability and
quality of the data published on USAspending.gov and Data.gov. It
seems that this revolution is actually not happening yet.

Well, I think that in the Obama administration, for example, they are
making a lot of more patent data available, FCC (Federal Communications
Commission) data available, and so on. So it is happening, it’s just not as
rapid as one might think, because it’s a difficult problem. But I think
there’s enough momentum behind this effort, and we will see progress. As
they say "pazienza"! (he laughs).

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 Regional
Innovation
Policies
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Photo: Bertoblog Salotti

Hal Varian with the Italian Minister Maurizio Sacconi speaking at the conference
Web Economy: Internet per economic development. Rome, September 9, 2010.