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"In my humble opinion, there are two main reasons to be cautious: 1. Contests so far have generated relatively few ideas, most of which either relate to the realm of politics (e.g. how to map funding to politicians to what they do) or to relatively narrow areas, such as crime-related information. I have not yet seen anything extraordinary that would have a significant impact on service levels. 2. Contestants are necessarily either professional programmers, working for a vendor or self employed, or geeks. My contention is neither category is very likely to be hugely representative of the public at large."

"As I wrote in the past, wearing my typical analyst cynical hat, response to these contests has not been overwhelming. Sure we have seen a handful of original ideas, but often far from being ready for prime time, or difficult to sustain in the longer term."

"Universities could be adding millions of pounds to the UK economy, according to findings announced this week by JISC at a Universities UK event. A recent JISC report, authored by Alma Swan (Modelling scholarly communication options: costs and benefits for universities) shows that a single large university could contribute around £3 million each year to the research community as a whole simply by sharing knowledge through a more open route."

"Clearly data release can reduce fraud and curb unnecessary spending. The MPs' expenses scandal has stimulated more interest in this area but there are already websites dedicated to examining how public money is spent. Releasing full financial breakdown of spend can save millions, as a recent case in Canada proved. A $3.2 billion tax evasion fraud was exposed when financial data was made publicly available."

"The following is a short compilation of open data success stories. It's hard to see the indirect benefits of releasing data. Since publishing open data is building an infrastructure, there are no obvious direct benefits and you can't predict the concrete impact it will have."

"Maantieteellistä tietoa hyödyntäviin teknisen palvelun toimialan yrityksiin keskittyvä aineistoanalyysi vuosilta 2000-2007 osoittaa, että julkisen tiedon hinnoittelu vaikuttaa selvästi yritysten liikevaihdon kasvuun. Yritykset maissa, joissa julkinen maantieteellinen tieto on ollut ilmaista tai enintään rajakustannusten perusteella hinnoiteltua ovat kasvaneet vuositasolla keskimäärin 15 prosenttia enemmän kuin yritykset maissa, joissa julkisen maantieteellisen tiedon hinnoittelu on ollut kustannusperusteista. Rajakustannushinnoitteluun siirtymisen jälkeen on havaittavissa positiivinen kasvuvaikutus jo seuraavana vuonna, mutta selvästi voimakkaampi kasvusysäys nähdään kahden vuoden päästä hinnoittelumuutoksesta. Julkisen maantieteellisen tiedon rajakustannushinnoittelu ei ole kuitenkaan vaikuttanut merkittävästi suurten yritysten kasvuun; PK-yritykset ovat hyötyneet eniten halvemmasta maantieteellisestä tiedosta."