“Now I want you to put your data on the web...” — Tim Berners-Lee
Q: When the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, stands up and says Raw Data on the Internet is the key to the next great paradigm shift, “the next web,” people tend to listen, don’t they?
Rick Schaffer: They do. He has seen this coming for a while, and we loved it when he stood up there and got the crowd to chant “Raw Data Now!” It helps to validate and promote what we have been up to for ten years now at Simpler Systems. I guess you could say we have been ahead of the curve a bit with this technology, so it’s exciting to see the new paradigm that we’ve been working toward really begin to gain momentum out in the world.
Q: Is the concept of Raw Data and it being the epicenter of the next major paradigm shift easy to explain to people?
RS: [laughs] No, not really. It’s a bit like trying to explain the Internet to people before it existed. If you had tried to do so, in say 1989, someone might have asked, “Well what can you do with that?” And the answer would have been, “Well, a billion things!” In some ways it’s almost too big to imagine or explain.
Q: People want specific examples?
RS: Yes, which we can give, but then one can get hung up thinking the example is the whole picture, and it’s not. Not even close. Just like if you showed someone how email works and they thought that explained the whole Internet.
Q: So how do you boil down the concept for people?
RS: Well, it’s about going from limited access to information on the Web, which is what you have today – to full, unrestricted access.
Q: What do you mean by full access?
RS: Instead of just accessing documents and web pages and static information through your browser, imagine if you could access the databases, or raw data, that underlie that information, then pull whatever information you desire directly from those databases, then easily slice it and dice it any way you like. You would be in complete control of the information instead of being at the mercy of whatever is published on the Web and whatever format it happens to be in.
Q: Now are we talking about data from individuals, businesses, organizations, the government?
RS: Possibly all of the above down the road – that’s the big big picture. But government data is the logical starting place and our primary focus right now.
Q: Why is government the logical starting place?
RS: Well, think about the amount of data that government collects, generates, and stores – it’s massive. And there is enormous value in that data, if we could get to it. Theoretically this information belongs to all of us, but it has been difficult to get at it or do anything with it – we’re helping to change that.
Q: Is there an element of government accountability to this?
RS: Absolutely. Transparency is essential to accountability. And transparency means having access to the data and the ability to look at that data in meaningful ways.
Q: And that’s what Simpler Systems is creating?
RS: [smiles] Well, that’s what we are facilitating, I would say. We have created tools, and a platform, if you will, to facilitate getting government data on the Web. It's a tool that empowers people to access and work with that data. We call it simpler/gov.