Overview

Throughout this book I have tried to emphasize the ultimate extraction of actionable value from aggregated sets of data. So what would you say if you were told there was a huge data resource that was widely available, easily accessible, and essentially free? I am referring to public data, which comes in a variety of sizes, shapes and forms, as well as what we might call "publicly available" data sets that are packaged and sold by value-added information resellers.

For the most part, a public data set is a collection of data that is collected as a by-product of some legal or regulatory mandate that requires registration of some event or transaction. In some cases, personal data supplied directly by individuals is made available in both individual and aggregated forms. In addition, there are public data sets made available by government bodies as a convenience to their constituents, specifically for public use. In either of these cases, depending on the context or source, significant value can be added to internal data sets by acquiring and integrating publicly available data.

In this last chapter, we look at publicly available data sets so that we can consider their value in terms of information integration and exploitation and hopefully show the value of acquiring and managing this kind of data. In addition, we will briefly discuss the political aspects of collecting and manipulating public data in a way that poses the perception of an invasion of privacy.

I have to admit that...