The founder and Executive Director of Link Digital, Steven De Costa has been involved in the community around the open source data management software known as the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network since 2012. For the last five of those years, Link Digital has been a CKAN ‘co-steward’, supporting the community of users and contributors that collaborate with the software project.
The growing role of CKAN in the digital ecosystem is evidenced by the fact that it serves as the key component of some of the largest and most successful open data portals around the world. But what of its future? In the second in a series of interviews to mark CKAN’s 20th anniversary, Link Digital’s Marketing Officer Kate Sampher spoke to Steven about his involvement with the software and its future directions.
Link Digital’s early engagement
CKAN was crucial to what Steven describes as “a real blossoming of the open data community” from 2009-2012, around the time that Link Digital first got involved in CKAN and began to use the open source software as a vital component in its global work building data management solutions for clients.
Established in 2001, Link Digital’s engagement with CKAN was driven at first by Australian national and state governments that were keen to develop data portals of their own. The first of these, data.gov.au – Australia’s national data portal – established in 2013, was a particular important development.
“It created this opportunity for CKAN to be adopted by the Australian national government and their open data program. So just catching that and being involved in that, made me feel confident that progressing CKAN would make a lot of sense.”
CKAN: more than just software
The central reason that Steven has never wavered in his belief in CKAN is his understanding of the reciprocal nature of contributing to the project.
“For us as a service supplier, every time we invested in CKAN as a technical solution, we got real value in return. Every time we put effort into the project, we got a response back.”
This is, in turn, connected to CKAN’s guiding principle: that open data is a public good that should be non-right restricted and easily transferable, and that creates more value the more it is shared.
It also links to Steven’s view that CKAN is more than just a software project. It is “a group of people, and a community of customers that is highly aligned with reciprocity and deserves continued investment from people who can benefit from it.”
Rethinking open data?
Which is not to say that CKAN, and the open data movement more generally, does not face challenges. One of these is the rise of AI, which is pushing a rethink on the part of governments and other large organisations about what data they share, the terms under which they might share it, and what data sovereignty might mean in this new era.
Is this redefining open data and, if so, what could it mean for CKAN and the companies like Link Digital that use it? Steven agrees that while it’s a big question, he does not think the nature of open data is changing. “I think it’s still a thing that revolves around and upon accountability, transparency and good governance… So, open data and openness generally are part of that.”
“Certainly, AI is a different kind of beast. It’s kind of this idea that reality once observed, can be modelled and internalised. And once you can observe reality as modelled and internalised, you can create a knowledge operation. You can create a model that would reciprocate what it’s internalised. That kind of technological shift does not change at all the dimension of value for open data. It just changes the engine or the mechanism upon which open data is valued.”
Also read: What is the future of open data in the AI era?
The Objective Observer Initiative and CKAN’s future
One of the ramifications for open data from the rise of generative AI and large language models, is that while making data open is still crucial, it is now no longer enough.
In addition to sharing data, what is needed is verifiable honesty. This is a core purpose behind the Objective Observer Initiative (OOI), a framework that Steven has been working on for the last 12 months, which attempts to blend philosophy, mathematics and physics, open data, AI and digital platforms into a new digital ecosystem framework that is more transparent, objective, and accountable.
“The whole idea of the OOI is just to recognise the fact that independent of what technology is out there and independent about how attractive it is and how much we want to use it, AI is still based on data, and data is based on perception.”
The OOI focuses on how we can leverage technology like AI to create “better data” that can be objectively trusted between parties, aiming for a perceptual model over a cognitive model in AI. The goal is to create data where the agreement upon objective understanding is somewhat independent of the parties involved.
As Steven sees it, the nature of CKAN means that, while it may not be the sole technical solution, it is a good entry point to potentially start using the OOI to generate better data.
CKAN: relevant for another 20 years
Steven has no doubt that CKAN will still be around in 20 years’ time.
Central to the project’s longevity is its grounding in three key areas: a community of contributors, platform owners – the software’s implementers and users – and the value the platform creates for end-users. “I think this kind of triangulation between CKAN’s contributors, platform owners and end users, is what grounds it as a project.”
“It’s not connected to some technological track like AI. It’s not dependent on those things. It’s only dependent on the three things that ground it, which are contributors, platform users, and the value it creates.”
“I’ve given to CKAN, and it’s never failed to give back. As a software project, as a group of people, as a group of customers that want to use it, it’s never failed to give back. Every time I give in to it, it creates value. So, after 20 years, I just think this project is something that is amazing. It deserves more people to invest into and deserves more people who benefit from that.”
You can read CKAN Insider# 1: Key lessons from client conversations on our site here.
