Open Sourced Facts

I’ve given up on the idea that you can win an argument based on facts. I understand the politics behind that statement, but debating the correct path just no longer seems a viable way to achieve a goal. Again, a political example, but it appears to me to be a demonstrable fact that Brexit has had a significantly negative impact on Britain. Yet, nearly two years in and the government is still quibbling about the source of negative impacts in the country. Facts wouldn’t have changed the situation that we are in but addressing facts could have been beneficial.

This appears to be the opposite of make do and mend. That old WWII British stiff upper lip mentality only works if you have an idea of the situation, you are in. If you have an idea of the shared facts. Leaning into the democracy you can accept things that don’t go your way. If we voted to leave Europe, then so be it. That is our reality now. But there is opportunity as well as misfortune in every large-scale event and if we can’t agree on facts then we won’t be able to see either for what they are during the transition.

Now I’ve had an idea, and it’s a bit naive, but I like it.

I see a way to move forward. It has to do with understanding facts. Not to shame anyone or argue against anything as I’m sure that wouldn’t work anyway. But if there was a place, I can go to understand something, I would go. I understand I just described journalism and the media at large. However, there is a significant amount of work that is required to understand the viewpoint of the source of information you take from journalism. Critical thinking is a skill, but why do I have to employ it for every single fact I want to find out in a current event or phenomenon. Why do I have to either be a climate scientist or watch 150 hours of opposing viewpoint media to get a basic understanding of climate change? Why isn’t there just basic fact sheets.

Now I’ve had an idea, and it’s a bit naive, but I like it. Inspired by Scotland’s National Performance Framework, it seems like it would be possible to start building fact sources from open-source public data. At least relating to public achievement this framework aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals works to monitor our progress towards out shared goals at a national level.

The Framework is broken up into 11 National Outcomes and then each outcome is broken down into a series of National Indicators which are in theory run by data sources throughout the public service. It’s not fool proof as in our Education National Outcome is measured by a whole host of indicators, but none of which look at educators themselves. That appears to be missing out on half of the equation of education. Other indicators are based off sources that are at best limited in their scope. The Skill Underutilisation indicator is derived from a survey of employers. Given that we have resources such as job boards, LinkedIn and most significantly roughly 20% of employment in Scotland is to the public sector we have the ability for this indicator to be a lot more precise than a survey.

But the entire system gives me hope for developing a shared resource that can be used to help direct and coordinate effort. Perhaps its my age, but I don’t believe in government’s ability to really deliver useful change. But if we had basic facts to work from that are constantly measured and responded to outside influence, we might have a base to start making our own changes for good.

My idea would be to build more indicators, think of them as open-source indicators that help support national outcomes. This would need a bit of coordination to allow indicators to give details regarding the status of an indicator, plus how the indicator is captured, measured and should be used. But beyond that if we just had the raw data of national performance then when you organise a protest, a charity or just some small event, you have the potential of viewing your direct impact on the rest of the nation.

This is one of my, “if I won the lottery” dream projects. Maybe one day, but until then I’ll keep looking at the progress made on the National Framework.