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by Teresa Martin

"Where's the bus?"

That should be an easy question to answer, thought Chris Dempsey, Director of Innovation at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT).

Heh. Think again.

Where's the bus?

The answer had eluded transit authorities since, well, probably since the first bus rolled away from the first bus stop. It was a simple, yet puzzling question and one that lay at the heart of the interaction between public and transit.

There was no reason, really, thought Dempsey, that the question should be such a challenge.

Look at weather, after all. Weather is complex and yet there are hundreds upon hundreds of options for finding out if the sun might shine tomorrow, or if the clouds will be rolling in.

What exactly is the difference between "Will it rain?" and "Where's the bus?"

Well, it turns out the vast difference can be boiled down into two little words: Open Data.

The basic tenant of Open Data is that certain data are freely available to everyone. Open Data has become part of the Government 2.0 mantra and a theme in re-inventing government for the 21st century.

While pondering bus routes, Dempsey came to realize is that weather data - unlike bus data - is open. People can access it, manipulate it, and create applications with, for and from it.

As with many other open movements, the open door to data created an array of options and let lose a flurry of creativity such that we've ended up with a million ways to find out if it's a lion or a lamb kind of day.

Until recently, transit data was closed, proprietary, and held like a state secret. It wasn't easy or even possible for anyone to provide an answer to "Where's the bus?" And, not surprisingly, no one did.

Until September 2009, that is. That's when Dempsey's team embraced Open Data and the MBTA made basic trip planning information open. It told the developer community: here it is, come get it, have fun. By November, there were six interesting and innovative applications built on MBTA data.

Cost to the MBTA: $0.

Benefits to the transit public? Incalculable.

One of the first proponents of Open Data was the global climate research community. The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is an organization whose purpose is to observe, understand, and predict global change, and to make its results available for use in policy matters.

One of its initiatives is the Global Change Data and Information System (GCDIS). More than 15 years ago, in 1995, it set a clear bar for the CGDIS:

International programs for global change research and environmental monitoring crucially depend on the principle of full and open data exchange (i.e., data and information are made available without restriction, on a non-discriminatory basis, for no more than the cost of reproduction and distribution).

In other words, to solve big problems, data needs to be Open.

Over time, other segments of the science community followed suit, agreeing that to further the cause of humankind, data needed to be Open.

Governments slowly began to experiment as well. The federal Open Government initiative wants to change the culture of information dissemination and the data.gov website ( http://www.data.gov/ ) is the hub for the effort.

The federal government is very good at amassing data ... but not so good at communicating it. By letting others use the data, that division of labor might change, and - in theory at least - we all could benefit.

Over at the T, the initial success in September led the group to wonder what would happen if real time data were made Open: How would that change the interaction between people and transportation? Could it become as easy to answer "Where's the bus" as "What's the temperature?"

Determined to find out, in mid-November the MBTA released real time data for five bus lines. The T also launched a developer's website - http://www.eot.state.ma.us/developers/ - to share the data and support the process.

Within one hour of opening the data - yes that's right, one HOUR - someone had mashed that data into Google Earth to show the real time location of the busses.

Two days later someone else had created a free webpage where people can track current bus location from any browser.

Within a week, people could download a cute little desktop applet that counted down the time until a bus arrived at a favorite location.

In the blink of the eye there were a plethora of different countdown applications, applications that sent real-time bus data to any mobile or landline phone, iPhone and Android apps, and even an LED sign at a developer's favored bus stop.

Data, unleashed, unleashed a wave of creative development. The team had its answer: Yes! Open Data could indeed make it easy to answer, "Where's the bus?"

Open Data represents a huge shift in the way governments think. Sharing is downright scary. Letting someone else use that data is even more scary. But maybe the Open Data movement is a way to encourage governments to think about their core competencies, focus on these, and let go of some of the distractions.

"The best thing to do to get organizational leaders comfortable with new technologies is to relate them to things that are not technologically-based," Dempsey told me in a email exchange about the topic.

"Our sharing of data with developers is similar to our sharing of a press release ... In both instances, we rely on third-parties to distribute important information to citizens," he said. "We are much better off working with them, rather than competing against them."

In other words, open data turns what are can be antagonistic relationships into ones of synergy and opportunity. A transit entity is in the business of making the busses run on time and on budget. Why not let someone else focus on communicating bus performance?

The same holds true for other public data. By opening it up, we have the potential to make it more usable and valuable. By opening it up, we also change the interaction between the public and the public organization, creating a potentially more dynamic and meaningful one.

I'm thinking Open Data is a classic win-win opportunity.

So doe the MBTA. Last week it announced that real time data feeds will be available for all routes by the end of the summer.

Where is that bus? Check out http://catchthebusapp.com/ or any of the other apps to find out, or use that open data to create your own way of answering the question.