A group of Texas cities — including Dallas, Plano, Irving and dozens of others — have put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) seeking novel ways of monetizing their data.
From the document:
The North Texas Innovation Alliance and its partner governments are seeking solutions that capture new revenue streams for municipalities, counties and the region as a whole. NTXIA membership has identified financial models, revenue channels and procurement as priority areas of focus for innovation, and currently assembling options and emerging solutions for use in the region. The group and individual government members want innovative solutions for consideration in the areas of data monetization, asset monetization, new revenue streams and others. The goal is to use new solutions and technology to unlock budget accretive programs.
Analysis from Cities Today:
The idea of potentially charging for government data could be controversial for some and, in the case of open data, might seem counter-intuitive. There are also complexities around issues such as data ownership, value, re-use and more.
Andrew Collinge, Advisor, Smart Dubai, and former Director for Intelligence and Analysis, Greater London Authority, recently wrote on Cities Today that: “As urban data gets bigger and more unstructured through AI and IoT, costs associated with pre-processing, building of datasets and the infrastructure to enable sharing all increase.
