Tim Davies: 5 Stars of Open Data Engagement

Tim Davies — then a researcher at Practical Participation and a contributor to the Web Foundation's Open Data Research Network, later a founding research lead at the Open Data Institute — proposed the Five Stars of Open Data Engagement framework in 2012 as a deliberate complement to Tim Berners-Lee's existing Five Star Open Data deployment scheme. Berners-Lee's stars had been about technical openness — published / structured / non-proprietary / URIs / linked. Davies's stars were about the social side of reuse: be demand-driven, put data in context, support conversation around the data, build capacity skills and resources, and collaborate on data as a common resource.

The framework filled a gap the publication-quantity metrics had created. Open-data programmes in 2011–2012 were measuring publication — number of datasets, formats covered, download counts — without a corresponding framework for measuring whether the data was actually being used to do anything. Davies's five stars provided categories that programmes could be assessed against without collapsing into the technical-publication ledger.

The framework was widely cited in the post-2012 open-data literature, including the Open Knowledge Foundation's later evaluation work, the Open Data Barometer methodology Davies himself helped lead, and several national open-government strategy documents. The publication-versus-engagement distinction it formalised has remained one of the more durable analytical frames in the open-data field.