I would like to inject an idea that has been slowly dawning on me over the last months. The notion of commons‑based peer production for public policy analysis (as extracted from here):
“One novel idea is the application of commons‑based peer production to public policy development, in part driven by the simple expedient that public agencies alone do not have the capacity to search the potential scenario space — and nor the creativity for that matter (with neither aspect intended as a criticism of government analysts).”
This will require a massive effort — in particular to assemble the structured data needed. And the European Commission is heading in exactly the wrong direction with its single digital market for information agenda. We urgently need a carve out from the Commission for information of public interest with as much as possible placed under CC‑BY‑4.0 licensing (or something inbound compatible). Other jurisdictions are arguably in a better state in this context due to different legal and administrative traditions.
More on the commodification of public interest information within Europe here. R