Data Sources

Question 1

Public Data

Answer 1

Data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed, although hard to change or modify

Question 2

Open Data

Answer 2

It is a subset of public data but has some fundamental differences. For example, open data are smaller in volume, more likely to be structured, more likely to be open licensed and well maintained and importantly more likely to be reliable as they come from sanctioned portals. Some open data requires the user to pay a nominal fee. They can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone with no existing local, national or international legal restrictions on access or usage.

Question 3

Research

Answer 3

Data from a third party that is made available to you under a licence agreement or data that data has been collected, generated or created to validate original research findings. Examples include observational data, simulation data, derived data.

Question 4

Proprietary

Answer 4

Data that is owned and stored within an organisation. Proprietary data may be protected by patents, copyrights/trademarks or trade laws. Two subcategories of proprietary data are operational and administrative data.

Question 5

Operational

Answer 5

Proprietary data (owned and stored within an organisation) that is produced by your organisation’s day to day operations. Things like customer, inventory, and purchase data fall into this
category.

Question 6

Administrative

Answer 6

Proprietary data (owned and stored within an organisation) that is required to run your organisation but not part of the day-to-day organisations. Such as HR, admin, payroll etc.

Question 7

Client

Answer 7

A third party’s proprietary data.