Open Data Suffers

TechChrunch reported this interesting piece about the way budget cuts have hit the data.gov initiative. 

The gist of it is that the open government data initiative is up against hard times because it has not lived up to its promises.

But this is wrong. One key role for government is to push innovation in those areas where the profit is not immediately obvious. Like the internet, some years ago. Imagine if the Internet had been cut because it wasn’t obvious who the users were ….