What problem are we trying to solve?
We want to make finding and booking a badminton court as easy as it is to book a hotel room. We’re building a future where the opportunities that sport and physical activity providers offer are no longer stuck in a single website, and can be listed in a wide range of apps and services.
To make this happen we want to help the sport and physical activity sector open its data. Innovators can use data to connect people to physical activity in new and exciting ways. The more organisations there are publishing open data, the more it can be used by innovators, and the more sustainable the ecosystem.
A key aim for us is to ensure that open data is published at source, as we think this is the best way to build a robust and secure data infrastructure. In the majority of cases this means working with booking system platforms to build this into their products. his approach takes time however. Whilst we’ve been making good progress, the opening up of data has to compete with the other priorities of each booking system. Over time, with network effects around open data becoming more important, we expect that it will become more of a priority. But in the short term we’ve been considering ways to gain momentum.
What are adapters and how can they help?
One approach to quickly adding new functionality to existing systems is to create adapters. Physical adapters include things like one for your plug when you go abroad, but in this case we’re talking about adapters as a temporary pieces of software that can be used to publish data from a specific platform, without the need for the platform provider to make changes to their product in the short-term. They can be used as a shortcut to make more data available, so that innovators can demonstrate value. We do not see them as a long-term solution for a strong, sustainable ecosystem, but we recognise that they can have a tactical benefit in the short-term.
There are some risks to using adapters. Overuse of adapters can lead to a fragile data infrastructure which won’t be able to support long-lasting open data businesses. The best way to ensure that we have a sustainable data ecosystem is for data to be published directly from platforms, rather than through adapters that are hosted or run by members of the community.
If too many adapters are deployed, this may reduce the urgency for the booking system providers to build open data feeds into their own products. Adapters are often limited in the features they can provide, creating inefficiencies and incurring additional costs. We want to build a safe, secure and sustainable data infrastructure for the sector.
The ODI does not want to get in the way
The OpenActive community is bigger than the ODI. Our role is to help the physical activity sector take advantage of open data, and to support the wider community in making this happen. Although we have reservations about adapters, members of the community are telling us that they are willing to help build and run them in order to quickly unlock more data.
We do not want to get in the way of people who want to deploy adapters. We also recognise that people will look to us to play a coordinating role. Our focus is on encouraging booking system platforms to build this into their own products, therefore avoiding the need for adapters. But in the meantime we are happy to signpost people to opportunities where an adapter could be deployed. If you are interested in deploying an adapter for an organisation listed here, please let us know and we can tag you as the owner. We have also put together a document that describes how we will support commercial organisations. We are always keen to get feedback from the OpenActive community to ensure that we are working fairly for everyone.
