[open-government] Open Government Data Bulletin Idea

Thu Nov 10 10:37:56 UTC 2011

Hi All,

As a member of the working group and a subscriber to this list I
regularly see announces of interesting open government data
developments and activities -- hackdays, data releases, policy
changes, license adoptions etc. (Here's just one example from Anne
Fitzgerald yesterday [1]).

[1]: http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-government/2011-November/001751.html

It is great to have these notices coming through to the list but I've
been thinking for a while that it would be nice to collect these in a
slightly more organized fashion in addition to having them come to the
list (or surface via twitter etc). Prompted by Anne's mail yesterday,
I've booted up a quick google form and put it online here:

<http://opengovernmentdata.org/bulletin/>

The idea is people can submit "notices" here -- short summaries like
the ones sent to the list. These notices will automatically get
republished back onto the site (not quite done but on the way -- I'd
like this to be nicer than a simple embed of the spreadsheet!).

We can also do a monthly or quarterly summary to the list (that will
be much easier to put together than via a wade through the list
archives!). In addition will have a permanent record that can grow
over time and allow us to see how things have developed.

To assist in carrying this out we probably need 1 or 2 volunteer
"Bulletin Editors" who:

* Help submit notices (some things don't come through to the list and
some people will just want to mail and not also add to the bulletin)
* Review submissions in case of spam or duplication (just looking
through the spreadsheet) and perhaps add extra info (like date and
place)

So:

a) What do people think?
b) Anyone up for being a Bulletin Editor? (If interested you can mail
me direct off-list rather than on-list)

Rufus
-- 
Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/