[euopendata] Open data in public sector ICT -system procurement - Denmark?

Tue Nov 29 15:33:31 UTC 2011

Hi,

I heard rumours that in Denmark there would be some sort of rule that open
data / interfaces are included in all public sector ICT procurements by
default. Does anyone has links or information about this or anythin related
to "open data and ICS system procurement" in any other contry/organization?

Currently I am helping out the Finnish enviromental agency in their
procurement- and specification process for new data intensive systems.
There for I ask if you have any concrete examples on how the open data was
taken into account in some public sector IT system procurement process. Any
links, hints and thoughts are wellcome.

Best Regards,
Antti Poikola

---SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION SO FAR---

Jeff Kaplan suggested that open data shoud be made a condition for any gov
procurement.

He linked to the UK's "Open Public Services White Paper" [1], which
suggests making it a requirement that all organisations providing public
services through contracts with Government will be obliged to publish open
data as part of their contract.

[1]
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/open-public-services-white-paper

Andrew Stott devided the theme in two separate points:

(1) where the Government is contracting for the provision of public
services then the contract should oblige the contractor to release open
data about the public service in the same way as the Government would
release open data if it provided the public service itself. That's the
proposal in the Open Public Services White Paper Jeff Kaplan quotes, and it
is essential to ensuring accessibility, performance and accountability
while having a wider range of public service providers.

(2) Government IT system should natively provide for the extraction and
publication of Open Data, and Government IT contracts should require this.
This is a real problem, both where systems have been procured/designed
without the ability to do ad hoc or regular extracts of the raw data or
where the *contract* treats this as a new requirement for which the
supplier can charge extra (and sometimes excessively). Current UK FOI rules
mean that an agency with a poorly written IT contract can legally refuse an
FOI request which an agency with a better contract would have to meet, with
the paradox that the worse the IT contract or system the less transparent
the agency need be!

I further devided the point 2, to sub-poits 2.1 and 2.2

(2.1) Create general level open data guidelines for the people who handle
government IT system procurement. As an example, one private news paper
from Finland recently released guidelines to journalists on use of open
data [1] and also new IT systems / services are mentined: "In the
developing of new services, there will be a conscious effort to create APIs
(application programming interfaces) and back-end interfaces for
administrators that will facilitate the opening up of gathered data for
further use."

(2.2) More specific good practices and examples are needed to give the IT
procurement people real tools on how to implement the above mentioned
general guidelines. What kind of IT architecture enables natively the open
data? What should and could be written into public bidding documents etc.

Andrew Stott also pointed the The "Making Open Data Real" consultation
paper [2] which discusses this topic in the following points:

- Ensuring through procurement rules that data collected by public service
providers is stored in ICT systems that minimise the cost and difficulty of
publishing data online. Currently, data requests are often refused because
the data is stored in a fashion that makes it difficult to extract.
 Procurement rules for ICT systems could be reformed to ensure that new
systems are designed in ways that make data extraction easier and cheaper.

- Mandating a phased introduction of ‘Open by Default', delivered through a
new generation of ICT systems, and accompanying policies. A true
culture-shift to Open Data will require more than new powers. It will
require that public sector ICT systems make 'Open by Default' the most
attractive option for procurement.

[2]
http://data.gov.uk/opendataconsultation/policy-challenge-questions/an-enhanced-right-to-data

-- 
Antti "Jogi" Poikola - +358 44 337 5439
--------------------------------------------
Q: Why is this email three sentences or less?
A: http://three.sentenc.es
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