[od-discuss] 3 nominations for Open Definition Advisory Council membership

Fri Jan 25 20:45:29 UTC 2013

Hi all,

I have three superb suggested additions to the AC. First, the obvious FAQs:
* Existing members at http://opendefinition.org/advisory-council/
* There is no limit on membership; process for license [dis]approval
designed to encourage consensus among expert-and-committed-to-open AC
members, without lots of time commitment; increase in size doesn't
raise quorum; see http://opendefinition.org/licenses/process/
* Approval for adding AC members is the same:  at least two Advisory
Council members approve nomination(s), and at least 75% of Advisory
Council members expressing an opinion if any dissent.
* Proximate reason for these nominations, now: much OD work in recent
past and upcoming has and will be Public Sector Information related;
getting more expertise on board specific to this domain is an obvious
win. Credit to Jonathan Gray for prompting on this.
* All 3 are subscribed to this list and have agreed to have their
names put forward.

Please +1 nominations, either all 3 or individually, as you wish.
Questions and dissent also welcome. :)

Nominee bios below. I suspect many of you have met Tariq at OKFest; I
vouch for Federico's excellence personally through years of working
with him at Creative Commons; Andrew has been actively participating
in Open Definition discussions for some time now, and also just joined
OKF's overall advisory board.

Tariq Khokhar is the World Bank's Open Data Evangelist. His interests
lie where technology, transparency, poverty and data meet. He guides
the World Bank's Open Data Initiative and is responsible for internal
and external strategy, outreach and communications, and supporting
client countries with their own open data programs. Prior to joining
the Bank, Tariq led innovation and community engagement work at
Aidinfo and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). He
was formerly a director of Bond UK and the Chief Development Officer
of Aptivate. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge, has
close relationships in the global Open Data and Open Government
communities and currently lives in Washington DC.

Federico Morando is an economist, with interdisciplinary research
interests focused on the intersection between law, economics and
technology. His research activity at the Nexa Center mainly concerns
new models of production and sharing of digital contents. He also
taught intellectual property and competition law at Bocconi University
in Milan and he is an associate editor of the IJCLP. He has an
undergraduate degree in Economics from Bocconi Univ. and a master’s
degree in Economic theory and econometrics from the Univ. of Toulouse.
He holds a Ph.D. in Institutions, Economics and Law from the Univ. of
Turin and Ghent with a dissertation about software interoperability.
He joined the working group of the Nexa Center at the beginning of its
first year of formal activity. From Dec. 2012, he leads the Creative
Commons Italy project and he is a member of the Open Team of Regione
Piemonte that launched and steers the development of the first Italian
open government data portal. From Dec. 2008, in his position as the
first Managing Director of the Center, he works closely with the
Directors to define staff and project goals and to coordinate the
Center’s fellows.

Andrew Stott was the UK’s first Director for Transparency and Digital
Engagement. He led the work to open government data and create
“data.gov.uk”; and after the 2010 Election he led the policy
development and implementation of the new Government’s commitments on
Transparency of central and local government. Following his formal
retirement in December 2010 he was appointed to the UK Transparency
Board to continue to advise UK Ministers on open data and e-government
policy. He also advises other governments on Open Data both
bilaterally and through the World Bank and the World Wide Web
Foundation. He is an expert adviser on Open Data strategy to the EU
Citadel On The Move programme and co-chairs the OKFN Open Government
Data Working Group.

Mike