[okfn-announce] Open Knowledge Forum on Civic Information (No. 2)

Mon Oct 30 11:31:53 UTC 2006

~~ Please redistribute to relevant mailing lists and individuals ~~

## Open Knowledge Forum on Civic Information (No. 2) ##

Organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the UCL 
faculty of Computer Science (Ian Brown)

Web page: <http://www.okfn.org/okforums/civicinfo2/>

### Where and When ###

   * When: Tuesday 28th November, 1845 for 1900 start
   * Where: UCL (London), Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre, Roberts 
Building G08
     * The Roberts building is immediately opposite waterstones at the 
intersection of Gower Street and Torrington Place. See 
<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/about-ucl/location/maps/campus_2006_screen>
     * [Map of UCL within London](http://tinyurl.co.uk/23l7) (note that 
the Roberts building is at the bottom of the block shown as UCL on this map)

### Registration ###

Attendance is free but please register at:

   * <http://www.okfn.org/okforums/civicinfo2/>

Any problems (or additional information) email info [at] okfn [dot] org.

### Subject Matter ###

This forum will focus on open 'civic' information. Civic information is 
material produced by government or other groups which is relevant to 
political activity by citizens. In particular it includes:

   1. The law be it in the form of statutes or judicial decisions
   2. Statements of elected representatives at the local and national 
level (for example the records of parliament in the form of Hansard).
   3. Information about the activities of elected representatives and 
other governmental officials

As with the first forum on civic information our focus will be on both:

   * projects and software that work to produce or make available open 
information
   * the legal and social issues involved in obtaining and providing 
such information

Motivating all of these efforts is the goal promoting greater public 
involvement in the democratic system and increasing the accountability 
of a government to its citizens.

### Speakers ###

   * John Sheridan, Head of e-Services at the [Office of Public Sector 
Information](http://www.opsi.gov.uk/)
   * Heather Brooke of [Your Right to Know](http://www.yrtk.org/)
   * Julian Todd of <http://www.publicwhip.org/> on "Other 
publicwhip-type projects I'd like to see and why"
   * Richard Pope talking about scraping a planning database in 
Brixton/Lambeth and Love Music Hate Racism's use of PledgeBank

### About the Open Knowledge Forums ###

**Promoting open information - getting it, using it, sharing it**

The Open Knowledge Forums are a series of informal gatherings centred on 
the subject of open information/data. It aims to bring together those 
/producing/ and those /campaigning/, and to cover everything from 
software to the law. The sessions are usually held in the evenings in 
London and their format is to have talks by three or four different 
people followed by a general discussion.

The Open Knowledge Forums are organized by the Open Knowledge 
Foundation: <http://www.okfn.org/>