[@OKFNau] Examples of Use of Commercial Government Data

[Lachlan Musicman]

I deserve that rebuke and I think Pia makes a good point. But it's
also true that from *outside* government, it can be hard to be
anything but cynical, and I am not often seeing that change of
attitude that you claim - as someone bubbling with impatience on the
outside, I see feet draggers and excuse makers. I think that different
levels of government (Fed, State, Local) probably have different
opinions and different levels of commitment as well. I know I should
be differentiating between them, but in reality, I just see a wall of
Government.

Good to see the discussion take off ;)

Cheers
L.



------
The totalitarian society envisioned by George Orwell in 1984 should
have arrived by now. The electronic gadgets are here. The government
is here, ready to do what Orwell anticipated. So the power exists, the
motive, and the electronic hardware. But these mean nothing, because,
progressively more and more so, no one is listening. The new youth
that I see is too stupid to read, too restless and bored to watch, too
preoccupied to remember. The collective voice of the authorities is
wasted on him; he rebels. But rebels not out of theoretical,
ideological considerations, only out of what might be called pure
selfishness. Plus a careless lack of regard for the dread consequences
the authorities promise him if he fails to obey. He cannot be bribed
because what he wants he can build, steal, or in some curious,
intricate way acquire for himself. He cannot be intimidated because on
the streets and in his home he has seen and participated in so much
violence that it fails to cow him. He merely gets out of its way when
it threatens, or, if he can't escape, he fights back. When the locked
police van comes to carry him off to the concentration camp the guards
will discover that while loading the van they have failed to note that
another equally hopeless juvenile has slashed the tires. The van is
out of commission. And while the tires are being replaced, the other
youth siphons out all the gas from the gas tank for his souped-up
Chevrolet Impala and has sped off long ago.
----
The Android and the Human, Philip K. Dick
sourced from http://boingboing.net/2015/03/10/philip-k-dicks-androids-blu.html


On 15 March 2015 at 11:22, Pia Waugh <pia.waugh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Just a quick one:
>
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Lachlan Musicman <datakid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Government officials. I cannot express how grateful I am that there are
>> people in this organisation who can talk pretty because I just want to break
>> their kneecaps and push them into puddles with a sneer.
>
>
> It'd be really cool if people could remember that "government officials" are
> not a faceless enemy. There are a lot of us working in government to improve
> things, and comments like this certainly don't help. If you make it a
> "you're either with us or agin us" then you make it very hard to
> collaborate, educate or change the status quo. Personally I'm finding
> attitudes are changing within Australian governments (fed, state/territory
> and local) quite rapidly and I'm cautiously optimistic things will continue
> to get better. Meanwhile, I guess we'll start issuing knee protectors as
> standard issue across the public service ;)
>
> Cheers,
> Pia
>
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