[@OKFNau] Examples of Use of Commercial Government Data

[Steve Bennett]

Hi Pia,
  Nice comment. I think Lachlan's point was that there *are* lots of open
data advocates that are good at working with government - he just isn't one
of them. :)

For my part, in Victoria, I've found plenty of enthusiasm and interest in
open data in state and local government, particularly as you get closer to
the people who work directly with the data. (VicRoads and City of Melbourne
stand out as organisations that have made open data an organisational
priority, not just a localised one.) My experience is that public servants
are pretty risk averse, and not terribly well informed on new technologies
and approaches, and a bit slow to grasp new opportunities - but if you can
work around all of that (and often you can!), then you can make progress.

Steve


On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 11:22 AM, 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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