[okfn-discuss] Opening up local government data: APPSI Presentation

Mon Sep 21 07:59:14 UTC 2009

2009/9/18 CountCulture <countculture at googlemail.com>:
> Just thought members of this list might be interested in seeing the
> presentation I gave to the UK govt's Advisory Panel on Public Sector
> Information (APPSI).
>
> I've put it on Slideshare under a CC non-Commercial Share Alike licence at:
> http://www.slideshare.net/countculture/appsi-presentation-opening-up-local-government-data

Very nice presentation of the issues. As a small aside: is there a
reason to put it out under a non-open license (non-commercial ain't
open ...)?

> Please do distribute it to anyone you think will be interested -- would
> be great to get as wide a distribution as possible, and get some
> traction on the issue of opening up local government data.

Completely agree. We'd be very happy to blog about this and your
efforts at openlylocal -- which I've just registered on CKAN
<http://ckan.net/package/openlylocal>).

Couple of things that would be useful first though:

1. Would it be possible to make explicit the "openness" situation with
regard to the data you've got, for example by applying a license such
as the PDDL (<http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/>). It is
important to remember that free access does not equal openness. Just
like for code, open data requires more than just availability, in
particular it needs explicit licensing.

2. Would you mind adding an open data "button":
<http://www.opendefinition.org/buttons/> to make it even clearer to
users that the data is open.

Regards,

Rufus