[okfn-discuss] okfn-discuss Digest, Vol 96, Issue 36

Mon Sep 30 04:35:39 UTC 2013

Hi all,

Hong Kong's open data development has been moving along quite nicely for
the past few years.  Although far from perfect there has been good activity
on several fronts; both by government and by citizens.  See here for a
timeline of activities around open data in HK since 2011.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aubx-NcO9dXXdEhWQjl4VUJSN3A3YW83SnBodUt6S1E#gid=0

Hong Kong does not have 'Freedom of Information' legislation but rather a
"Code on Access to Information that stipulates that all Government
Departments have Access to Information Officers and provides contact
information, so they can provide data when it is requested."  See here for
a project on making a central point to make these requests.

http://opendatahk.com/projects/9

Hope this helps.

Bill Proudfit

On 26 September 2013 22:15, <okfn-discuss-request at lists.okfn.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Open Data Developments in Asia (Waltraut Ritter)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 07:15:17 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Waltraut Ritter <writter at ymail.com>
> Subject: [okfn-discuss] Open Data Developments in Asia
> To: okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID:
>         <1380204917.1139.YahooMailNeo at web160803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> The Open
> Knowledge Conference this year attracted delegates from 68 countries,
> indicating that Open Data is indeed becoming a global movement around the
> world.
> ?
> How is Open
> Data adopted in Asia, the largest continent of this planet where 60 per
> cent of
> the world population live?
> ?
> Asia has
> some of the most advanced internet economies as well as some of the least
> developed countries with hardly any access to information or information
> infrastructure, neither analogue nor digital.
> ?
> At the
> OKCon, 26 participants from 11 Asian countries were present, including
> Nepal, Kyrgyzstan,
> Tajikistan, and Russia. In this blog, I focus on selected North and South
> East
> Asian countries: New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea,
> Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia,
> Laos,
> Myanmar, simply because getting reliable data from all 49 Asian countries
> would
> require much more research.??
> ?
> The selected
> countries are all included in the Worldbank Knowledge Economy Index (KEI)
> with vastly
> different economic rankings. ?New Zealand
> achieved the highest Knowledge Economy score, closely followed by
> Australia,
> Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, whereas Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar score
> lowest in
> all categories (ICT, education, economic incentive and institutional
> regime, innovation).
> Other key indicators relevant for Open Data development are the Corruption
> Perception
> Index (Transparency International), the World Internet Statistics and the
> Democracy Index (EIU) as a measure for general governance and functioning
> of
> government.
> ?
> According to
> the 2012 World Internet Statistics, the overall internet penetration in
> Asia is
> only 27.5 per cent, but this represents the largest numbers of users with
> more
> than 1 billion in one continent.? Internet penetration across the listed
> countries ranges from 1 per cent
> in Myanmar to 88 per cent in New Zealand, again with a wide gap between
> North
> and South East Asia (except for Singapore with 75 per cent).
>
> South East Asia has often been
> described as ?Information black hole? in scholarly research on national
> information strategies, with many governments restricting or denying
> access to
> information to their citizens, based on the assumption that government
> information by default rather is a secret. ?Earlier this month, the
> government of Vietnam
> enacted the ?Decree 72? which limits the use of blogs and social media to
> ?providing or exchanging personal information?, and prohibits them from
> being
> used to disseminate news or even information from government sites. The law
> also bans content which could be ?harmful? to national security or which
> opposes the government (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23920541).
> This kind of restrictions is based on the perception that government owns
> the
> information and can control its use.
>
> While North Asian countries
> including New Zealand and Australia mostly have Freedom of Information
> (FOI) laws
> in place (with the exception of Hong Kong); in South East Asia, FOI laws
> are
> more the exception than the rule. Sometimes there are laws, put they are
> not
> fully applied, e.g. in Thailand.? The
> country?s Official Information Act (OIA) from 1997 was enacted but ?the
> concept
> of freedom of information is totally new to both Thai state officials and
> to
> the people. Thai society thus needs some time to learn more about the
> Information Law. State officials have to understand the procedures of law
> enforcement better so that they know how to provide information services
> and
> disclose information to meet public requests. Meanwhile, people should
> recognize their right to know and
> know how to utilize the Information Act as a means of access to state
> information. Thai society should recognize information law as an essential
> part
> of establishing accountable and transparent government and as a crucial
> part of
> eventually building up civil society. ?(Quote by N. Seriak, Office of
> Official
> Information Commission
> http://www.worldlii.org/int/journals/PLBIN/2000/29.html)
>
> In 2000, the law was therefore amended
> to include strategic guidelines on how to promote and develop the
> acknowledgement of the Act?s content,
> its utilization, the mechanism and the procedures to utilize the Act to
> meet
> people's right to access information. This example illustrates that the
> idea of
> open information also requires a new way of thinking about information,
> both for
> government officials and citizens.
>
> Only 4 of
> the listed 5 countries are full democracies according to the EIU index -
> New
> Zealand, Australia, Japan and Korea; they are also members of the OECD. The
> majority of countries in Asia falls into the categories of ?flawed?
> democracies
> (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia),
> Singapore is a ??hybrid system? and at
> the bottom are authoritarian governments such as Vietnam, Laos (lowest
> overall
> score) and Myanmar, which is now currently moving into another phase of
> political
> governance. In August this year, Myanmar officially ended censorship,
> thereby
> jumping up to 151st out of 179 countries in the World Press Freedom
> index.?
> ?
> The
> institutional regime and governance play a key role in the development of
> national open data policies; in some ways they define the bandwidth of
> what can
> be achieved in a country.
> ?
> A few
> examples illustrate how systemic restrictions embedded in institutional
> regimes
> limit the potential of open data:
> ?
> The Mekong
> River Commission (http://www.mrcmekong.org/),
> an intergovernmental organisation) ?set
> up in 1995 by the Mekong countries (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos) to
> collect and provide information about regional social economic development,
> regional water resource management, climate change adaptation and the
> long-term
> sustainable development of the Mekong River Basin, set up a Data Portal
> which is
> a rich? information storehouse about everything
> about the region.? Although it is a
> public organisation, it comes with a complicated fee structure, depending
> on
> who requests the information.? All
> information is copyrighted and the website states that there is only one
> authoritative
> ?Master catalogue?. The reasoning is that only the MRC can ensure data
> quality
> and consistency, and external data users cannot contribute to achieve
> higher data
> quality.
>
> With the ASEAN Economic Community
> (AEC) coming up in 2015, the 10 member countries are forming an economic
> space
> similar to the EU, which will also require more openness in cross-border
> information and data exchanges. Trade information is already openly
> assessable
> and in standardized format, but in a lot of other areas it is not.? So
> far, ASEAN only has adopted a rather vague
> ?ICT Masterplan?, however, it is still a long way to achieve something
> like an
> ?Open Data Masterplan? for the region. Member states are often not willing
> to
> share information among themselves, which was quite clearly demonstrated
> during
> this summer?s ?haze? crisis, which put Singapore, parts of Malaysia and
> Indonesia under a thick blanket of black smoke from illegal slash-and burn
> practices whereby hundreds of hectares of land for palm oil and pulp
> plantations
> were cleared. ?The health threatening
> haze led to heated exchanges between the Singapore and Indonesian
> governments.
>
> With Open Data, it would have been
> relatively easy to map and analyze the land data, identifying the companies
> owning the land and holding them accountable. The land concession maps are
> available ? to the Indonesian government, which would not release the data
> citing issues of information security and transparency as reasons for not
> furnishing the maps. The benefit of data sharing and open access is not on
> the
> agenda; Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natelegaw said: "The concession
> map is a means to an end (...). So it's not a question of providing data to
> this and that. It's just us utilising the national system that we have?"
> (Channelnewsasia 14 Aug 2013)
> In another ministerial
> meeting where the problems of trans-boundary haze pollution were discussed,
> Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik reminded member states to
> collaborate: "It's called sharing, you go through good times together,
> don't make noise to the world when things go bad. It's just like husband
> and wife;
> don't take your quarrel outside" (The Straits Times 20 June 2013). This
> exemplary ?information black hole? tradition ? don?t let the world know -
> will
> be more difficult with increased transparency, open data policies and the
> demand of citizens for information.
> ?
> Sometimes
> systemic limitations can be bypassed by civil society organisations: in
> Cambodia, the National Assembly rejected a draft law on FOI in January 2013
> opposing the idea that the government should provide information on
> matters of
> public concern. Since the government didn?t want to share information with
> citizen, a civil organisation started their own Open Data portal. Open
> Development Cambodia is an ?Open Data? website, ?the first of its kind in
> mainland Southeast Asia. The global ?Open Data? movement is based on the
> simple
> premise that data collected for public interest should be publicly
> available ?
> without restrictions, and that information or ?data? in the public domain
> should
> be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without
> restrictions. We have no agenda, other than to offer you food for thought.
> Bon
> App?tit!?? (Quoted from their website
> http://www.opendevelopmentcambodia.net)
> ?
> Some
> governments are beginning to realize the relationship between free flow of
> information, open data and socio-economic development, and acknowledging
> open
> data as source for innovation and reduced transaction cost for the whole
> society.
> ?
> The Japanese
> METI has just a few weeks ago published a report on the economic value of
> open
> public information. It is only available in Japanese, but a translation
> would
> benefit many other countries in the region and beyond and demonstrate that
> Open
> Data can be a source for innovation and economic development. While the
> potential economic value of Open Data is one of the main drivers for
> governments
> in the more developed countries in Asia to push for new policies and re-use
> regulations, South East Asian countries are largely still debating access
> to
> data.
>
> Interestingly, the Philippines
> were the largest delegation at the OKCon from Asia. The country will launch
> their Open Data portal in November 2013. As a country with a strong,
> information aware civil society, Open Data could accelerate socio-economic
> development.
> The Philippines also score low on bureaucratic transparency, but internet
> penetration is relatively high (around 34 per cent) and the Aquino
> administration now states that the freedom of information (FOI) bill is a
> priority legislative measure and promised to endorse the bill to the
> Senate and
> the House of Representatives for passage into law soon.
>
> The diversity of countries in
> Asia, with highly advanced internet economies and mature democracies on one
> side, and countries with very limited information society readiness, could
> provide us with a lot of insights for understanding the interdependencies
> between openness and overall development of a country. Since the
> collaboration
> and knowledge sharing among Asian countries is relatively weak, perhaps an
> online sharing space such as the European EPSI platform
> http://epsiplatform.eu/ could increase the
> awareness about Open Data in Asia. ?
> The potential of Open Data in
> Asia is huge; both for emerging and developed countries, and the
> trajectory for
> each country highly depends on national information policies and cultures.
>
> Waltraut Ritter, Opendata Hong
> Kong? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
> waltraut at opendata.hk.com
>
> 26 September 2013
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-- 
Bill Proudfit
鮑偉霖
Hong Kong
baoman.wordpress.com
www.linkedin.com/in/proudfit
twitter ~ @baoman
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