[okfn-za] [HacksHackers Cape Town] Restrictive licences on government websites

Fri Apr 5 09:08:21 UTC 2013

Hi Adi

Just a quick note to say that I am finding the discussion of great value and am gaining a lot of insight from the current exchange. I understand your frustration after pushing the bus for such a long time without seeing any discernible movement, but we are actually starting to see significant momentum and consciousness build around open data in the academic sector.

I like your ideas around a demand-driven approach, but our experience in the advocacy terrain shows us that multiple strategies at various levels with various stakeholder groups is required. We cannot ignore the imperative for strategic engagement with government on this, however daunting the prospect. What's more, this ideally needs to be positioned in a far broader advocacy context aimed at engagement with international developments around public access to outputs from taxpayer-funded work. This is not expected to be easy or straightforward, but the SCAP programme and the OpenUCT Initiative have started engaging in advocacy work at this level and identifying the leverage points around innovation, job creation, etc. that we need to employ.

There is, by the way, significant work underway in the UK, EU and Australian contexts to track economic return from open access to information (including data). John Houghton and Alma Swan are good to follow if you are interested in this area. The findings from a recent Danish study are particularly instructive. See: http://www.deff.dk/uploads/media/Access_to_Research_and_Technical_Information_in_Denmark.pdf

In short, don't take the conversation offline. I expect things in the local context will get a lot more difficult before they get easier and we need to keep building the network (and the conversation). If you are interested to visit us at UCT it would be great to meet sometime. We have an open data research project just coming on stream as part of the IDRC/World Wide Web Foundation ODDC programme. See:
http://www.webfoundation.org/wp-content/cache/supercache/www.webfoundation.org/2013/02/launching-research-exploring-the-emerging-impacts-of-open-data-in-developing-countries-oddc//

Michelle
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Michelle Willmers
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Tel:+27(21) 650 5061
Cell: 082 229 4262
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From: Adi Eyal <adi at burgercom.co.za<mailto:adi at burgercom.co.za>>
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 09:00:32 +0200
To: <hackshackers-capetown at googlegroups.com<mailto:hackshackers-capetown at googlegroups.com>>
Cc: "okfn-za at lists.okfn.org<mailto:okfn-za at lists.okfn.org>" <okfn-za at lists.okfn.org<mailto:okfn-za at lists.okfn.org>>, <odadi at googlegroups.com<mailto:odadi at googlegroups.com>>
Subject: Re: [okfn-za] [HacksHackers Cape Town] Restrictive licences on government websites

I strongly disagree with both you and Sandi.

You are both advocating for a supply-driven approach (convincing government to open data of their own accord). I don't think we have the right environment in South Africa to push this. Perhaps in the medium-long term. The problems with supply-driven are:

- It's expensive.  We have limited resources in the public sector - asking for another policy to be implemented is unlikely to find traction.
- It's untested - Paul, you mentioned that open-data creates jobs - really? Which jobs do you envisage being created? How much will those jobs add to the country's GDP? There are far bigger issues in South Africa to deal with without worrying about opening datasets.
- Open data can easily be seen as adversarial - which government dept is going to open up data which is likely to result in public scrutiny?
- We have a weak civil society pushing this issue. I might be wrong but from my experience with the community in Cape Town (forgive me if I have left out any important organisations) is that there is generally no interest in this topic. OKFN has almost zero activity on its mailing list and zero meetings to speak of. Odadi has not managed to follow through on the hackathon that was held last year. HacksHackers is the most active group of all but its constituents are not particularly interested in advocacy (again - forgive me if I am wrong here) but rather how do we use data to improve our ability to find stories.

In short, there is no momentum or interest to push this agenda. I'm sure that the vast majority of subscribers to this mailing list are bored by this topic. Please speak up if you would like me to take this conversation off-line.

Sandi - you talk about piggy-backing onto a larger process such as BRICS or SADC. I have spent the last 3 years of my life working on an open data mechanism in SADC in order to promote information sharing between countries in the  health sector. There are so many political hoops to jump through that this process is likely to take many more years before all countries jump on board. Interestingly, South Africa is the most open and the most closed country that I have worked with. Open because tenders are published in the public domain on the DoH website but closed because South Africa considers the oddest data to be secret and will not share it publicly.

I believe that demand-driven (groups like HacksHackers demanding access to existing data sources) approaches are key:
- They don't require much more effort from the public sector. The data is already available but perhaps under restrictive licences.
- It tries to mobilise civil society to start to demand data. HacksHackers for instance does not care about the theoretical benefits of open data. We care about data availability and how we can exploit datasets in order to produce real, tangible products.
- It is much more short term. We can see results immediately through the creation of products.
- I want commercial access to data now because I want to build products and sell them either in a for profit or not for profit vehicle.
- We already have legal instruments in place such as PAIA and the Copyright Act - why not take advantage of them?

My goal is to try to convince potential users of open data to start producing products. Only through products will we have a "me too effect" which will produce an environment where advocacy will have significant effect.

Until we have more than a handful of interested parties pushing this issue - I'm afraid that I'm very dubious of the approaches suggested.

Adi

On 5 April 2013 06:37, Paul Murphy <paul.murphy.ptm at gmail.com<mailto:paul.murphy.ptm at gmail.com>> wrote:
I think this is where the advocacy element of ODADI (and others) comes to the fore.
And we should recognise that we have a long journey to convince the powers that be that OpenData is a good thing and the way to go, particularly in the current climate of the secrecy bill.
So whilst I can be convinced about OpenData relatively easily and change my behavior accordingly, getting change to happen in the public sector will take time.

I am reminded of the UNDP Workshop on Open Data that I attended last year.
http://unpan.org/Events/BrowseEventsbyCalendar/tabid/94/mctl/EventDetails/ModuleID/1532/ItemID/2228/language/en-US/Default.aspx?selecteddate=10/10/2012
and I attach the Canadian presentation which I found the most enlightening and perhaps represents a version of a future that we can aim for in South Africa.
(Brazil were also good but their presentation is a lot bigger - 7mb - so I didn't want to attach)

I agree with Sandi that rather than going the legal route we need to constantly spread the OpenData message
- South Africa is meant to be a participatory democracy - Open Data promotes that
- OpenData creates job opportunities
- showcasing examples of what has been done with Open Data - ideally South African examples
- other

Paul

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:26 PM, Sandra Williams <sanditest7 at gmail.com<mailto:sanditest7 at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi all,
As somebody who use to work in Govt IT I also know that it is an active process of maintaining boundaries to data access not only for external people but also within & between internal Govt divisions. This paradigm not only adds transactional costs to Govt services but also leads to added risk to Govt as an entity but also risk to society.

E.g. Deeds office data standards (or lack thereof) leads to massive transactional costs with ripple effects on multiple economic value chains.

It comes down to architecture (designing for open data access), standards & data governance policies - but mostly we need a new mindset about data "ownership" and empathy with citizens who have a legitimate right to data access.

Legal challenge is 1 path but how bout using market forces? I.e I'm thinking of BRICS & the idea of closer integration between Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA can be supported by open Govt data standards.  The same applies to our Southern African Economic Development Region - the cost of doing business in this region. Remember this sort of thing (among other idea was) exactly the rationale behind formation of the EU.  And although the EU project is floundering i.t.o. political & economic paradoxes yet as a data project it has shown us the power & value of open data.

These are just thoughts - but I think in order to change the current data access paradigm requires the marshaling of significant energy (legal battles don't give you that) so maybe what's needed is piggybacking on other big ideas?

Sandi

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