[Open-data-census] "Publicly available"

Sat Oct 5 23:48:01 BST 2013

if the data are only available via FOI then are they really accessible, if
that have been made available as a result of foi then i would say they are
publicly accessible.

Which datasets are you thinking of?

did you respond to the transport question?  It has become really weird!

Is there a way to work together on this?  I had stuff filled out and now it
is all changed, when do these get locked down Christian?

Cheers
t

On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 10:51 PM, James McKinney <james at opennorth.ca> wrote:

> "Publicly available" is defined as:
>
> > Is the data "public" - this does NOT require freely available but does
> require that *someone* outside of the government can access in some form
> (e.g. if the data is available for purchase it is public, if the timetables
> exist as PDFs on a website that you can access it it is public, if you can
> get it in paper form it is public).
>
> And later refined by:
>
> > By publicly available is meant without having to put in FOI request - so
> it should be available without further ado.
>
> By reading just the definition, I had figured that datasets that are
> accessible via FOI were to be considered publicly available. Can the
> definition be clarified so that contributors don't need to find that one
> sentence in the FAQ to get a correct understanding?
>
> What about the following case: Canada Post charges $50,000 per year for
> its postal code database. It's offered for purchase. Of course, since it's
> data, you need to sign a license agreement as part of the purchase. Now, is
> the "ado" involved in negotiating, signing and respecting a license
> agreement too much for it to be considered "publicly available"? From
> experience, the extra work caused by license agreements is often more than
> the work involved in filing an average FOI request.
>
> To me, the consequence of this is one of:
>
> 1. datasets that have been proven to be accessible via FOI should be
> considered publicly available; or
> 2. datasets for purchase cannot be considered publicly available, as any
> such purchase involves a license agreement; or
> 3. "publicly available" is a poor choice of words
>
> I'm personally leaning towards (3), additionally because a $50,000 dataset
> doesn't elicit the words "publicly available" in my mind.
>
> An alternative to "publicly available" might be "publicly offered".
> Datasets accessible only via FOI are not offered, in keeping with the
> current definition of "publicly available". I feel more comfortable saying
> that the Canada Post $50,000 dataset is "publicly offered", but I would
> feel disingenuous saying to a colleague that it's "publicly available".
>
> Furthermore, I've seen several submissions incorrectly interpret "publicly
> available" to imply "free", and indeed the screaming "NOT" in the current
> definition suggests that the authors of the census continue to face such
> misinterpretations. Although I recognize that "publicly available" is a
> beautiful and popular term, it seems that many people do not agree about
> what it means, so best to use a different term.
>
> What are the list's thoughts?
>
> James
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-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
http://datalibre.ca/
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