[Open-data-census] open data faq - publicly available

Wed Oct 16 02:50:42 BST 2013

That's why I think the term "publicly offered" better represents the intended meaning of "publicly available". Information that requires an ATI/FOI request is not publicly offered, but information that is sold is publicly offered.

I don't think an ATI request can be compared to a purchase order. With ATI, you don't know that you will get the information if you submit a request (the authority can use any number of exceptions to deny a request). With information offered for sale, you know that if you submit an order, you will get the information (if not, the seller is in breach of contract).

James

On 2013-10-15, at 9:30 PM, Gene Shackman wrote:

> Hi all
> 
> This was discussed before, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.
> 
> On this faq page
> http://2013.census.okfn.org/faq/
> I am wondering about the "Publicly available" definition, which includes "If a freedom of information request or similar is needed to access the data, answer "no"."  It seems to me this is still publicly available. It meets this criterion "does require that *someone* outside of the government can access in some form."  You include data that has to be purchased as publicly available, so someone has to make a request and then pay. Data available through freedom of information is similar: someone has to make a request.
> 
> The only data not publicly available would be stuff you cannot purchase, cannot get through a freedom of information request, cannot make copies of, probably not available because of national security or contains individual information. That is, the source has to say, no, the public cannot have access to those data.
> 
> Gene 
> 
> 
> Gene Shackman, Ph.D. 
> The Global Social Change Research Project 
> http://gsociology.icaap.org 
> Free Resources for Methods in Evaluation and Social Research 
> http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods 
> ---------- 
> Applied Sociologist 
> ----------
> 
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