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

Wed Oct 16 04:50:23 BST 2013

"publicly available" or "publicly offered" is pretty complicated. The key idea seems to be "that *someone* outside of the government can access (the data) in some form".

Publicly offered seems good, but if you limit it to data for sale, you exclude conditions where the government says you can have the data for free if you ask for it. I'm not sure if you meant to limit to data for sale.

I guess I'd also say the term offered is not necessarily clear. Does the government have to *say*, in some form, that the data are available if you buy it or ask for it? That would be "offered". If the government just presents a summary of the data, and briefly describes the data, but doesn't anywhere say the words that the data are available if you ask or buy it, does that count as "offered"? Would those data be excluded from "publicly offered"?

I think another distinction is whether the public CAN get the data, or CANNOT get the data. With an ATI/FOI, you wrote the public may not necessarily get the data, which is true. But they might. So it isn't always clear. 

On the other hand, if there is some statement from the source saying that the specific data WILL NOT be released, then this is a clear statement, the public CANNOT get this data, and so not publicly available. One example is individual level census data with personal identifiers. I think the US Census says somewhere that they will not release this level of data. I'm not really sure if there are many other examples. But the main point is that for some data, the government makes a statement that those data are not publicly available. (Then of course the question is, in order for data to be declared not publicly available, does there have to be this clear statement?)

So I guess the main decision is whether okfn means publicly "available", that, theoretically, someone outside the government *could* get the data, or publicly "offered", that is, theoretically, the government has a statement somewhere that these data are offered to the public if the public want it, either by buying it or asking for it. (Then of course the question is, what sorts of statements are acceptable and which are not).

Gene 

________________________________
 From: James McKinney <james at opennorth.ca>
To: Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "open-data-census at lists.okfn.org" <open-data-census at lists.okfn.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Open-data-census] open data faq - publicly available

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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