[open-government] 1. It's not Open Data, so stop calling it that...

Wed Jul 28 15:39:29 UTC 2010

Thanks for this really interesting update Tracey.

For me it is simple: open data mean compliance with
http://opendefinition.org/. I wonder if it would be useful to create a
dedicated page for public/gov data that could be linked to at e.g.
http://opendefinition.org/gov/?

There's also: http://www.opengovernmentdata.org/ with its what and why pages ...

Rufus

On 28 July 2010 13:41, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings all;
>
> I am really glad that Glen created that post and Jonathan circulated
> it.  The problem he identified is recognized here in Ottawa and a
> process is in place to address that Terms of Use.
>
> The City of Vancouver Open Data advocates created this ToU without
> much thought, and the City's legal team accepted it.  City legal teams
> are not necessarily experts in these matters and tend to be very
> conservative, risk averse and are not necessarily aware of what is
> going on the world of technology and data.  The 3 other cities that
> opened their data found it easier to just copy the Vancouver ToU.  The
> legal team figured that if one city accepted it, it must be good
> enough for them to.
>
> When this ToU was implemented in Ottawa, users voiced concern,
> especially the open street map folks on a listserve called
> civicaccess.ca. As a result, I communicated with the City and created
> a legal advisory group with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public
> Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) (http://www.cippic.ca/en/) who agreed to work
> on this issue and dedicated research resources on this topic for the
> summer.  I also conducted a public consultation at Change Camp Ottawa
> 2010.  CIPPIC is now reviewing a draft memo on this topic and we
> should have something to go out to consultation next week.
>
> The City of Ottawa has started a working group on this topic with the
> other "open data" cities and it is expected that the recommendations
> on modifying the ToU will be adopted.
>
> Citizens like myself would not have been able to have the ear of the
> City of Ottawa and any of the other "open data" cities, if we did not
> have this public interest legal clinic. Lawyers, it seems, listen to
> other lawyers, and it is very hard to find pro-bono lawyers to do this
> work, let alone for a citizen to convince a city to hire a team of
> lawyers to modify something they see as non-problematic, and then
> share those resources with other cities.
>
> Here is a link to a write up
> (http://traceyplauriault.ca/2010/07/21/changecamp-ottawa-2010-open-data-terms-of-use-session/)
> on the consultation that was held in Ottawa.
>
> Your input is of course most welcome.
>
> Sincerely
> Tracey
> https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
>
> PS  I gave CIPPIC a large reading list which included licensing work
> from GEOSS, Global Map, IPY, SCAR, CC, ODpl, GeoConnections, etc.
> This was new material for them and it was incredibly useful to be able
> to refer to that excellent work.
>
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>

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