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

Thu Jul 29 11:43:43 UTC 2010

On Wednesday 28 July 2010 09:44 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> I guess the two main bits were:
> 
>   1. Legally open (i.e. compliant with opendefinition.org)
>   2. Technically open (i.e. released in machine readable format, if applicable)
> 
> What do people think?

I feel that while it is very important to have set standards and binding
definitions, sometimes it may be counter-productive to argue against
things that do not satisfy those standards and definitions.  Instead the
argument should be to encourage governments to satisfy those standards
and definitions.  The two things are not necessarily corollaries.

Reasons:
1. The openness of open data is a continuum.  There are things that are
not-very-open but public, somewhat open but not machine-parseable, truly
open, and that these are not discrete quantum categories. Distinguishing
one state of openness from another is not an easy task, and is not
something that all would agree with.

2. While we should encourage movement towards 'truly open' from 'not
public' and 'somewhat open', achieving even the first step (of
copyright-restricted, unreadable data) is a big step, and one in the
right direction, and should not be discouraged as not being "open enough".

These are evolving thoughts based on the scenario in developing
countries with problems of digitized data, and not necessarily
applicable to the discussion about the City of Vancouver.

Regards,
Pranesh

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283

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