[open-government] Open government data in Brazil

Wed Jun 30 15:26:29 UTC 2010

Carlos Affonso at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Brazil recently
let me know about a draft new bill proposition on the "Civil Framework
for the Brazilian Internet", which refers to opening up public data:

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=1hZny_ki-xBmsFFJiu7FcgNTxdTNZ5mqfY2rj-zyEco9GL2E7Gm52yPJzTy0S&hl=en&authkey=CNyireAO
http://www.a2kbrasil.org.br/ENG/Draft-Bill-Propostion-on-Civil

I presume the key sentence is:

"The Federal Union, States, Cities and Federal District of Brasilia
shall be guided by the following directives in the development of the
Internet in Brazil: [...] V. the disclosure and dissemination of
public data and information in an open and structured manner."

This is excellent news! I think it would be useful to have this
group's input on the wording.

E.g. do folks think this is strong enough to imply that the data is
open for anyone to reuse for any purpose (e.g. including commercial)?

Compare wording from recent UK Public Data Principles (launched on Friday):

"Public data will be released under the same open licence which
enables free reuse, including commercial reuse" [1]

Or from the US Open Government Directive:

"To the extent practicable and subject to valid restrictions, agencies
should publish information online in an open format that can be
retrieved, downloaded, indexed, and searched by commonly used web
search applications. An open format is one that is platform
independent, machine readable, and made available to the public
without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that
information." [2]

Would love to hear opinions on this! Quite crucial as presumably will
inform pricing/licensing policy and if it is too weak then may be push
for noncommercial/no derivs restrictions, which may mitigate many of
the potential benefits...

Personally I would like to see something like:

"the disclosure and dissemination of public data and information in a
structured manner, free for anyone to use for any purpose"

All the best,

Jonathan

[1] <http://data.gov.uk/blog/new-public-sector-transparency-board-and-public-data-transparency-principles>

[2] <http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
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