[open-government] Economic Benefits of Open-Data - Presentation Ideas for City of Montreal

Tue Nov 9 16:46:51 UTC 2010

Absolutely agreed, Roy -- overclassification imposes serious costs, both in
terms of the opportunity cost of unreleased data, and greater expense for
the distributor and users of data.  I wrote about this recently:

http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/redaction-and-technical-incompetence/

The overclassification discussion is well-developed within archivist and
security circles -- it's worth engaging with those folks.  Sunlight's
friends at POGO have also provided leadership in this area.

2010/10/31 Roy Peled <roypeled at gmail.com>

> If I might add my thoughts -
>
> 1. this cuts costs of providing information. Instead of gov officials
> cutting out pieces of information needed for other agencies, the press or
> the public at large - everyone can just take what they need. While the
> burden of work moves to the requestor, this saves communication time and
> misunderstandings as to what is needed, hences makes the work more
> efficient.
>
> 2. Cuts costs of protecting data - all too often efforts are put into
> protecting data for no good reason. If we agree that much of the data should
> be put in the public domain, there is much less to protect.
>
>
>
> 2010/10/29 Toby Mendel <toby at law-democracy.org>
>
>> Hi Daniel,
>>
>> I have done more than 'spot' that report. I provided detailed input into
>> it. Helen Darbishire, of Access Info, and I have had some discussions about
>> how to extend a traditional right to information human rights analysis to OG
>> but there is still a lot of background work and thinking to be done.
>>
>> Toby
>>
>> On 29 Oct 2010, at 12:37, Daniel Dietrich wrote:
>>
>> Dear Toby,
>>
>>
>> On 28.10.2010, at 11:58, Toby Mendel wrote:
>>
>> I have not worked much in the area of "open government" (I use quotes
>> because of course RTI is very much about open government too!) but I am
>> starting to get more involved in it. I believe that the RTI and OG movements
>> can learn a lot from each other. OG advocates can learn more about using
>> human rights to promote their issue, and RTI advocates can learn more about
>> some of the practical implications of openness, especially using modern
>> technologies.
>>
>>
>> I absolutely agree. I am sure you have spotted this report:
>> http://access-info.org/es/open-government-data
>>
>>
>> http://www.access-info.org/documents/documents/Beyond_Access_10_Aug_2010_consultationn.pdf
>>
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>>
>>      ___________________________________
>> *Toby Mendel*
>> *Executive Director*
>> * *
>> *Centre for Law and Democracy*
>> toby at law-democracy.org
>> Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
>> Fax: +1 902 431-3689
>> www.law-democracy.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
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