[open-government] Defining Open Government Data?

[toby at law-democracy.org]

OK, this is interesting. In the right to information movement (and under
RTI or FOI laws), openness attaches to information held by or accessible
to public authorities (and not necessarily produced by or about them).

For purpose of open government data, I can see at least two main reasons
to focus on information about and produced/commissioned by government:

1) We can argue that copyright (or other forms of ownership protection)
should not apply, which is more difficult than for information produced by
private parties outside of a government contract (ie on the basis that the
government is the people ...)

2) In terms of prioritising the release of data, given that this takes
resources, this type of information is (often) more interesting (as Javier
points out below).

But do we want to restrict the definition to this? In my view it might
unnecessarily limit the scope of what we are talking about, even if it
does define the core information we are interested in.

Best, Toby


> Yes, in my view government data is definitely defined by origin
> (produced by public bodies), not by subject matter (what data is
> about). I see it as part of government data's big value that it is not
> just about government but about lots of different aspects of the world
> (environment, society, economy, ...).
>
> Hence, I would suggest leaving the provisional wording as is, along
> the lines of "produced or commissioned by government or government
> controlled entities". Leaving this open ended might have some
> advantages. We could list some examples (a la PSI Directive) to
> illustrate what we mean?
>
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 10:17 PM, Javier de la Cueva
> <jdelacueva at derecho-internet.org> wrote:
>> El 19/10/10 19:00, Jonathan Gray escribió:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>
>>> I envisage this as having two key components:
>>>
>>>   (i) legally open (as in opendefinition.org)
>>>   (ii) technically open (i.e. machine readable, available to download
>>> in bulk)
>>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>
>>> Any input/comments would be very much appreciated! We'd ideally like
>>> something ready at or just before Open Government Data Camp in London!
>>>
>>
>> Perhaps I lost something important in this thread but I am concerned
>> about another point: the content of the data. Even it is legally open,
>> technically open and socially open, its content can be something not
>> related at all with government.
>>
>> I have been looking in detail Spanish Proyecto Aporta and Catalonian new
>> website and I can find things like links to search engines (which are to
>> be most of the 719 records of Proyecto Aporta) or homeopathy vocabulary
>> [1] in Gencat.
>>
>> I wonder if some precision should be made in the definition about the
>> content of the data.
>>
>> [1] http://dadesobertes.gencat.cat/ca/dades-obertes/dataset_000088.html
>>
>> --
>> Bests,
>> Javier de la Cueva
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>
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> open-government at lists.okfn.org
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>


___________________________________
Toby Mendel

Centre for Law and Democracy
toby at law-democracy.org
Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
Fax: +1 902 431-3689
www.law-democracy.org