[open-government] Defining Open Government Data?

Mon Nov 15 00:51:28 UTC 2010

Hi all,

There is a huge difference in US law between information produced by Federal entities in the scope of their employment and information produced under grant of contract for the Federal government (I am not addressing state or local law in the US). The Federal info is exempt from copyright protection under section 105 of the 1976 Copyright Act. Information commissioned by the US Federal government under contract or grant has a broad range of terms and conditions associated with such arrangements, with most of them left under the proprietary control of the non-government parties. There is a legitimate debate on whether this approach is the right one, but there would be lot of push back from the non-government parties if the default rule of flexibility would be changed.

I also want to address the FOIA debate raised earlier. As a general matter, FOIA is a mechanism of last resort to the citizen. It is not the primary approach for providing access, since the citizen needs to know the information is held by the government, then request the info, pay for the search, and can be denied in whole or in part. In some countries, the very act of requesting the info can be dangerous to the citizen. FOIA is thus an essential right, but a backup mechanism, not a panacea. E-government and other positive rights of dissemination and access are paramount. See http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15862&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Regards,
Paul
________________________________________
From: open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org [open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of toby at law-democracy.org [toby at law-democracy.org]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 7:12 PM
To: Jonathan Gray
Cc: open-government at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [open-government] Defining Open Government Data?

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
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-government mailing list
> open-government at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
>

___________________________________
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

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