[open-government] Defining Open Government Data?

Tue Oct 19 18:24:22 UTC 2010

Fair comments, Ton. Sorry for reading over that too quickly.

On 20 October 2010 07:11, Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> I'm not calling any public official an idiot. In fact I work with civil
> servants a lot and have done for almost 15 years, and have yet to find one
> who isn't passionate about public service.
> If you read my text again you see I am calling websites idiotic and crappy,
> which a lot of websites tend to be, the result of the sometimes mysterious
> bureaucratic processes governments and big organizations have, as well as
> fuzzy procurement specifications.
>
> best,
>
> Ton
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Interdependent Thoughts
> Ton Zijlstra
>
> ton at tonzijlstra.eu
> +31-6-34489360
>
> http://zylstra.org/blog
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz
> > wrote:
>
>> 2010/10/20 Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com>
>>
>>> And maybe things like:
>>>
>>> every idiot/crappy gov website is polite enough to point to an Adobe
>>> Reader download link to be able to open the PDF-muck they throw on-line.
>>> Maybe part of the 'socially open' definition stuff should be pointing to
>>> possible useful tools for re-use (which data.gov.uk is moving towards,
>>> btw), such as Gridworks or viz tools that are emerging.
>>>
>>> But that's maybe asking too much already.
>>>
>>
>> Let's act in good faith and refrain from calling officials idiots. They're
>> professionals who are dedicated to making their country a better place. With
>> that in mind though asking for more than a PDF is too much. Many officials
>> struggle to understand that people want access to anything other than their
>> PDF reports. They're entire career is built on providing excellent advice to
>> others. Why wouldn't you want to read their advice?
>>
>> Moreover, by increasing the complexity that's required (more than "Export
>> to PDF" on the part of the official), we shut lots of people out. They're
>> too technology phobic.
>>
>> For example Google Refine is a good tool, but it will take years for
>> government departments to learn about it - even though we're currently beta
>> testing the 2.0 release. It will take a few more years before officials will
>> be allowed to install it on their centralised desktops. I have been
>> considering installing an instance on the Google App Engine, but don't know
>> how much traction that will get. There are significant legal considerations
>> for departments when they send their data offshore.
>>
>
>
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