[open-government] New Zealand Government releases Declaration on Open and Transparent Government, and new Data and Information Management Principles

Mon Aug 15 20:36:20 UTC 2011

2011/8/16 Tim Davies <tim at practicalparticipation.co.uk>:
> I also thought the phrasing around high-value data was interesting - but
> more from noting that whereas a number of other open data declarations and
> policies have put the 'Transparency' or 'Democracy' arguments for open data
> first, keeping the 'Economic' arguments in second place, the NZ statement
> appears to be placing the economic argument for open data as the most
> important, with arguments around citizen's right to public data on basis of
> principle, or around the importance of public data for democratic engagement
> playing a secondary role.

In our part of the world, transparency or accountability have always
been a close second to economic growth. New Zealand is generally
regarded as the least corrupt country in the world
(http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results).
There are more sophisticated things to say, but in general there's
simply less persuasive power to change the status quo by appealing to
transparency.

What I think is really interesting is the policy development process.
These documents were created on Open NZ's wiki (e.g.
http://wiki.open.org.nz/Open_Data_and_Information_Principles) and
refined at a public workshop and were hardly modified by Cabinet at
all. I think this shift policy development is actually more
significant than the words themselves.

More broadly, I'm beginning to think that open data isn't inclusive.
Raw data require highly technical, knowledgeable intermediaries who
translate data to information. Naturally, the information derived from
data can facilitate debate and discussion. However, data are not by
themselves entities which facilitate democratic discourse. Economic
arguments are explicit about needing to utilise third parties.