[open-government] We need international open government data principles

Mon Jul 18 15:44:03 UTC 2011

Thanks for the update John.

My impression: the OGP is a great opportunity for countries to show that they willing to take action at the national level (Action plans) and to look good by joining the initiative (PR).

However I have my doubt that this is a great opportunity to set international standards. The OGP clearly stays outside the UN because otherwise it would not have happened. 

My belief is that the 8 Principles and also the 10 principles and the open definition are strong because clear. I am a bit sceptical about approaching the UN or even OGD to agree on Open Government Data Principles. I am afraid that at the end of such a process we would end up with watered down results. e.g. the bare minimum standard that hurts nobody.

Please keep us posted John.

Daniel

On 18.07.2011, at 16:25, John Wonderlich wrote:

> Now that the OGP event has passed, my impression is that it'll be a difficult forum through which to push  for the adoption of such data principles.
> 
> The work is primarily around getting countries to adopt individual National Action Plans, which apply specifically to the participant countries, and are to be authored by each country, and then reported on regularly afterward.  
> 
> There will be significant pressure and analysis of whether each country's plan is sufficiently ambitious, and that gives countries a reason to want to be able to point to broader multilateral initiatives, like one that could be created around data principles.  But the countries are not trying to become an international force directed toward the UN, or even directed at other countries, beyond their attempt to encourage each other to take on narrow transparency reform issues. 
> 
> I will, however, raise this question at a meeting at the White House later this week, to see whether this sort of standardization effort might fit in any way with what they're doing.
> 
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 9:24 AM, John Wonderlich <johnwonderlich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure, will do.
> 
> I'd love to see the effort to evaluate open government data expanded and made more rigorous, and applied on more levels.  To see a bit more of what Sunlight did to this effect, here's another blog post we did around the 10 principles, that lays out their relation to the 8:
> 
> http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2010/08/11/a-principled-look-at-open-data/
> 
> We also tried at one point to expand the principles into something of an evaluative framework; to see the effort we tried, this blog post is a good starting point:
> 
> http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/evaluating-open-pages/
> 
> The issue with expanding any particular principle, of course, is that it doesn't exist along a single continuum.  For example, there are many different ways in which a piece of government information can be considered permanent, so assigning a number on a 1-5 scale, for example, can be an unhelpful simplification.  To be broadly successful, I suspect that the principles (whichever were adopted) would have to be broken, in turn, into a variety of other evaluative criteria.  Or, instead, judged rather subjectively, in more of a narrative form.
> 
> This is something that Josh Tauberer has done quite well at time in the US.  For an example of the data principles applied, see his post here:
> 
> http://razor.occams.info/blog/2009/12/01/congressional-disbursements/
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:08 AM, Javier Ruiz <javier at openrightsgroup.org> wrote:
> Thanks John
> 
> please keep us posted on the OGP anyway, it seems an important development that will probably have consequences, besides driving a wedge through the BRICs 
> 
> Javier
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 9 July 2011 00:48, John Wonderlich <johnwonderlich at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that the OGP event next week would be a good place to discuss the idea, but may not be the ideal place for further refinement of broad open data principles and guidelines, since it's limited to a few countries, and based on mutual encouragement for particular governance reforms more than it's based on the broad collective action involved in standards creation.
> 
> Others more closely involved in the OGP process may feel differently, of course.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Javier Ruiz <javier at openrightsgroup.org> wrote:
> John and Rufus
> 
> you are participating in this
> 
> http://www.state.gov/g/ogp/index.htm
> 
> do you think this is going to be the international governance space for open data?
> 
> javier
> 
> 
> 2011/7/8 John Wonderlich <johnwonderlich at gmail.com>
> Here are two:
> 
> https://public.resource.org/8_principles.html
> 
> http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/documents/ten-open-data-principles/
> 
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> I just posted this on the OKF blog:
> 
> http://blog.okfn.org/2011/07/08/we-need-international-open-government-data-principles/
> 
> I'd really like to try and start a conversation around this again -
> with key stakeholders from around the world.
> 
> The key thing in my mind is consensus - rather than new content. We
> have lots of good conceptual work, and clear wording to build on. What
> is needed is to bring key people to the table and to agree on
> something very short and very clear.
> 
> Anyone interested? ;-)
> 
> --
> Jonathan Gray
> 
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
> 
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
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