[open-government] Is it too radical to demand everything?

Sat Sep 15 12:47:07 UTC 2012

Hi all,

There are a few people in Australia experimenting with the idea that
reports/content done for gov by external parties (contrators, private
sector) be required to be CC-BY in the contract, which would likely lead to
the private sector giving shorter more concise content and keeping the
generic stuff they want to keep proprietary out of the reports that could
be made public. Governments spend a lot of money on behalf of the public,
and as the entity paying the bill, we should be able to require
contractually that we get content we can republish in a lot of cases. This
would also create greater value to the public sector as more reports would
be sharable across government, and of course, sharable to the public. No
reason why this couldn't apply to software too, and it'd be interesting to
compare notes.

Of course, as Josh notes, there are more certainly an importantly a lot of
privacy and other appropriate considerations. It is vital that government
protects the privacy of its citizens, and get the balance right between
publishing data, and privacy. For instance, with some sensitive data like
health data, appropriate deidentification that goes beyond just removing
names and addresses, but also turns ages into age categories and the like
is really important.

Trade agreements and Internet "regulation" may be two examples where far
greater public (and indeed global) transparency would be useful in ensuring
the value of the Internet tto society is not degraded bit by bit over time
(sorry, terrible pun there).

Anyway, looking forward to hearing more from other people.

Cheers,
Pia

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 10:38 PM, Josh Tauberer <tauberer at govtrack.us>wrote:

>  On 09/14/2012 10:48 PM, JOSEFSSON Erik wrote:
>
> On 15/09/12 03:58, Josh Tauberer wrote:
>
>  the open data movement must demand from government and public sector to
> publish everything themselves
>
>
> It's not too radical. If you add in basic caveats for security, privacy,
> and intellectual property,
>
>
> Which intellectual properties are you thinking of?
>
>
> I was just using as wide a brush as possible so that I could get away with
> saying "most open gov advocates" believed something.
>
> But there are two to keep in mind. One is IP held by the private sector on
> documents that happen to have gotten mixed up in government records. The
> other is IP held by the government on its own records.
>
> There's no particular consensus on what to do about either of those. For
> instance, in the U.S., you're supposed to lose copyright protection if your
> document makes it into actual law, but in other cases privately held IP
> could be mixed in with government records. I think open gov advocates tend
> to be OK with that line, but I'm not sure. Also in the U.S. we take a hard
> line that no government records can be called open if they have any
> intellectual property or license restrictions, but that is not the case in
> most other places in the world where OKD/CC-style licenses are accepted by
> the open government communities there.
>
>
> - Josh Tauberer (@JoshData)
> http://razor.occams.info
>
>
> On 09/14/2012 10:48 PM, JOSEFSSON Erik wrote:
>
> On 15/09/12 03:58, Josh Tauberer wrote:
>
>  the open data movement must demand from government and public sector to
> publish everything themselves
>
>
> It's not too radical. If you add in basic caveats for security, privacy,
> and intellectual property,
>
>
> Which intellectual properties are you thinking of?
>
> Europeana finally came to the conclusion that its metadata has to be CC0
> (as it also waives database rights).
>
> The GPL is a software patent free zone.
>
> So, which legit caveats are there?
>
> Trademarks?
>
> //Erik
>
>
>  I think most open gov advocates would say, yes, in a perfect world,
> government records should all be online. That sort of across-the-board
> transparency is the root of the freedom of information / right to know
> movement, which is right now pretty healthy across the world. People do
> demand that, and constitutions these days get written with that in mind.
> (Success!)
>
> A good starting point is the external links section on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_legislation.
>
> At the same time, people specialize on particular types of government
> records --- legislative, geospatial, financial, etc. We get into the
> details on these because when it comes time to implementing open data the
> details matter.
>
> So, both are going on.
>
> - Josh Tauberer (@JoshData)
> http://razor.occams.info
>
> On 09/14/2012 05:06 AM, Ivo Babaja wrote:
>
> Considering Rufus' post about great expectations, I think that the goal
> for open data should be more radical.****
>
> I think that, at least in some future perspective, the open data movement
> must demand from government and public sector to publish everything
> themselves.****
>
> To require that information should be published, to be considered official
> and legal.****
>
> ** **
>
> And I mean ALL information. Why not e.g. publish financial transactions
> made from all government's accounts?****
>
> That should help fight corruption more than simple budget projections.****
>
> ** **
>
> With this info, there is foundation for more meaningful, more to-the-point
> political discussion, whether it comes from media, political parties or
> NGOs. ****
>
> And that is real contribution to democratic progress.****
>
> ** **
>
> But open data can not be just about progress. ****
>
> It must also be about people's right to know and control those that are
> conducting public duties.****
>
> ** **
>
> My views in short here: http://www.publictopublic.org.****
>
> **
> **
>
> Kind regards,****
>
> Ivo Babaja****
>
>
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> --
> Erik Josefsson
> Advisor on Internet Policies
> Greens/EFA Group<http://www.greens-efa.eu/36-details/josefsson-erik-138.html>
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