[open-government] Definitions of Open Government and Open Government Data

[Ton Zijlstra]

I agree,

Open Government Data is open data from a government body, as per the open
data definition.

There is public information and public data, which is accessible but might
not be open (no open license, fees applied, not in open or commonly used
standards, not machine readable etc.) Open gov data is a subset of what is
public gov data.

Usually what is public is regulated in national law in each country. And it
might differ, a lot. Also in terms of how copyright is applied to public
gov material.

Also realize that there is a difference between right to access and right
to re-use in a lot of places. Freedom of information and open data are not
synonymous. It can even be there is a general re-use right, but no access
right. This is the case in Spain for instance. There you have the right to
use everything that is being published in any way you want, but there is no
right to any information, and you're dependent on what gov publishes of its
own accord.

best,
Ton

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Interdependent Thoughts
Ton Zijlstra

ton at tonzijlstra.eu
+31-6-34489360

http://zylstra.org/blog

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On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 8:34 PM, James McKinney <james at opennorth.ca> wrote:

> > But what about Open Government Data? I think it would be too harsh to
> > define it as Open Data provided by the government, because there is so
> > much government data out there which is not open, but accessible
> > nonetheless.
>
> I think that is precisely how most people would define it, however. If you
> want to talk about publicly available government data more generally, maybe
> "publicly available government data" would be a suitable identifier.
>
> James
>
>
> On 2013-04-07, at 1:52 PM, Konrad Reiche wrote:
>
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > I am writing my thesis in Computer Science in the context of Open
> > Government Data. Lately, I am dealing a lot with the definitions of
> > Open Data, Open Government and Open Government Data.
> >
> > I would say, Open Data is more or less quite well-defined, but I have
> > my problems with narrowing it down for Open Government and Open
> > Government Data. Recently I have started to read "Open Government,
> > Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice" published
> > by O'Reilly Media. For Open Government it says:
> >
> > "What is open government? In the most basic sense, it’s the notion that
> > the people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of
> > government."
> >
> > But what about Open Government Data? I think it would be too harsh to
> > define it as Open Data provided by the government, because there is so
> > much government data out there which is not open, but accessible
> > nonetheless.
> >
> > So I would rather read it as ((Open Goverment) Data), data provided by
> > the government, where people have the right to access them.
> >
> > Does someone know whether these terms are discussed somewhere in more
> > detail, something that I could reference?
> >
> > Best,
> > Konrad
> >
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>
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