[open-government] Long term preservation and archival for Open Data

Wed Oct 9 17:43:27 BST 2013

Interesting question Ivan!

In general I think governments cannot be presumed to keep supplying data
for the sake of re-users only. For instance when the governments purpose
for the data collection no longer exists.

There are however various scenarios where mirroring of data might make
sense:
Government bodies reneging on earlier open data commitments or taking steps
towards less transparency
Government shutdowns as in the US (unlikely elsewhere in the world)
Government bodies dissolving without transfer of data tasks/responsibilities
Budget cuts hitting open data provision
etc.

A lot depends on the data itself as well. As archiving data may mean said
data is rapidly becoming useless / outdated, other than for archival
purposes themselves.
For other types of data having historic data may actually be more valuable
than just the current data. (e.g. I've been involved in a small project
where government only published todays values of data, but provided no
historic data, which we addressed by archiving the daily releases.)

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 Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Ivan Begtin <ibegtin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>    most of us are involved in open data activities and availability of
> opendata is critical issue when we want to re-use it.
>
> Right now we have a few examples when data, published earlier, disappear
> later.
> Sometimes it happens since data government information systems updated or
> closed, sometimes when "Government shutdown" happens (like data.gov right
> now) and sometimes when government agencies disbanded.
>
> I know that where are some archival initiatives related to government
> websites. It's UK web archival initiative (
> http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/) and similar projects in
> other countries (USA, Australia, Hong Kong and so on).
>
> As I understand no one such initiative covers datasets and when data.govis unavailable the only chance to get the data is to look at other
> commerical/non-profit projects that re-publish data.gov datasets for own
> use.
>
> So I would like to launch discussion about long term preservation and
> archival for datasets published by government and not only government.
>
> What do you think from your experience in your countires, do we need to
> launch long term preservation or it's not an issue right now?
>
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
>   Ivan Begtin
>
> Director of NGO "Informational Culture"
> email: ibegtin at infoculture.ru
> phone: +7 499 500 96 58, +7 910 426 68 83
> website: http://infoculture.ru
>
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