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

[Tim Davies]

Hey Ivan,

A really interesting discussion: in theory open data can be mirrored,
archived and made publicly accessible; in practice it won't be unless there
are organisational structures and archival practices to maintain that.

Perhaps tangentially, but I'm currently in a workshop about developing
plans for 'Web Observatories' as a model for academic communities to
aggregate and share large datasets from the web for research and I jotted
down a few notes about the sustainability challenges and possible
governance models here:
http://www.opendataimpacts.net/2013/10/web-observatories-the-governance-dimensions/

More on the Web Observatory project at
http://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/

All the best

Tim


On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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 data is rapidly becoming useless / outdated, other than for archival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
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Interdependent Thoughts
> Ton Zijlstra
>
> ton at tonzijlstra.eu
> +31-6-34489360
>
> http://zylstra.org/blog
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> 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.govright 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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-- 


w: http://www.timdavies.org.uk | m: 07834 856 303 | twitter: timdavies

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