Over the past few years I have become increasingly involved in the movement for open government – and more specifically advocating for Open Data, the sharing of information government collects and generates freely towards citizens such that they can analyze it, repurpose and use it themselves. My interest in this space comes out of writing and work I’ve down around how technology, open systems and generational change will transform government. Earlier this year I began advising the Mayor and Council of the City of Vancouver helping them pass the Open Motion (referred to by staff as Open3) and create Vancouver’s Open Data Portal, the first municipal open data portal in Canada. More recently, Australia’s Government 2.0 Taskforce has asked me to sit on its International Reference Group.

Obviously the open government movement is quite broad, but my recent work has pushed me to try to distill out the essence of the Open Data piece of this movement. What, ultimately, do we need and are we asking for.  Consequently, while presenting for a panel discussion on Conference for Parliamentarians: Transparency in the Digital Era for Right to Know Week organized by the Canadian Government’s Office of the Information Commissioner I shared my best effort to date of this distillation: Three laws for Open Government Data.

The Three Laws of Open Government Data:

1. If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
2. If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
3. If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower

To explain, (1) basically means: Can I find it? If Google (and/or other search engines) can’t find it, it essentially doesn’t exist for most citizens. So you’d better ensure that you are optimized to be crawled by all sorts of search engine spiders.

After I’ve found it, (2) notes that, to be useful, I need to be able to use (or play with) the data. Consequently, I need to be able to pull or download it in a useful format (e.g. an API, subscription feed, or a documented file). Citizens need data in a form that lets them mash it up with Google Maps or other data sets, or analyze in Excel. This is essentially the difference between VanMaps (look, but don’t play) and the Vancouver Data Portal, (look, take and play!). Citizens who can’t play with information are citizens who are disengaged/marginalized from the discussion.

Finally, even if I can find it and use it, (3) highlights that I need a legal framework that allows me to share what I’ve created, to mobilize other citizens, provide a new service or just point out an interesting fact. This is the difference between Canada’s House of Parliament’s information (which, due to crown copyright, you can take, play with, but don’t you dare share or re-publish) and say, Whitehouse.gov which “pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected.”

Find, Use and Share. That’s want we want.

Of course, a brief scan of the internet has revealed that others have also been thinking about this as well. There is this excellent 8 Principle of Open Government Data that are more detailed, and admittedly better, especially for a CIO level and lower conversation.  But for talking to politicians (or Deputy Ministers or CEOs), like those in attendance at that panel discussion or, later that afternoon, the Speaker of the House, I found the simplicity of three resonated more strongly; it is a simpler list they can remember and demand.

Government 2.0 Taskforce Emailed Submission

Author: Andrew Leigh

Submission Text:

From the standpoint of researchers, one of the things that the Taskforce should strongly support is more data. A few examples are below.

• State and territory governments should release geocoded crime statistics of all crime reports. See for example this website created by the New York Times:
http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map

• FaHCSIA should release all data (including prices and quality ratings) from its annual Child Care Census.

• The Taskforce should encourage projects such as the digitisation of MP interest registers by http://www.openaustralia.org/.

I’d like to open this thread up as a kind of repository to which anyone can add to an inventory of data sets that should be made public. Andrew has mentioned data held by state government agencies. Of course our only clear jurisdiction is in the Federal arena but I think we should be prepared to both talk about and make suggestions/recommendations regarding data held by other agencies – it’s up to them whether they want to accept them. In that spirit I’ll reiterate something I’ve argued previously namely that we should publish (pdf) data on individual companies workers compensation premiums where this provides reasonable information about their past safety record.

So please feel free to use this thread as a record of all the data you, the community think does, should or might exist that we should be trying to get freed to enable us to lead slightly more informed, and so slightly better lives.

In giving evidence before the - Victorian Parliament - Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee’s  Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data my sister Professor Anne Fitzgerald quoted a passage from an article published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology which addressed the role that the US federal government should have in modernising its internet infrastructure:

In order for public data to benefit from the same innovation and dynamism that characterize private parties’ use of the Internet, the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each enduser need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large. 328 (David Robinson, Harlan Yu, William Zeller, Edward Felten, ‘Government data and the invisible hand’, Yale Journal of Law and Technology, vol. 11, no. Fall 2008).

The Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee’s report quoted this evidence (at page 109)

The establishment of the Data.gov website in the US embodies this philosophy. (See as background President Obama’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies : Transparency and Open Government (January 2009))

The Data.gov website explains its role as follows:

About

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

As a priority Open Government Initiative for President Obama’s administration, Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs will continue to grow as datasets are added. Federal, Executive Branch data are included in the first version of Data.gov.

Participatory Democracy

Public participation and collaboration will be one of the keys to the success of Data.gov. Data.gov enables the public to participate in government by providing downloadable Federal datasets to build applications, conduct analyses, and perform research. Data.gov will continue to improve based on feedback, comments, and recommendations from the public and therefore we encourage individuals to suggest datasets they’d like to see, rate and comment on current datasets, and suggest ways to improve the site.

Goal

A primary goal of Data.gov is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications). Data.gov strives to make government more transparent and is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen our Nation’s democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

For some interesting examples of what can be done see Rewired State (UK)