Eight Open Goverment Data Principles
Josh Tauberer
way back from the 'Open Government Working Group' conference in
Sebastopol, CA, I thought I would report to this list one outcome of the
conference. (The conference was organized by Carl Malamud, sponsored by
the usual contenders, and a bunch of people on this list were there.)
Here's our official group-written (read: laboriously edited)
announcement, which is also at www.opengovdata.org (the www. is crucial
for the moment):
---
8 december 2007 - This weekend, 30 open government advocates gathered to
develop a set of principles of open government data. The meeting, held
in Sebastopol, California, was designed to develop a more robust
understanding of why open government data is essential to democracy.
The Internet is the public space of the modern world, and through it
governments now have the opportunity to better understand the needs of
their citizens and citizens may participate more fully in their
government. Information becomes more valuable as it is shared, less
valuable as it is hoarded. Open data promotes increased civil discourse,
improved public welfare, and a more efficient use of public resources.
The group is offering a set of fundamental principles for open
government data. By embracing the eight principles, governments of the
world can become more effective, transparent, and relevant to our lives.
---
The principles can be used to determine whether government data can be
considered "open", and it was suggested that we develop some sort of
branding that we all can make use of to support and point to the
principles. The principles are at:
http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OpenDataPrinciples
The discussion pages linked from some of the terms in the principles are
editable wiki pages and do need to be fleshed out with suggestions from
anyone.
Also, Dan Newman started some discussion about how to mobilize citizens
at large over transparency issues. I am eager to see how that discussion
continues--- I expect some organizing will happen on the (open) mail
list created at the conference (and linked from www.opengovdata.org;
yes, yet another mail list...).
Ok, back to waiting for my plane.
Josh Tauberer
John Wonderlich
Thanks for reporting about what was discussed.
When I tried to address similar concerns in February , I ended up with a very similar set of ideas (what I termed themes) for government information, largely as a result of the discussions on this group.
Here's what I came up with then:
Timeliness: Promptly available information is necessary for meaningful involvement.
Accessibility: The House (and related agencies) should strive to publish information in accordance with W3C recommendations for accessibility.
Format: The House should embrace structured information (XML, etc), standardize formats across different agencies (this effort has been underway for some time), and utilize non-proprietary filetypes.
Preservation: House data is historically significant, so issues regarding archiving and permanence should be considered.
Availability: Balancing the requirements for informed participation in a democracy with the privacy rights of individuals and the pragmatics of a funcitoning legislature lead to proper levels of disclosure.
Accuracy: Standards for accuracy and completeness preserve meaningful access.
Usability: Information should be presented in a fashion that encourages use.
Interactivity: Appropriate levels of user input should be considered.
Even data sets that aren't publicly available have permanence concerns, which have been inadequately addressed also, given the current controversy around the CIA interrogation tapes, or the White House/RNC emails. I'm not making any judgements on those situations, but pointing out that clear expectations about a given data set's permanence let us effectively judge whether the data is being handled appropriately. This is not a judgement that should be made when one subset of people suspect bad acting on the part of another group.
John
--
John Wonderlich
Program Director
The Sunlight Foundation
(202) 742-1520 ext. 234
Josh Tauberer
> The one thing I see missing from this weekend's discussion is
> considering whether it should be publicly available.
This came up, though not quite in that way. I think the consensus at the
time was that if information disappeared, it was no longer "open"
because, well, it was no longer being provided in the first place.
But, adding some notes about preservation into either, say, the
'complete' or 'accessible' principles is definitely warranted.
--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
John Brothers
In-source consistency - A given Data Source could be open, permanent and structured, but if the structure keeps changing, it can be a huge mess. (Luckily, this isn't likely to happen)
Cross-source consistency - Ideally, however, we should have some consistency between different data sources - that the thing that identifies, say, an Earmark in one data source is used correctly in another data source. This is a much harder constraint, but far more beneficial to the consumer of the data.
Perla Ni
So here's my attempt to word this:
Free or at Lowest Marginal Cost: All data should be provided free of charge or, in the case of archived data where Congress incurs substantial costs to provide the data in a currently acceptable or distributable format, Congress get quotes from multiple vendors so that they charge the lowest marginal cost for the data.
Perla NI
VoterWatch.org
Perla Ni
CEO GreatNonprofits
www.greatnonprofits.org
415-902-2659
per...@greatnonprofits.org
Greg Palmer
One other thing we discussed but did not make it into the short form that we've released was the idea of reasonable expectations of government data being digital. I'll summarize by saying that "if any particular government data should reasonably be digital, citizens have the right to expect that it is." I'm not sure I'm capturing the whole idea there, but it was the idea was that we need to have a reasonable expectation of progress by government. Associated with that idea is the fact that digital data distribution and reproduction is often orders of magnitude cheaper than for physical artifacts.
Perla Ni
james a. jacobs
the related issues of openness, completeness, accessibility,
licensing, and marginal cost:
Josh and Perla and John and Greg have already addressed some of the
issues intertwined with preservation. Here is my attempt to bring
these threads together, add an explicit preservation-perspective,
enumerate the problems, and provide a starting point to solve the
problems:
1. Preservation will not just happen. Digital preservation in
particular takes planning and resources. I worry that, if
preservation is not addressed explicitly it will not be addressed
adequately.
2. Requiring "access" alone -- even open, complete, free access -- is
not enough. Without planning and funding for long-term access and
preservation, access today can turn into inadvertent loss tomorrow.
3. Relying on the government to provide the only means of long-term
preservation and access will work sometimes but fail when it is most
critical. If the government is the sole-provider and it (intentionally
or unintentionally) amends, alters, loses, abridges, or deletes
content, the content is lost for everyone for ever. Information that
is most embarrassing, most valuable, most useful to citizens in making
government accountable will be most vulnerable to intentional control,
alteration, and loss.
4. Relying on the government to provide sole means of access endangers
privacy as it allows governments to record and track use of government
information by individuals.
5. We can predict, based on what governments have done in the past,
what will happen if we allow or encourage the government to recover
costs for access (even marginal cost of distribution). There will be
two-tier access for users: some will be able to afford access and
others will not. There will be two-tier access for content: 'popular'
content will be free or less expensive, but there will be charges for
less-popular or less-used. There will be two-tier access to
functionality: one user may be able to get one page of a hearing for
free, but it will cost for citizens' groups, libraries, and others who
wish to get mass content (e.g. all hearings for a congress). The
government will rely on private sector vendors to provide access
through outsourcing and will claim that availability of content
through private vendors meets the requirements of 'access.' In an
attempt to recover costs, governments will license access to data and
in doing so, impose licensing restrictions on redistribution and use
and will apply technological locks (i.e., DRM) to enforce license
restrictions.
One possible component of a solution to the above problems is to
require that the government make available en masse and distribute
(without charge or licensing restrictions or DRM) all government
information to libraries, archives, and other memory organizations.
The existing Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), which is
defined by U.S. Code Title 44 and administered by the Government
Printing Office (GPO), provides a starting place for such a
distribution system. The GPO has, however, been arrogating to itself
the role once given to distributed depository libraries and most
depository libraries have been reluctant to ask for the responsibility
of accepting deposit of digital government files. It will probably be
necessary to write into plans for preservation the explicit role of
government deposit and the role of depository libraries to accept and
preserve that information. With lots of copies in lots of
institutions, free of of locks and restrictions on use, it will be
harder to lose, destroy, or control access to government information.
With multiple partners preserving and providing access to the
information, there will be multiple budgets, multiple constituencies,
and multiple technical preservation solutions.
Jim Jacobs
Data Services Librarian Emeritus
University of California San Diego
Dan Manatt
Micah Sifry
http://www.personaldemocracy.com
http://www.techpresident.com
http://micah.sifry.com
John Wonderlich
Sean Moulton
I believe, it is tomorrow (Tues) at 10am.
http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=513
Sean Moulton
Director,
Federal Information Policy
OMB Watch
1742 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington,
DC 20009
Phone: (202) 234-8494
Fax: (202) 234-8584
Combined Federal Campaign #10201
Leslie Harris
Micah Sifry
wish to get mass content ( e.g. all hearings for a congress). The
Dan Manatt
Silona Bonewald
http://wiki.participation.e.govt.nz/wiki/Guide_to_Online_Participation/Overview
I highly recommend it as something to recommend as a path to other governmental groups.
I mentioned all of these principles in my presentation that I gave at the ec3.org last month (a consortium of state CIO, CTO, Secr of state and State auditors) http://www.slideshare.net/silona/social-networks-and-government-application
note slides 54 and 56.
What was so amazing about the presentation is the overwhelming positive response I received over these ideas and concepts. I think we have a bunch of people on our side in this in regards to state government.
Cheers,
Silona