Visible Government: Open Government Records...
Mark Weiler
It's great to hear that people are coming together to explore FOI/ATOI and the Internet (both about 30 years old). I am familiar with WhatDoTheyKnow.com and think it's a great technology. Canada would be well served with its own version of WhatDoTheyKnow.
I’m a graduate student at Simon Fraser University and have been developing software for publishing FOI requests and the responsive records. It's called Open Government Records and is a plugin for the Open Journal System. OJS is an open source (GNU) web application for publishing academic journals. Much thanks to everyone at the Public Knowledge Project (http://pkp.sfu.ca) for making such a wonderful technology in OJS!
Open Government Records (OGR) is intended for academics to use foi/atoi within their research. OGR organizes and tracks foi requests (very useful when having many requests being processed at once). It also allows users to publish the text of their requests and the responsive records and so can be used to support the formation of a research community in which foi/atoi figure importantly in the knowledge being developed.
OGR is based on the idea of a FOI or ATOI journal. A FOI journal is a collection of FOI requests and the responsive records. A site running OJS/OGR could have many FOI journals -- some associated with a particular public body, some associated with a theme -- there’s flexibility with how a FOI journal could be used.
OGR is still in development and a site with an install can be found here: http://www.opengovernmentrecords.net/ogr/
The site has a few FOI/ATOI journals.
If it is useful for VisibleGovernment's projects, please feel free to comment on or ask questions about OGR. I've read the previous posts to this group and I've used WhatDoTheyKnow so can also comment on some issues already discussed.
Also, there's now a few sites that combine the Internet with Freedom of Information (e.g., WhatDoTheyKnow, the CAIRS database, Open Government Records) – are there more?
Mark Weiler
Jennifer Bell
start to getting a community of people interested in FOI together.
The VisibleGovernment.ca tool (as it exists in concept only, at this
point), is mostly about filing the requests online, and being able to
collect statistics on response times. Posting respsonses is a
secondary goal, though a valuable one. I think there's a very good
opportunity for a data-sharing API between the two projects.
Mark: what's your strategy for marketing OGR? How are you going to
connect with your user base?
Jennifer
Karen Smith
I haven't posted to this Visible Government list before so I'll begin
with a quick intro. I am a PhD student at U of T in the Faculty of
Information and Knowledge Media Design Institute.
Mark, it was great to see your Open Government Records (OGR) concept
up on the PKP platform. Some of the research I am currently carrying
out with Dr. Andrew Clement connects to identity documents (including
ID cards and the databases they link to). Andrew's team has a website
www.idforum.ca where we have posted a variety of documents associated
with ATI and FOI requests concerning enhanced drivers licenses using
RFID technologies (see: http://www.idforum.ischool.utoronto.ca/?q=documents).
I look forward to further discussions on this thread,
Karen
www.karenlouisesmith.net
It is great to see the Open Government Records systems up on the PKP.
Mark
I've been mulling over a thought... initially, I thought that the
legislative contexts within each country would require each country to
have their own distinct brands of FOI web-app. WhatDoTheyKnow works
great in the UK, but Canada's Access to Information Act would seem to
require an entirely different design.
However, I do wonder if a framework could be created that could be
used across any jurisdiction. For example, there could be a layer that
has user accounts, notification systems, localization, database of
requested texts, etc. Then software developers in more than one
country could develop applications from the framework, taking into
account the FOI practices of their country.
Mark
Jennifer Bell
The same framework could be used for multiple levels of government
even within a country. Though, I think the most robust approach would
be to, instead of relying on a single software framework which solves
all problems, have a data sharing standard and/or an external db for
the information (like google), that allows applications to evolve to
suit particular needs.
In the short term, the important thing is to get a system working.
Jennifer