Fwd: [OpenDataBC] Open Government Engagement Team Releases Open By Default Engagement Report

[Michael Lenczner-2]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin McArthur <[hidden email]>
Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:33 PM
Subject: [OpenDataBC] Open Government Engagement Team Releases Open By Default Engagement Report
To: [hidden email]

Some good news today, the Open Government Engagement Team has released a new report covering the Open By Default principle. I recommend everyone read it.

http://www.ontario.ca/government/open-default-new-way-forward-ontario

Since they're asking for feedback, my $0.02 it would be that the 'Open By Default' commitment needs to be treated as a more broadly as a fundamental shift in the way government manages information. The report recommends that Ontario "Reform the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act by basing them on the principles of Open by Default and requiring the proactive publication of certain types of information." [emphasis mine]

I interpret the Open By Default principle of the G8 Open Data Charter more broadly, in that all information not proactively closed for legitimate reasons [privacy, security or intellectual property, etc] would be proactively published and be 'Open By Default' from day 1 of a dataset's lifetime. This wouldn't be certain select data types like Hansard as suggested in the report, but rather a broad commitment to releasing all data proactively in this way unless it has been purposefully closed -- switching the default from closed [but ask us and maybe] to open [except what we've decided we cant share].

The process to-my-mind for a database would look something like:

1. A government employee decides they need to create a database.
2. The employee completes a policy stack including justification for creation, privacy impact assessment (PIA), security assessment, intellectual property assessment, authorization for modification, retention/redundancy rules, etc [I'd envision a web-form that an employee can just simply check boxes off on and hit submit]
3. The database create request is processed by a data management group and as a result is added to a public data repository, its either marked as public or private based on the results of the assessments. Oversight orgs are copied on (but not asked to approve) the creation request and provided the justification documents. [auditor general, privacy commissioner, ocio, etc]. At this stage any public data is visible to everyone, and can be auto-discovered by simply looking at the data catalog. Generic API's would already exist and would allow standardized access to any government database (rest, soap, middleware, etc).
4. The employee uses the same database as the public for collecting/working with the information and data is added to the database via standard API's and tools.  In this way citizens and government have equal access to primary sources of public data.

We already have a 'closed by default but maybe open by asking' process via FOI/ATIP -- what the 'Open By Default' commitment means to me is that the public doesn't have to negotiate access anymore, and not for a few select datasets, but for all datasets not otherwise purposefully closed. This change would make for a policy-forward development process for government information and eliminate the unexpected after-the-fact workflow of FOI. Its easier to manage this policy stack up-front then retroactively and the outcomes are better for everyone involved. It would however require changing the way government thinks about information management and of the public as a bidirectional partner -- this will be a significant culture shift.

The benefit of the Open By Default approach to info management (over an Closed by Default but maybe Open By Asking approach) is that it gets all the tough questions out of the way when the programs are being developed. It leads to privacy and security forward information architecture, it handles oversight about what data is being collected. It allows for the public to request their personal information (and correct it) in automated ways, and it lets the public interact with primary source data on equal footing to the government itself. It increases transparency as FOI requests are no longer processed under the lens of 'what are they really asking for and why are they asking for it'. It also deals with those unknown unknowns like 'what datasets can I request under FOI?', for which we dont have a good solution right now.

The open source communities are showing us how to collaborate in disorganized and decentralized groups without giving up security, privacy, autonomy or authority. The GitHub-style model of information management (public/private repositories, pull requests for managed contributing, public commenting, issue tracking, etc) is something that our governments need to implement if they're going to meet this commitment to 'Open By Default' and truly take the next step towards citizen participation.

Congrats to the Ontario Team on the report,

$0.02

--

Kevin

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[David Eaves]

Happy to answer any questions people have about the report as best I can.

--

eaves.ca

@daeaves

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 27, 2014, at 2:47 PM, Michael Lenczner <[hidden email]> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin McArthur <[hidden email]>
Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:33 PM
Subject: [OpenDataBC] Open Government Engagement Team Releases Open By Default Engagement Report
To: [hidden email]

Some good news today, the Open Government Engagement Team has released a new report covering the Open By Default principle. I recommend everyone read it.

http://www.ontario.ca/government/open-default-new-way-forward-ontario

Since they're asking for feedback, my $0.02 it would be that the 'Open By Default' commitment needs to be treated as a more broadly as a fundamental shift in the way government manages information. The report recommends that Ontario "Reform the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act by basing them on the principles of Open by Default and requiring the proactive publication of certain types of information." [emphasis mine]

I interpret the Open By Default principle of the G8 Open Data Charter more broadly, in that all information not proactively closed for legitimate reasons [privacy, security or intellectual property, etc] would be proactively published and be 'Open By Default' from day 1 of a dataset's lifetime. This wouldn't be certain select data types like Hansard as suggested in the report, but rather a broad commitment to releasing all data proactively in this way unless it has been purposefully closed -- switching the default from closed [but ask us and maybe] to open [except what we've decided we cant share].

The process to-my-mind for a database would look something like:

1. A government employee decides they need to create a database.
2. The employee completes a policy stack including justification for creation, privacy impact assessment (PIA), security assessment, intellectual property assessment, authorization for modification, retention/redundancy rules, etc [I'd envision a web-form that an employee can just simply check boxes off on and hit submit]
3. The database create request is processed by a data management group and as a result is added to a public data repository, its either marked as public or private based on the results of the assessments. Oversight orgs are copied on (but not asked to approve) the creation request and provided the justification documents. [auditor general, privacy commissioner, ocio, etc]. At this stage any public data is visible to everyone, and can be auto-discovered by simply looking at the data catalog. Generic API's would already exist and would allow standardized access to any government database (rest, soap, middleware, etc).
4. The employee uses the same database as the public for collecting/working with the information and data is added to the database via standard API's and tools.  In this way citizens and government have equal access to primary sources of public data.

We already have a 'closed by default but maybe open by asking' process via FOI/ATIP -- what the 'Open By Default' commitment means to me is that the public doesn't have to negotiate access anymore, and not for a few select datasets, but for all datasets not otherwise purposefully closed. This change would make for a policy-forward development process for government information and eliminate the unexpected after-the-fact workflow of FOI. Its easier to manage this policy stack up-front then retroactively and the outcomes are better for everyone involved. It would however require changing the way government thinks about information management and of the public as a bidirectional partner -- this will be a significant culture shift.

The benefit of the Open By Default approach to info management (over an Closed by Default but maybe Open By Asking approach) is that it gets all the tough questions out of the way when the programs are being developed. It leads to privacy and security forward information architecture, it handles oversight about what data is being collected. It allows for the public to request their personal information (and correct it) in automated ways, and it lets the public interact with primary source data on equal footing to the government itself. It increases transparency as FOI requests are no longer processed under the lens of 'what are they really asking for and why are they asking for it'. It also deals with those unknown unknowns like 'what datasets can I request under FOI?', for which we dont have a good solution right now.

The open source communities are showing us how to collaborate in disorganized and decentralized groups without giving up security, privacy, autonomy or authority. The GitHub-style model of information management (public/private repositories, pull requests for managed contributing, public commenting, issue tracking, etc) is something that our governments need to implement if they're going to meet this commitment to 'Open By Default' and truly take the next step towards citizen participation.

Congrats to the Ontario Team on the report,

$0.02

--

Kevin

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[Gerry Tychon-2]

I have had a chance to quickly go over this report and I think (with some smallish exceptions) it is pretty good. One recommendation is the use of "dashboards" which has been discussed in this forum before. I was thinking I would like to see some dashboards related to the open data portals themselves. For example, a dashboard showing datasets by publishing organization. In Alberta, the Ministry of Transportation has provided only one dataset. It is hard to believe that Transportation could only find one single dataset that could be made open.

... ggt

On 27/03/2014 12:47 PM, Michael Lenczner wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin McArthur <[hidden email]>
Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:33 PM
Subject: [OpenDataBC] Open Government Engagement Team Releases Open By Default Engagement Report
To: [hidden email]

Some good news today, the Open Government Engagement Team has released a new report covering the Open By Default principle. I recommend everyone read it.

http://www.ontario.ca/government/open-default-new-way-forward-ontario

Since they're asking for feedback, my $0.02 it would be that the 'Open By Default' commitment needs to be treated as a more broadly as a fundamental shift in the way government manages information. The report recommends that Ontario "Reform the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act by basing them on the principles of Open by Default and requiring the proactive publication of certain types of information." [emphasis mine]

I interpret the Open By Default principle of the G8 Open Data Charter more broadly, in that all information not proactively closed for legitimate reasons [privacy, security or intellectual property, etc] would be proactively published and be 'Open By Default' from day 1 of a dataset's lifetime. This wouldn't be certain select data types like Hansard as suggested in the report, but rather a broad commitment to releasing all data proactively in this way unless it has been purposefully closed -- switching the default from closed [but ask us and maybe] to open [except what we've decided we cant share].

The process to-my-mind for a database would look something like:

1. A government employee decides they need to create a database.
2. The employee completes a policy stack including justification for creation, privacy impact assessment (PIA), security assessment, intellectual property assessment, authorization for modification, retention/redundancy rules, etc [I'd envision a web-form that an employee can just simply check boxes off on and hit submit]
3. The database create request is processed by a data management group and as a result is added to a public data repository, its either marked as public or private based on the results of the assessments. Oversight orgs are copied on (but not asked to approve) the creation request and provided the justification documents. [auditor general, privacy commissioner, ocio, etc]. At this stage any public data is visible to everyone, and can be auto-discovered by simply looking at the data catalog. Generic API's would already exist and would allow standardized access to any government database (rest, soap, middleware, etc).
4. The employee uses the same database as the public for collecting/working with the information and data is added to the database via standard API's and tools.  In this way citizens and government have equal access to primary sources of public data.

We already have a 'closed by default but maybe open by asking' process via FOI/ATIP -- what the 'Open By Default' commitment means to me is that the public doesn't have to negotiate access anymore, and not for a few select datasets, but for all datasets not otherwise purposefully closed. This change would make for a policy-forward development process for government information and eliminate the unexpected after-the-fact workflow of FOI. Its easier to manage this policy stack up-front then retroactively and the outcomes are better for everyone involved. It would however require changing the way government thinks about information management and of the public as a bidirectional partner -- this will be a significant culture shift.

The benefit of the Open By Default approach to info management (over an Closed by Default but maybe Open By Asking approach) is that it gets all the tough questions out of the way when the programs are being developed. It leads to privacy and security forward information architecture, it handles oversight about what data is being collected. It allows for the public to request their personal information (and correct it) in automated ways, and it lets the public interact with primary source data on equal footing to the government itself. It increases transparency as FOI requests are no longer processed under the lens of 'what are they really asking for and why are they asking for it'. It also deals with those unknown unknowns like 'what datasets can I request under FOI?', for which we dont have a good solution right now.

The open source communities are showing us how to collaborate in disorganized and decentralized groups without giving up security, privacy, autonomy or authority. The GitHub-style model of information management (public/private repositories, pull requests for managed contributing, public commenting, issue tracking, etc) is something that our governments need to implement if they're going to meet this commitment to 'Open By Default' and truly take the next step towards citizen participation.

Congrats to the Ontario Team on the report,

$0.02

--

Kevin

--
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