Re: Many words about a Parliamentary committee #opengov #opendata

[Sam Vekemans]

Thanks for sharing!
It's now been tweeted. :)
Sam

On 12/7/10, Michael Mulley <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> I spoke to the House committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics
> today. I know several people on here are interested in how it went; here's
> my report.
>
> The witnesses were myself and, by video from Edmonton, Chris Moore. (This
> was a recent invitation, and I learned it was just going to be me and Chris
> only the day before. I'd describe myself as, uh, apprehensive, especially as
> I wasn't able to set aside much time to prepare. With more time, I'd have
> loved to have more discussions beforehand and see if I could involve list
> members & others interested in the subject.)
>
> I've pasted a copy of my opening statement below. I found it surprising that
> I--a coder with no policy background and not particularly much policy
> knowledge--was essentially the first person seen by the committee after the
> Information Commissioner. I saw my role as more or less a pitchman's: to
> introduce the basic concept of open data; try to ensure that people knew
> what data was and what, more or less, "open" means in this context; and to
> communicate as best I could a sense of excitement, that this wasn't another
> debate about access to information or disclosure but that it represented a
> real potential for researchers and citizens and was something lots of
> Canadians felt strongly about.
>
> Chris spoke largely about Edmonton's experience and successes, and about the
> international jurisdictions he's been able to work with around data issues.
>
> I'd anticipated and tried to prepare for questions around how and why open
> data would be valuable, and spent my time beforehand looking for examples
> and arguments around this. There were no such questions, and I used none of
> the examples. (My inner optimist says this is because the committee members
> were convinced. My inner optimist, however, has been known to be wrong.) The
> bulk of questions went, rightly, to Chris. Here's what my extravagantly
> sleep-deprived brain can recall at the moment in terms of questions:
>
> - Next steps for the committee, and how open data applies to different
> branches of government
> - Whether the existence of community sites like mine represented a failing
> on the part of the state
> - Licensing -- what an "open" versus a "Creative Commons" license meant
> - A couple of questions (from the Conservative side) around possibilities of
> fraud or misrepresentation when republishing data, and whether there were
> risks of people tampering with data's "integrity"
> - A question about whether I thought data about disease incidence -- an
> offhand example of mine -- should be available to everyone.
> - A series of questions about dealing with a glut of information, and
> whether too much data leads to a focus on the instantaneous over the
> historical
> - Questions about international models, Australia in particular
> - How Edmonton approached commercial users of its data
> - What "open government" meant to us
> - How to approach official languages in the context of an open data policy
> - What specific changes to Access and privacy legislation might be required
>
> No exchanges ever got in the slightest bit contentious; I don't recall
> anything Chris or I said ever being challenged. If I had to gauge the
> feeling of the session, it was one of sometimes mildly bemused interest,
> with no particular hurry but also no particular sense of opposition to the
> ideas being discussed. (But this is the assessment of a shoddy intuition
> faced with a situation--Parliamentary committee--it's never encountered
> before.)
>
> Carolyn Bennett noted that the committee would be engaging in public online
> consultations on this study. A letter from David Eaves with advice to the
> committee was circulated to all members.
>
> And that's your open-data eyewitness report. Below is what I said at the
> beginning of the session.
>
> ----------------
>
> Hi. Thank you for inviting me; I'm very happy that Parliament is conducting
> this study, and I'm honoured to be able to contribute.
>
> I'm here because, about six months ago, I launched a site called
> openparliament.ca. I know at least some of you have seen it and have said
> nice things about it, which I appreciate very much. But for those of you who
> aren't aware of it, it's a site that republishes the Hansards of the House
> and tries to make them more engaging and useful. You all have pages on the
> site, which show anything you've said recently on the House floor, along
> with media coverage, votes, any legislation you've introduced, and so on.
> It's all searchable; you can sign up for e-mails or updates when a given MP
> speaks, a bill is discussed, or a particular keyword is mentioned. I made it
> as a volunteer, spare-time project, and I'm hugely pleased that people have
> found it useful, and that it's used by tens of thousands of Canadians each
> month.
>
> Now I should say that I've never worked for, in, or even really with
> government. So if I'm going to talk about open government, the subject of
> this study, it'll be very much from an outsider's perspective.
>
> “Open government” is a fairly vague term that's meant many things over many
> years. But the current usage—you'll also hear “Government 2.0” as a
> synonym—means, to me, the idea that recent advances in technology can enable
> a government that is collaborative, cooperative, and able to both spark
> innovation and capitalize on it. Now, this is certainly an appealing notion,
> but it's also a bunch of vague, happy words that would be difficult to
> disagree with. So to talk about something more concrete, in an area where I
> have at least a little knowledge, I'll focus on one particular idea: that of
> open data. Let me quote Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce, whose
> excellent report I'd really recommend you look at: “Public sector
> information is a national resource, and releasing as much of it as possible
> on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social
> value and reinforce its contribution to a healthy democracy.”
>
> So: data. Now, many people, when they hear the word “data”, their eyelids
> start to grow heavier, their shoulders start to slump. I think that's a
> pity. When I hear “data”, I get excited. To me, data means possibility. It
> means opportunity. It means discovery. And I really hope I can share with
> you at least some sense of that excitement.
>
> Let's take care of definitions. When I say “data”, I mean big piles of
> information, structured so that computers can make sense of them. Like
> Hansard. Like pollutant inventories and industrial safety reports. Like bus
> schedules. Like satellite imagery. Like the list of registered charities and
> their public filings. Like government-funded scientific papers. Like digital
> maps and details on the postal-code system. Like records of prescribed drugs
> and disease occurrence. There are endless examples.
>
> And if you ask anyone working in technology how great the value of data can
> be, the answer you'll get is: immense. Increasingly, the Internet economy is
> driven by companies working to figure out how to extract value from data.
> Ray Ozzie is a computer legend, currently a leader at Microsoft. Let me
> quote him: “Data is the flint for the next 25 years.” And a corollary to
> that is that the value of data is often not apparent at first. Less than a
> decade ago, many people didn't think that web search data—the terms people
> type in to the little search box on their computers—was all that valuable.
> Companies offered web search, of course, but often as a sort of loss leader.
> Then Google came along, and realized that, in fact, this web search data was
> worth many billions of dollars a year. Several studies have attempt to
> measure the value of government data. A European study put the market size
> for the EU's public-sector information at 27 billion euro, and other reports
> have come up with similarly staggering numbers. It's tremendously valuable,
> and to lots of different groups: to those interested in public policy,
> whether researchers or just engaged citizens. To businesses in all manner of
> industries. To civic-minded Canadians, who have a new way of engaging with
> government. And to government, which of course uses this data for planning
> and program delivery, but can also benefit from much of this external
> innovation.
>
> If we recognize the value of government data, it's the “open” in “open data”
> that allows that value to be unlocked. That word means many things, and I
> think it's worth the time for me to try and unpack those. The first is—and
> there's a piece of jargon coming up, but I promise it's
> important—machine-readable. Let me use my site to explain what I mean by
> that. I republish Hansard, which I get from the Web site of Parliament. But
> because of the way it's made available, getting the data out so I can
> republish it is difficult, and took quite a bit of time and trickery on my
> part. The methods I use are fragile—if Parliament changes the look or format
> of its site, mine breaks. And because getting the data out is difficult,
> it's much harder to do all sorts of useful things, like making my site fully
> bilingual or reporting on committees. In my case, this isn't the end of the
> world—the hurdles have caused plenty of frustration, but the site
> nonetheless exists. But often data that isn't machine-readable is simply too
> difficult to make productive use of. To make data available in a
> machine-readable way which is more conducive to exploration is, for the most
> part, not difficult from the point of view of technology. The roadblocks
> here are matters of will and of culture.
>
> “Open” in the context of open data also means “free”. Now, in English that's
> one word but means two very important things. They should be free of cost
> because that's how they will most efficiently create economic value and
> support innovation, and because sharing information that already exists
> costs government next to nothing. They should also be free as in speech, by
> which I mean available under terms that allow repurposing and
> redistribution, which is exactly where the greatest value lies. And I want
> to stress that repurposing isn't an addendum, a blue-sky wishlist item.
> Openparliament is an example, of course, but there are others, even if I
> restrict myself to my own life. I lived in NY for a while, where there's a
> wonderful site called Everyblock, which takes the mundane details of
> municipal government—business permits, building permits, restaurant
> inspections, crime reports, hearings—and repurposes them to publish a sort
> of newspaper for your own block. What's dull in aggregate becomes
> interesting when it's filtered for what's relevant and nearby, and that
> makes participating in local government that much more likely. Another
> personal example: I studied public health briefly, where one often tries to
> take disparate datasets – cancer incidence, say, and pollutant release—and
> try, in combining and repurposing them, to generate hypotheses to make
> Canadians healthier.
> That's why it's crucial that the default posture of government be sharing,
> not a closed door, and why the default terms for government information
> should be an open license, like Creative Commons, and not the current
> innovation-killing restrictions of Crown Copyright.
> And anyone who's tried to work with government data has come up against that
> default posture of secrecy. Some personal examples: under Speaker's
> Permission, I am able to republish House Hansards, but that's not true of
> the Seante—republishing that is illegal. Your official photographs are under
> Crown Copyright, and I was unable to get permission to use them. On the
> municipal level, in Montreal, I've tried to get digital maps of the
> political districts and I've tried to get bus schedules, and I've been
> rebuffed, despite knowing that it would take literally five minutes to send
> me the latter.
> A friend in Halifax tried a few years back to get the same information there
> and was denied, but he went farther – an Access to Information request,
> denied, and a court challenge, denied, with one of the grounds for denial
> being that a digital map was not a document but a mechanism for producing
> documents. Now, needless to say I disagree with the decision, but there's
> something in that phrase that catches my interest: a mechanism for producing
> information. Yeah. In an information economy, that's kind of the point.
> A means of creating information—well, just last Saturday, thousands of
> people across the world, and hundreds in Canada, got together for an Open
> Data Day, an event spearheaded by David Eaves in Vancouver and a great team
> from right here in Ottawa. I participated with the group in Montreal, where
> about twenty people met and worked on a dozen projects on the municipal
> level, among them a site to discover which of the city's skating rinks are
> open and when they've been cleaned, and a system to warn drivers when
> there's new construction along their daily route.
> Digital maps as a means of creating information—that's borne out by the
> experience of NRCan, the only federal department with a thriving open data
> culture, whose geographic datasets are used by a huge community of
> researchers, who'll tell you just how valuable they are. They're used
> heavily by industry—mining and forestry, of course, but also real-estate
> developers and burger joints. And even by me—I used data from NRCan's
> GeoGratis for a recent project related to finding polling places in
> municipal elections.
> There are many points of view from which to argue for open data, and then
> for the broader concept of open government. I've given you only one—for
> example, I haven't really mentioned accountability and transparency—but I
> hope I've been able to communicate some of the excitement that I and
> increasing numbers of Canadians feel about this, and that Canada will join
> what is growing worldwide movement.
>

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