The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
 
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I think most of the links provided on the datalibre are really derivative works of the 2007 8 principles of open government data which was definitely part of the so called "new comers" movement (I find attempts to break the OD world into long standing experts vs. new comers - with the subtext of that latter being either uniformed and/or disinterested in broader challenges… problematic).
The notable exceptions are the UNCED document (the link on datalibre is broken) and the W3C document which are more recommendations for actions than principles especially since they say little about what defines open, or what makes something open from a legal or usage perspective. The best alternative (and it is a very good document) is the American Library Association (which interestingly has no date). I can't speak for James, but from a personal perspective, it is pretty hard to read the previous note and not feel that the contributions of myself and other so called "new comers" (despite working on and advocating for open data for 7 years now) is held in pretty poor regard. Yes, we definitely came at this from a different place than academics and scientists but I think our contributions to the policy objectives of open data speak volumes and our desire to engage and work with those the science and library communities - when they have welcomed us - has always been strong. Indeed, I agree that the OKFN definition does not deal as well as it could with things like provenance and archiving (I think interoperability and standards is open to some debate) but this is because it is almost exclusively focused on the license. That is both its weakness and strength - so depending on your perspective there is work that could be done to improve it (I think it could be very much improved by incorporating more of the 8 principles). That said, I would argue that this license component was one piece that was largely missing prior to the recent surge in open data starting around 2007. On 2013-09-05, at 11:03 AM, "Tracey P. Lauriault" <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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In reply to this post by Russell McOrmond
On 2013-09-05, at 12:45 PM, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote: With that in mind, wouldn't people agree that the data is not open if Depends on how you define "method to interface with the data". Can you some specific examples (to help make the statement less abstract). Cheers, Peder :) _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
On 2013-09-05, at 2:03 PM, "Tracey P. Lauriault" <[hidden email]> wrote: It was one of the reasons why a few years ago when the oknf contacted us to become a part of it somehow, we said that we liked our canadian flavour of things, and the fact that we were doing well without them. Good for you. The word knowledge as in "Open Knowledge" is problematic. Knowledge requires processes that lie outside the realm of access to more data, so I've never been quite comfortable with the OKFN name. "If a person digging a well moves hither-and-thither across a field, digging shallow hole after shallow hole, no water will be struck. One must remain faithfully in one place, digging deeply and constantly, to strike water." Peder _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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One of the main reasons we like the 'open knowledge' concept is that it isn't just about bits of stuff on computers and various legal and technical properties they have - but precisely because it is more than this: it is also about people, and the interactions they have around open data, open content and the digital public domain, and how they put it to work in the world. :-)
On 5 September 2013 22:59, Peder Jakobsen <[hidden email]> wrote:
Jonathan Gray Director of Policy and Ideas | @jwyg Empowering through Open Knowledge okfn.org | @okfn | OKF on Facebook | Blog | Newsletter _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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On 2013-09-05, at 5:20 PM, Jonathan Gray <[hidden email]> wrote: One of the main reasons we like the 'open knowledge' concept is that it isn't just about bits of stuff on computers and various legal and technical properties they have - but precisely because it is more than this: it is also about people, and the interactions they have around open data, open content and the digital public domain, and how they put it to work in the world. :-) Anyhow, you bought the domain name already so it's kind of moot now. OKFN are amazing at marketing the concepts, and the software is awesome, so I'm just splitting philosophical hairs here. Keep up the great work, and stay the hell away from any buddhist notion of knowledge, and any tactile information required in brain surgery, tennis and golf, and you'll be quite fine with that name :) Peder _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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Thanks. And likewise - I'm a huge fan of this group, hence me hanging out on your list and dropping into discussions. ;-) And as a researcher in philosophy and the history of ideas when I'm not doing stuff with the Open Knowledge Foundation, I'll continue to ruminate on the nature of knowledge with a very different hat on long winter evenings.
J. On 5 September 2013 23:49, Peder Jakobsen <[hidden email]> wrote:
Jonathan Gray Director of Policy and Ideas | @jwyg Empowering through Open Knowledge okfn.org | @okfn | OKF on Facebook | Blog | Newsletter _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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On 2013-09-05, at 5:55 PM, Jonathan Gray <[hidden email]> wrote: And as a researcher in philosophy and the history of ideas when I'm not doing stuff with the Open Knowledge Foundation Ha! Now that's good because I'm actually just making stuff up as I go along. Seems to me that knowledge that really has an impact on the world are the difficult things that we must struggle with alone. Calculus is the perfect example: arguable no idea or piece of knowledge has had a bigger impact on the betterment of humanity, yet there is no data or information that provides a silver bullet that suddenly makes you understand how to use calculus to innovate. You must struggle with hundreds of progressive problems, as a set of tiny lightbulbs go off in your head from time to time. That eventually becomes useful knowledge. Cheers for now….. Peder :) _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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In reply to this post by David Eaves
On 13-09-05 08:50 PM, David Eaves
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The OD deals with the accessibility of the work only summarily in the first paragraph on "access", requiring the work to be available in a convenient and modifiable form. There's certainly a whole lot more which could be said here in terms of openness of the content as opposed to openness of the legal terms. For this reason, there's actually some preliminary talk right now on the OD list of splitting these out into two different definitions. If we go this route, I could envision an open content definition perhaps including things like provenance, archiving, metadata, APIs, adherence to open standards, etc. I'm sure there'll be a long period of discussion and review before crafting any such definition, but it'd be great to hear thoughts on what else such an open content definition should address. Kent _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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The OKNF has a role to play, they are popularizing the idea/vulgarise, and we need that, but we need not loose sight on the roots of open data, science and scientific research data and better & deeper definitions of open data. The OKNF is but one. On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Kent Mewhort <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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I don't know how the OKF causes any loss of sight. When you popularize an idea outside of ivory towers, some details are inevitably untransmitted, at least at first. It is impossible for a person who is new to an idea to immediately inherit all information about it. I consider the benefits of a large, broad, strong movement to outweigh any consequences arising from some members of that movement being less informed than others. The only alternative to overcoming the communication problem previously described is to not communicate broadly - i.e. keep the conversations in the ivory towers. If that were the case though, I, for one, would certainly have never heard of open data.
On 2013-09-06, at 9:48 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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In reply to this post by James McKinney-2
That is not what I mean James, sorry for not being clear, I think they are great, but they are the new kids on the block and it is a bit a historical. In terms of Ivory towers, I am more so referring to the fact that the Canadian Economy is still natural resource based, agriculture, R & D and services pretty much in that order. Meaning that the bulk of the data produced in Canada fall within science, environment, geomatics, biology, fisheries, hydrographic, geological, industrial research and so on, and that much much larger community of data producers and users are not adherents to the OKNF as they find them to not be rigorous enough or solid enough on things like metadata, interoperability, scalability, description, portals, standards, data discovery, preservation and so on. The 'big data' and the 'data science' folks pretty much bypass OKNF and what I call 'new' open data for these reasons. I love what the OKNF has done, it does really really good work, but it needs much more depth and rigour. The open data census is an example of a fantastic media savvy initiative, but it disseminated erroneous results because of this lack of methodological rigour, and at some point they will be called to task for that. The OKCon will be addressing this I hope as it is on the agenda. But false info about Canada was shared, scored and evaluated and that is problematic.Creative Commons which primarily was cultural products in the early days, had a similar issue until which time Science Commons and w/attribution became culturally acceptable. t On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 3:05 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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Just want to add a thought from a developers perspective. OKFN made it possible for me to start working in Open Data quickly and painlessly because of something very few organizations would have the patience and discipline to do properly; produce truly AMAZING TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION. Sorry for shouting, but I can't stress enough how important this is, no one has done this except OKFN.
Also, the vision and leadership that Rufus Pollock has provided is much appreciated. I have never met him, but I spend lots of time reading his documentation, his code and technical forum posts. It's rare to find someone who is both a "big ideas" thinker, but can also code in the trenches with the best of them, and his apparent tenacity has done more to move Open Data forward then anything else I've come across. Github has all the evidence. Sorry for gushing, but much respect from us coders out here. It's always best to gravitate to where the momentum is, and OKFN is steam engine rocketing full speed towards the future, afaik. Peder On 2013-09-06, at 10:19 AM, "Tracey P. Lauriault" <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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+1 Peder On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Peder Jakobsen <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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In reply to this post by Peder Jakobsen
I wouldn't say OKF is alone in providing quality technical documentation and resources. mySociety, Sunlight, Code for America and others [1] all have good docs. Depending on what sort of software you're writing, you'll end up mostly reading one group's code or another's. As with OKF's projects, the quality of the documentation varies according to the project's popularity.
James 1. Open North's public-reuse code is well documented as well. On 2013-09-06, at 10:44 AM, Peder Jakobsen wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
OKF has good connections with the research community in the EU. They are not insensitive to the issues. If the question is how the OKF can tie in better with the research community *in Canada*, then that's a worthwhile conversation. The OKF, like similar orgs, is a do-ocracy, so if you want things to change, it's best to get your hands dirty. You can only get so far criticizing an organization. I'm pretty sure the OKF has heard the complaints by now - I think it's time to adopt a different tactic. For instance, I've been contributing to several of their open specifications, writing patches for their software, maintaining datacatalogs.org, going to their conferences, speaking with them directly, participating on their lists, etc. because those activities align with my own priorities. (Same goes for other orgs I care about.) On 2013-09-06, at 10:19 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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Of course James. On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 4:35 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)
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Tracey, thank you for calling OKFN on the lack of rigor.
As you know, we (community members - civic accessers) benefit by reviewing methods so that we understand the findings. Being open to review is fundamental to science. Calling organizations on lack of rigor, and perhaps offering suggestions for refinement is also fundamental. What I find interesting about "false info about Canada was shared, scored and evaluated and that is problematic", is that within Canada, government can provide "false info" without being called to task for that. Government can withhold citations for quotes, and provide incorrect methods, and dismiss scientists for maintaining scientific standards (standards required for graduation from universities and required for government positions). Government generated findings, findings developed without peer-review, without rigor, and without providing correct methods, and quotes not sourced, can then be used to justify policy changes. Indeed, in Canada, methods provided to Finance Canada for an assessment of methods to be used for equalization payments were not the methods used to create the findings. Thankfully, there are alternatives to using government findings. With active and involved people, dedicated to rigor and evidence, and with the opportunity to review and contribute to refinement, we may avoid the problems that may come with unfounded policy-making (i.e. in BC 191 public schools were closed between 2001 and 2011 referring to incorrect methods). BC Statistics "disseminated erroneous results because of this " and I called them to task on the "lack of methodological rigour" (and was fired for insubordination for refusing to accept an "assessment" of an unspecified "behavioural problem" - namely calling them to task). Perhaps, at some point, other advocates of rigor, openness, correct methods, citations for quotes, will also call them to task. The Population Projection Project for Canada's census areas uses an easy to understand method (cohort change ratios), referring to open data (census counts) to provide verifiable age sex distribution projections. Your comments and refinements are welcome. Warren ps please participate in the Evidence for Democracy and Science rallies on September 16. The OKFN "disseminated erroneous results because of this lack of methodological rigour, and at some point they will be called to task for that." and " ... false info about Canada was shared, scored and evaluated and that is problematic." Are any civicaccessers interested in refining and promoting verifiable (rather than not verifiable) population (age /sex distributions) projections iewed, unpubliched ----- Original Message ----- From: Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> To: civicaccess discuss <[hidden email]> Sent: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 09:38:25 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] [Okfn-ca] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis) Of course James. On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 4:35 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote: > OKF has good connections with the research community in the EU. They are > not insensitive to the issues. > > If the question is how the OKF can tie in better with the research > community *in Canada*, then that's a worthwhile conversation. > > The OKF, like similar orgs, is a do-ocracy, so if you want things to > change, it's best to get your hands dirty. You can only get so far > criticizing an organization. I'm pretty sure the OKF has heard the > complaints by now - I think it's time to adopt a different tactic. For > instance, I've been contributing to several of their open specifications, > writing patches for their software, maintaining datacatalogs.org, going > to their conferences, speaking with them directly, participating on their > lists, etc. because those activities align with my own priorities. (Same > goes for other orgs I care about.) > > > On 2013-09-06, at 10:19 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote: > > That is not what I mean James, sorry for not being clear, I think they are > great, but they are the new kids on the block and it is a bit a > historical. In terms of Ivory towers, I am more so referring to the fact > that the Canadian Economy is still natural resource based, agriculture, R & > D and services pretty much in that order. Meaning that the bulk of the > data produced in Canada fall within science, environment, geomatics, > biology, fisheries, hydrographic, geological, industrial research and so > on, and that much much larger community of data producers and users are not > adherents to the OKNF as they find them to not be rigorous enough or solid > enough on things like metadata, interoperability, scalability, description, > portals, standards, data discovery, preservation and so on. The 'big data' > and the 'data science' folks pretty much bypass OKNF and what I call 'new' > open data for these reasons. > > I love what the OKNF has done, it does really really good work, but it > needs much more depth and rigour. The open data census is an example of a > fantastic media savvy initiative, but it disseminated erroneous results > because of this lack of methodological rigour, and at some point they will > be called to task for that. The OKCon will be addressing this I hope as it > is on the agenda. But false info about Canada was shared, scored and > evaluated and that is problematic. > > Creative Commons which primarily was cultural products in the early days, > had a similar issue until which time Science Commons and w/attribution > became culturally acceptable. > > A friend best explained OKNF to me, and I paraphrase, they are flexible > and agile and because they have only a few people doing an amazingly big > thing, some stuff gets missed. They are fantastic disruptor, which we > sorely need, but they will have to tighten up methods as their influence > grows and it is up to all of us to be critical and continue to critically > think and question and help them out. > > > I think what Kent put forward is really useful. > > Cheers > t > > > On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 3:05 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote: > >> I don't know how the OKF causes any loss of sight. When you popularize an >> idea outside of ivory towers, some details are inevitably untransmitted, at >> least at first. It is impossible for a person who is new to an idea to >> immediately inherit all information about it. I consider the benefits of a >> large, broad, strong movement to outweigh any consequences arising from >> some members of that movement being less informed than others. The only >> alternative to overcoming the communication problem previously described is >> to not communicate broadly - i.e. keep the conversations in the ivory >> towers. If that were the case though, I, for one, would certainly have >> never heard of open data. >> >> >> On 2013-09-06, at 9:48 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote: >> >> The OKNF has a role to play, they are popularizing the idea/vulgarise, >> and we need that, but we need not loose sight on the roots of open data, >> science and scientific research data and better & deeper definitions of >> open data. The OKNF is but one. >> >> >> On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Kent Mewhort <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >>> On 13-09-05 08:50 PM, David Eaves wrote: >>> >>> >>> Indeed, I agree that the OKFN definition does not deal as well as it >>> could with things like provenance and archiving (I think interoperability >>> and standards is open to some debate) but this is because it is almost >>> exclusively focused on the license. That is both its weakness and strength >>> - so depending on your perspective there is work that could be done to >>> improve it (I think it could be very much improved by incorporating more of >>> the 8 principles). That said, I would argue that this license component was >>> one piece that was largely missing prior to the recent surge in open data >>> starting around 2007. >>> >>> The OD deals with the accessibility of the work only summarily in the >>> first paragraph on "access", requiring the work to be available in a >>> convenient and modifiable form. There's certainly a whole lot more which >>> could be said here in terms of openness *of the content *as opposed to >>> openness *of the legal terms.* For this reason, there's actually some >>> preliminary talk right now on the OD list of splitting these out into two >>> different definitions. If we go this route, I could envision an open >>> content definition perhaps including things like provenance, archiving, >>> metadata, APIs, adherence to open standards, etc. >>> >>> I'm sure there'll be a long period of discussion and review before >>> crafting any such definition, but it'd be great to hear thoughts on what >>> else such an *open content *definition should address. >>> >>> Kent >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list >>> [hidden email] >>> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Tracey P. Lauriault >> http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/ >> https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault >> http://datalibre.ca/ >> _______________________________________________ >> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss >> > > > > -- > Tracey P. Lauriault > http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/ > https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault > http://datalibre.ca/ > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss > > > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss > -- Tracey P. Lauriault http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/ https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault http://datalibre.ca/ _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
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