Announcing Open Government Records

Posted by Mark Weiler on Dec 08, 2008; 6:17pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Announcing-Open-Government-Records-tp1457.html

Announcing: Open Government Records
 
I've developed a website/software called Open Government Records (OGR). It's designed to support groups of people to share the text of freedom of information requests and responsive records.

OGR is a plugin for the Open Journal System (OJS; http://pkp.sfu.ca/) which is an open source academic journal publishing software. For OGR, the central metaphor is a FOI Journal and the idea is groups of people can make their own journal and publish FOI requests in them. A FOI Journal can associated to an organization (akin to WhatDoTheyKnow.com) or a theme that spans multiple public bodies (e.g., renewable energy).

It's designed as a research technology and intended for academic researchers, however, I'm sure it could be used by a range of groups and people. It's designed within the Canadian legal context and so there's things that OGR can't do that WhatDoTheyKnow.com can do (e.g., in Canada almost all correspondence between the applicant and public body is via mail -- although we can ask for the responsive records to be mailed in electronic format).

It's still in development, but if you did wanted to take a look, it's here:

http://opengovernmentrecords.net/ogr/

Feedback is welcome and would be appreciated. Much thanks to the PKP/OJS groups.

Mark Weiler