Posted by
Michael Lenczner on
Feb 13, 2006; 3:16am
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/public-announcement-draft-1-tp256.html
This is draft 1 of the letter that we will be asking you if you want
to support before it is released. It's basically the same as the
letter that Patrick, Tracey, Stef and I sent you as an invitation.
Please take a look over it and give feedback:
"We - the undersigned - would like to invite you to participate in a
new Canadian civic engagement space - Citizens for Open Access to
Civic Information and Data (aka: CivicAccess). CivicAccess is being
formed out of a belief that open civic information and data are
necessary for being an engaged citizen in an "information society". We
want to encourage the use of online technologies to enable citizens to
easily find public information and data and to develop policies to
make them freely accessible in open formats. This movement involves
people from different sectors (policy work, free/open source software,
social planning, data access, technology development, mapping, public
education, etc.).
As citizens of our neighborhoods, cities, and provinces we are trying
to contribute to the development of a larger community of practice
around open civic data in Canada. Access to civic information and data
help us make informed choices as voters as well as making government
more transparent and therefore accountable - essential elements of a
democracy. In addition these are the bits and bytes required to
re-imagine, re-envision, visualize and critically analyze the
communities we live in.
An email discussion list and a wiki with some draft content have been
created. A wiki is a collaborative web-based tool that will host
content and resources discussed on the list.
Please join the list and introduce yourselves, check out the wiki,
share your ideas and interests, add content, introduce activities and
projects that need support and discuss issues you think are important.
This is an idea whose time has come in Canada. Please join us in
making it a reality! "
http://www.civicaccess.ca/wiki/Launch/PublicAnnoucement