Posted by
Michael Lenczner on
Feb 20, 2006; 10:28pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/public-announcement-draft-1-tp256p274.html
Here's draft version 0.98 of the public announcement.
Unless anyone has problems with it I would suggest that we use it.
I'll wait 24 hours for comments/suggestions.
------------------------------------
We would like to announce the launch of a new online space for
Canadian civic engagement - Citizens for Open Access to Civic
Information and Data (CivicAccess). CivicAccess is being founded by
librarians, civil servants, GIS and IT professionals, academics,
lawyers, open-source advocates, and community planners from across
Canada. We are motivated by the belief that open civic information
and data are necessary tools for being engaged citizens in an
"information society".
Our goals are:
1) to encourage all levels of government to make civic data freely
accessible in open formats and to work with them to help make that
happen.
2) to support projects that use new online technologies to enable
citizens to easily find and share public information and data as well
as to re-contextualize that information in ways that make it
meaningful to them.
Access to civic information and data help us make informed choices as
voters. In addition they help to ensure government transparency and
accountability - essential elements of a democracy. In addition these
are the bits and bytes required to understand, critically analyze, and
re-envision the communities in which we live.
As engaged citizens of our neighborhoods, cities, and provinces we are
working to develop a community of practice around open civic data in
Canada.
This is an idea whose time has come. Please join us in making it a reality!
signed:
Names
On 2/13/06, Stephane Guidoin <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> > Basically, yup. Hopefully we can get some of the biggies to blog it,
> > too. If someone wants to send it as a press release that would
> > probably be okay as well - I'm not a PR guy so I don't know if there's
> > any reason to try that.
> >
> > Anyone else have ideas?
> >
> >
> To me there's a difference between invitation and press release. Actual
> participants could send invitations to people they know. But it could
> be interesting to make a press release which is more an announcement
> than an invitation.
>
> For example Online Rights Canada made a press release (I copied it there
> after as a reminder). But obviously, we don't have the same target as
> ORC : we want people to be participants and not spectators.
>
> The text Mike sent might not have the right tone to be added on a
> website. But it's good when you make a invitation to someone you know.
> To me, only the first sentence really needs to be changed to make
> something more public and opened.
>
> Stef
<snip>