Posted by
Michael Boyle on
May 17, 2006; 3:27am
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Re-Census-2006-statistics-tp583p598.html
This whole discussion has been extremely disappointing for a list
that I still hope will have some promise
1. The Census form is a tiny part of all government online
endeavours. No one here has presented any evidence that it is any way
representative of anything - especially nothing "further than we
target".
2. No one has made the case that a (certainly) quite ridiculous
browser requirement has anything to do with data accessibility later
on. Furthermore, there is no evidence that what happens on one side
of the census bears any relationship, online, to what comes out the
other end.
3. So before we get out the pitchforks and torches and storm the
castle, it might be worthwhile to try to understand what government
policy is related to open standards and how policies such as these
are made.
4. I read the pages on the Stats Can website closely and I don't see
that the information on the site has changed one bit. I don't
understand how this is a "victory"? The site always said that the JVM
was the issue.
5. A petition has to be presented TO someone. There is no single body
that makes this decision for the government. And if there were, it
would certainly not be in any position to ENFORCE the decision.
That's just not how government policy works.
6. The actual evidence of what the Canadian government IS doing that
is a GREAT deal more optimistic than the census. If there were a
central agency who decided this stuff for everyone, the Treasury
Board Secretariat would be it. Here's their take on this kind of
thing: "
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/ig-gi/index_e.asp". Note that they
can only recommend, not decide. Also note that there are at least 8
different laws and policies that have to be adhered to by every
government website. So though the census site decision might very
well have been faulty, that doesn't really mean that much.
So, please, can we move on to something more significant? Tracey has
been making great points about an important issue - data
accessibility later on - which seems much closer to the intent of
this list and the overall effort. And Michael has been trying to do
some interesting organizing of meetings and such.
Thanks.
Michael
On 16-May-06, at 4:04 PM, Stephane Guidoin wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
>> What about making the petition for "a policy for open standers for
>> Government of Canada websites and web delivered information"? We
>> could
>> site the census2006 as an example.
>>
>> Just a thought. I think that this serve the greater propose and
>> fits into
>> the CivicAccess mandate does it not.
>
> It's true and it's even an element that goes further than what we
> target. Our
> target (for the census for example), is more to have access to the
> data. I
> think some other groups focus more on the "open standard" question and
> obivously we should agree with them. But our task (to get public
> data... public
> !) is already vast not to take the risk to lose our focus.
_____________________________________________________________________
Michael Boyle www.mikel.org