According to Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation:

The White Paper gestures at a world in which there is “presumption to publish” within government, and in which common standards and formats for publishing data online are adhered to. It also includes a commitment on the part of government fo provide public sector data for free “wherever appropriate and possible”.

The document, written by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, highlights the benfits of open data for society at large such as greater transparency and improved public services. The White Paper also explores the way in which open data can unlock economic potential by stimulating the creation of new tools and services.

The data to be released under the new plans will add to the 9,000 datasets already available via data.gov.uk, a data portal powered by the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open-source software CKAN.

Read more about this development on okfn.org.

• GovHack 2012 – winning mashups, data visualisations, and apps

Global

• UK Finch Group report on expanding access to published research
• UK GP data released

GovHack 2012 – winning mashups, data visualisations, and apps

Over 40 great mashups, data visualisations, and apps were submitted for GovHack 2012. The major prizes went to the following projects:

• A Day in the Life (best overall Digital Humanities Award). A Day in the Life brings together historical temperature and rainfall data, population and price index, and National Archives image metadata to enable users to see a point-in-time snapshot of what a chosen location looked like on a chosen date.
• Time Capsule (best overall Science Award). Time Capsule is an interactive data visualisation which allows users to see trends from 15 government datasets as well as correlations between them, such as any correlation between unemployment and suicide rates.
• History in ACTION (Best Benefit to the ACT Community Award). History in ACTION enables users to create their own customised tour exploring the history of Canberra, with photographs and historical information correlated to suburbs and bus routes.
• WeatheredOak (Best API development for government data sets). WeatheredOak is an interface which consolidates historical weather data to provide accessible temperature data from Australian weather stations from 1900 to 2011.
• OpenBudget (Best Open Government Award). OpenBudget is an open data series and online visualisation tool allowing users to see (and export data on) government expenditure by department and function.
• Photo Search (Best use of the Archives data set). Photo Search creates a new responsive and intuitive search interface for exploring the National Archives of Australia’s images from the past 200 years.
• Safe Route (Best use of Geoscience Australia data sets). Safe Route allows users to monitor bush fires in their region, alerts users in an emergency, assists them to find the safest route for evacuation taking into account closed roads and obstacles, and automatically notifies Emergency Services for rescue if a user has no open path for evacuation.

You can see all the major and minor prize winners and highly commended entries, read more about the submissions and the teams, and access the code from the mashups and apps created for GovHack at the GovHack website. Video of the event is also available at the GovHack website.

UK Finch Group report on expanding access to published research

The Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings released its report on 18 June. The report addresses the key policy question of how to promote the shift to open access and realise the benefits of the digital revolution to maximise efficiency, transparency, and innovation, while minimising the risks.

The report recommends a programme of action that should be taken in the UK to promote open access to research publications and communication of results to the public. Recommended actions for the government include setting a clear policy direction and moving toward a system in which the administrative costs of publishing papers in journals is met by public funds including by universities and research councils, not by readers, so that published research would be freely available to all. The final report is available here.

UK GP data released

Data from more than 8 000 General Practices in England has been published to help to improve standards for GPs and allow patients to make informed choices. The UK Department of Health will measure convenience in booking, wait time in reception before an appointment, opening hours, and whether the doctors and nurses are good listeners and give clear explanations. Each surgery will be rated out of 10 and the data will be available on the NHS Choices website. Potential patients will then be able to compare nearby practices and even find a surgery with experience in a certain area. The Guardian has published an article about this initiative here.

• Using Open Data workshop
• Open Data Research meeting report
• US Digital Government Strategy
• Open GLAM Obstacles to Opening Up Content and Data in the Cultural Heritage Sector
• OpenCorporates global lookup service
• Brazilian Government open data portal
• US access2research petition

Local

• Copyright in databases in Australia guide
• GovHack 2012 reminder

Using Open Data workshop

W3C and JRC-IPTS are running a workshop called ‘Using Open Data: policy modeling, citizen empowerment, data journalism’ as part of the EU-funded Crossover Project. It will be held on 19-20 June in Brussels. The workshop will explore how all the released data from local, national, and supranational governments is actually being used and how claims made about the potential of this open data can be made real. The main outcome expected is a greater understanding of how open data can be used to benefit a variety of audiences and what obstacles might be hindering exploitation of data.

The public is encouraged to participate by the means set out on the W3C website such as discussion lists. For example, anyone can participate in a W3C Community group or W3C Business Group. Information on these groups and how to sign up is available here.

Open Data Research meeting report

Open Data Research is a project being developed by the International Development Research Centre, World Wide Web Foundation, and the Berkman Center at Harvard. The Open Data Research (South) meeting recently brought together 20 policy-orientated academics to develop a research agenda designed to measure outcomes of open data programs and gather empirical evidence. The aim is to ensure that open government data programs foster openness, support citizens’ rights, and are inclusive.

The report from the meeting, entitled ‘Fostering a Critical Development Perspective on Open Government Data’, is now available.

Several other reports on these issues can be found in the special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics regarding community informatics and open government data. Articles include Some Observations on the Practice of Open Data as Opposed to Its Promise and Open Data: What the Citizens Really Want.

US Digital Government Strategy

The White House has released a strategy document, ‘Digital Government: Building a 21^st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People.’ The strategy complements other initiatives of the US Federal Government, such as major IT reform, which are aimed at building a government that works better for US citizens. The strategy incorporates input from cross-governmental working groups, government practitioners, the public, and private experts. The four principles under which objectives are grouped in the strategy are as follows: an information-centric approach, a shared platform approach, a customer-centric approach, and a platform of security and privacy.

Open GLAM Obstacles to Opening Up Content and Data in the Cultural Heritage Sector

An Open GLAM blog post by Sam Leon this week outlines the obstacles to opening up content and data in the cultural heritage sector based on feedback from institutions. The main obstacles are legal uncertainty, economic issues including the cost of digitisation, problems in controlling released content, and technical constraints. You can add information to the list of obstacles by commenting on the post or responding on the Open GLAM mailing list.

As the post states, other resources about this issue include the Europeana White Paper no. 2: The Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid and the JISC Guide to Open Bibliographic Data.

OpenCorporates global lookup service

OpenCorporates aims to build an openly licensed global database containing every corporate legal entity. Their recent blog post discusses their progress towards a global lookup service for corporate URI identifiers.

OpenCorporates also published in April the report into access to company data in Open Government Partnership countries, ‘The Closed World of Company Data.’ That report shows that Open Government Partnership countries generally allow little more than free online searching while some even charge for searches for companies and reiterates the importance of open access to company data.

Brazilian Government open data portal

The Brazilian Government has launched an open government data portal, which aims to open up government data and improve transparency and policy-making. As stated in Ankit Sharma’s blog post on the topic, the portal includes 78 datasets and 849 resources available for reuse.

US access2research petition

The US access2reseach petition requests that the White House mandate open access to publicly funded scientific research. The petition is now approaching its goal of 25 000 signatures within 30 days and if the petition reaches this goal, the White House must give an official response to the request.

Anyone over the age of 13 can sign the petition here (you do not need to be a US resident). The access2research campaign website has further information on this cause.

Copyright in databases in Australia guide

A new short guide to copyright in databases under Australian law written by Natasha Dwyer and Professor Anne Fitzgerald is available here. It discusses when a factual compilation may be protected under copyright law in Australia with reference to recent cases concerning the originality test. This guide was written for inclusion in the Open Data Handbook.

GovHack 2012 reminder

GovHack 2012 is on this weekend 1-3 June in Sydney and Canberra. Teams can still register here. Data that can be reused and mashed up includes over 1 000 datasets available at www.data.gov.au as well as data from Geoscience Australia such as the National Elevation Data Framework and CSIRO biodiversity information from the Atlas of Living Australia.

More information is available on the GovHack website and in our previous blog post about GovHack 2012.

• World Bank Open Access event materials
• UK Open Data Institute launched
• European Commission announces its Google investigation concerns

Local news

• New Australian Privacy Principles

World Bank Open Access event materials

The liveblog and video archive from the World Bank Open Access event are now available here. This includes useful answers to the public’s questions about the workings of the World Bank’s Open Access Policy and Repository and generally about the benefits of open access. Discussion continues on Twitter @WBPubs.

An unofficial summary of the proceedings can be viewed here. The event tied into the ongoing push for all scholarly research to be available for free online in a text-mineable form. The Guardian published an article on the need for publishers to enable text mining this week and this has also been a popular topic for discussion on the OKFN Open Access mailing list and Open Science mailing list.

UK Open Data Institute

The UK Open Data Institute has been launched with an aim to establish a leading centre to nurture and promote new exploitations of open data and mentor new businesses who wish to exploit open data for innovation and economic growth. The Institute’s Implementation Plan and Business Plan have been published on their website along with a presentation by Nigel Shadbolt and Tim Berners-Lee about open data and the Institute’s planned operations.

The Google investigation

The European Commission has released an announcement about its investigation into Google’s business practices. The concerns identified were the following:

• Manipulation of search results in favour of Google’s own services;
• Copying of content from competitors’ websites; and
• Google AdWords exclusivity agreements and restrictions on portability, which prevent content from advertisements on Google being used on other platforms.

The European Commission has requested that Google present an outline of remedies to address these concerns in a matter of weeks. This response raises a question for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as to how problematic the above issues are for competition in Australia given Google’s market share in Australia.

An Australian investigation into Google’s practices would follow the ACCC’s finding from earlier this year that Google had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct. The misleading conduct in that case involved publishing advertisements on Google’s search results page that used a business or product name of a competitor’s business but the headline actually linked to an advertiser’s website which the business was not affiliated with. The ACCC’s summary of this decision can be found here.

New Australian Privacy Principles

The Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill 2012 (Cth) (available here) was introduced into Parliament on 23 May. The Bill represents the first stage of the Government’s implementation of many of the recommendations set out in the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report ‘For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice’.

In the second reading speech, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon pointed out that “[i]n an online world, we are increasingly sharing our personal information on social networking sites and paying our bills and buying footy tickets over the internet.” The changes aim to better protect personal information, simplify credit reporting arrangements, and introduce new enforcement powers for the Privacy Commissioner to conduct investigations and promote compliance. It will require some organisations to modify their privacy policies to include information such as whether the organisation is likely to disclose personal information overseas.

The Bill introduces into the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) the new Australian Privacy Principles, which are set out in five parts:

1. Principles that require entities to consider the privacy of personal information and manage personal information in an open way. For example, individuals must have the option of dealing with an organisation anonymously wherever practicable.
2. Principles that deal with the collection of solicited and unsolicited personal information. For example, when an entity collects personal information, it must make the individual aware of how and why the personal information will be collected and how the information will be dealt with.
3. Principles which set out the circumstances in which entities may use or disclose personal information and government related identifiers. These principles will also tighten regulation of direct marketing and disclosure of personal information outside Australia and afford more protection to sensitive information including biometric data.
4. Principles about the integrity, quality, and security of personal information. For example, entities must take steps which are reasonable in the circumstances to protect personal information from misuse, interference, and loss. ‘Interference’ would include an attack on a computer system.
5. Principles that make it easier for consumers to access personal information and request correction of that information.

Several definitions in s 6(1) of the Privacy Act would also be updated:

• ‘Personal information’ would be updated to implement the ALRC’s Recommendation, bring the definition in line with international standards, and ensure the definition is flexible and technology-neutral. ‘Personal information’ is defined in the Bill as “information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable whether  the information or opinion is true or not and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.” The Government has encouraged the development of guidelines on the meaning of ‘identified or reasonably identifiable.’

• ‘Record’ would be amended to include a reference to “an electronic or other device” to ensure the definition can encompass new methods of information storage in the future.
• ‘Generally available publication’ would be modified to state that a publication is ‘generally available’ even if payment of a fee is required to access it and this can include material available electronically.

Subsection 5B(3) of the Privacy Act would also be amended to clarify that the Privacy Act can operate extra-territorially if the organisation has “an Australian link”. The Explanatory Memorandum state that an organisation which collects information from an individual physically located in Australia via a website hosted outside of Australia and owned by a foreign corporation would be included. Entities with an online presence in Australia who collect personal information from people who are physically in Australia carry on a business in Australia.

The second stage will proceed when the first stage reforms have progressed further. This second stage will cover issues such as the clarification of exemptions from the Privacy Act and a scheme for compulsory notification of serious breaches.

• GovHack 2012
• Crowdsourced crisis mapping

Global news

• World Bank Open Access event
• Visualisations of Shakespeare plays
• CODATA conference

GovHack 2012

GovHack 2012 challenges teams of programmers and designers to develop solutions to the problem of how government data can be better used to benefit the Australian public. There are prizes and grants worth over $30 000 to be won.

The GovHack 2012 website recognises that governments collect huge amounts of data but often fail to release that data in an engaging and useable form. GovHack is designed to bring together people from government, industry, academia, and the general public to remix government data. Data from sites including data.gov.au and Australian Bureau of Statistics can be used to make apps, data mash-ups, and data visualisations. Some new data sets have been released for the event including environment and weather data from the Bureau of Meteorology and data about history and citizens from the National Archives.

Chief organiser Pia Waugh notes that GovHack is a unique opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of open data and generate ideas for how government can improve access to and better use the wealth of information it has. Terms of the event include that the resulting content must be licensed under CC BY and the resulting code must be made available under an open license that allows reuse, commercial use, and redistribution. Waugh promises that the output of GovHack will be used to improve government services and government management of data. Waugh states that supporters (which include Google and Adobe) have contributed funding on the expectation that there will be ongoing outcomes from the ideas generated and works produced at this event.

GovHack will be held in Canberra and Sydney from 1-3 June and is a part of APS Innovation Week, which will take place from 2-8 June supported by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science, and Research. Teams should register at the GovHack 2012 website.

Mashups from previous GovHack events can be viewed at Mash Up Australia. Winning entries in the past have included Know Where You Live and Suburban Trends, which provide different demographic information and apparent safety levels for Australian suburbs; geo2gov, which maps Australian locations to government jurisdictions, electorates, representatives, and location definitions for census purposes; and In Their Honour, which is a searchable database of 100,000 service men and women who fought and died for Australia including service records, burial locations, and a Timemap of WWI photographs.

You can share your thoughts on GovHack on Twitter (#govhack), Flickr (tagged govhack), and on the govcampau wiki.

Crowdsourced crisis mapping

Dr Marta Poblet and Professor Pompeu Casanovas have written a news article on how crowdsourced crisis mapping works and why it is important. Crisis mapping provides geolocated visualisations of data and allows filtering, categorisation, and analysis of the information. Crowdsourced crisis mapping uses the flows of information through social media to provide real-time, open access, geolocated data. The Standby Task Force, with which Dr Poblet is involved, monitors social media for information on specific crises, categorises and verifies this information, then collates and maps it.

Dr Poblet and Professor Casanovas from Spain’s Autonomous University of Barcelona are currently working with Professor John Zeleznikow at Victoria University on further uses of this crowdsourcing technology.

World Bank Open Access event

The World Bank is hosting an event in Washington DC on Monday 21 May to discuss their new Open Access policy as well as their new Open Knowledge Repository and their adoption of Creative Commons licences. Topics will include how Open Access can contribute to eliminating poverty and how the World Bank’s policy and repository will benefit users. Special guests include Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, and Professor Michael Carroll, a founding board member of Creative Commons. The event will be broadcast live in English, Spanish, and French. It is also possible submit questions now by following this link.

Visualisations of Shakespeare plays

The Science of Shakespeare (created by Pat Lockley) is a collection of computer-generated images based on different ways of analysing Shakespeare’s plays. These provide new perspectives on the plays by showing, for example, who interacts with whom over the course of a particular play.

Blog posts about these visualisations and the process of producing them can be viewed at Open Shakespeare. Open Shakespeare also provides Shakespeare’s plays and annotations of them, which are free to reuse and redistribute.

CODATA Conference

The 23^rd International CODATA Conference – Open Data and Information for a Changing Planet will be held in Taipei from 28-31 October. The conference will look at the importance of open data for disseminating research, particularly in data-intensive scientific fields, and for providing solutions to pressing global problems such as climate change and population pressure. Calls for abstracts and sessions close on 15 June. You can also keep up with news about this event on Twitter.

Global news

–       The first annual Open Government Partnership conference was held in Brasilia on 17-18 April 2012 and brought together over fifty governments as well as representatives of civil society and multilateral organisations. The aim was to showcase progress in open knowledge and formally present the commitments of the Open Government Partnership to encourage collaboration and exchange of best practice in the field of open government. Topics for discussion included leading open government, open data, and access to information processes as well as strategies for transparency and public engagement such as open data portals, e-petitions, and government-sponsored competitions. Videos of the proceedings are available here.

–       Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has been appointed to advise the UK Government on how to better engage with the public and open up policy-making. One of the initiatives Jimmy Wales will assist with is the Research Councils UK £2m Gateway to Research project. This project aims to enforce the government’s open access policy and implement sustainable methods to make all publicly funded UK research available online under a CC BY licence in a form able to be text-mined and re-used. The independent Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings is currently exploring how research can be made more accessible and will propose a programme of action for the government, research funders, publishers, and policy makers (further information on the group and minutes from their meetings are available here). A speech by the Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willets, regarding this initiative is available here.

–       Recent developments in open licensing of data include the following:

• The Austrian Government has released much of the data in its open data portal under a CC BY licence;
• The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research has published its data collection about schools, students, and teachers under a CC BY licence (all data from Italy’s National Institute of Statistics is also already licensed under CC BY);
• Harvard Library has released almost all of its catalog records into the public domain under its Open Metadata Policy; and
• The World Bank has announced its Open Access Policy making CC BY the default licence for all of its publications, which can be viewed in its Open Knowledge Repository.

Local news

–       The Australian Government has recommended that public sector information be released free of charge under a CC BY Australian licence by default under the Australian Government Intellectual Property Manual.

–       The Brisbane City Council is running a hack::Brisbane competition, which allows anyone to use the Council’s datasets to create useful, new applications, websites, or tools. There is a $10 000 prize for the overall best app or website and for the app or website that best contributes to making Brisbane’s facilities and services more inclusive and accessible. The closing date is coming up on 18 May 2012 and there are already great submissions in the gallery. This builds on the Brisbane City Council’s HackFest last year, which was a mini-version of the current competition. One winning app allowed users to locate details of the closest public toilet, while the other winning app provided users with up-to-date information about nearby accessible venues. These competitions show what can be achieved with the 800 government datasets available at www.data.gov.au.

–       Gov2Qld held an event to discuss a vision for Open Data in Queensland. It was great to see that there is a community of committed and enthusiastic individuals from Government, education, not for profit, and private sectors, working towards opening up government and other data to benefit us all. There was consensus that opening up data means much more than dumping datasets online and that what might be most needed for open data to become a reality is a change in attitude. Developments which the group discussed included

• The Wikidata project, which aims to create an editable, linked open data repository of facts about the world and sources for them;
• The use of CC BY for materials of the Australian Electoral Commission and the World Bank;
• The problems that arose from inadequate government data-sharing during the Queensland floods; and
• Developments in the UK in the realm of open data and how Australia might be able to make similar progress in this field.

We look forward to discussing these developments and ongoing news with those interested in open knowledge in Australia.

If you know of any open knowledge developments which you would like to publish a blog post about; any relevant events, activities, or initiatives you would like to share; or even any relevant pictures that could be added to the site, please feel free to contact us here or join and contribute to the discussion list at http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-au.