eaves.ca

I like it. Keep these great posts coming!

Well said! This fits right along the three layer breakdown of an open platform: http://topplabs.org/civichacker/2009/09/the-roo…

You might also be interested in:

* http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-gov-data-20090908/
* http://blip.tv/file/2664587
* http://www.acq.osd.mil/ats/opensyst.htm
* http://www.opengovdata.org/ (more on the 8 principles)

Yeah, I don't like 'play' either. Sounds like gaming, or other pursuits related to leisure time. Public officials I know would switch to 'off' with that term among the three.
'Use' works, or what about 'build'?
Find, build, share.
Or, 'add value'.

Hi, I'm a government employee, although I'm commenting purely on my own behalf. I was sitting in the back of the room during that panel discussion earlier this week, and I definitely think you've got some great ideas. As someone who spent a lot of time doing academic research, I think the idea of making government data sets available and ready-to-use (whatever that use may be) is excellent. And more interactivity certainly can't hurt in getting more people our age (I'm guessing you're like me, mid-to-late twenties?) to really engage with their government.

That said, may I suggest you modify your message a bit if you truly want to sell it to government? If you believe that the public service is behind the techno-curve, then it would follow that you shouldn't be speaking to public servants in techno-jargon and buzzwords. The language you use in your “Three Rules” is, I'm sure, second nature to the tech-savvy. However, to an audience that is (or that you believe to be) less knowledgeable, it would make sense to explain your terms at what to you probably seems like an absurdly basic level. What do “spidering” and “indexing” mean in the online context? What do you mean by “open and machine readable format”? (Your example of the Vancouver city government's open data helped make that part more understandable, although I would still be careful assuming everyone knows what an “.xml” does. A lot of people in that room only know “indexing” in the context of library shelves.)

This may seem ridiculous to you, but not everyone with a computer has to know how to program, just as not everyone with a car needs to be a mechanic, and not everyone who flies needs to be a pilot. I'm your age and I'm a techno-peasant by that standard. Now consider the age of the average public servant, especially the ones whose knowledge and experience you're most hoping to capture before they retire…I'm not saying you don't have good ideas, but you need to put them in really plain language with a lot of explanation if you want to convince government generally of how good they are.

There's a good discussion of this issue here: http://spaghettitesting.ca/2008/11/06/gcpedia-w…

One other tip for presenting to government people: be very careful about using the word “literally”. If information can't be found, then yes, it *might as well* not exist, it *is as good as if* it does not exist…but unless the failure of, say, a hard copy book to register in a Google search causes that book to spontaneously dematerialize from a library shelf, it does not “literally* cease to exist. This may seem nit-picky, and I'll confess that to some extent it is, but I guarantee you I'm not the only person in the room who noticed. There were a lot of bright, educated people there, and if you're misusing words they do understand, they're more likely to write off your great claims about new technology that they don't.

As someone who *wants* to see our institutional memory captured and preserved, and our government as open and responsive as possible, I wish you luck!

Hi David. Like Richard, I concur that this is an excellent piece and that I'm a bit disappointed in your interpretation of “open and machine readable format”. For full effect, this law should embrace open standards so that access to the information isn't dependent upon the purchase of any particular corporation's software. A “machine readable format” isn't of much use, if your machine lacks the software to read the proprietary format, and the value of that format is questionable when it has a history of successive, incompatible revisions (necessitating additional software upgrades to be able to read the current generation of format). Using open formats like OpenDocument (for documents) and Ogg (for audio and video) makes the data truly accessible to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for software. Thank you for all that you're doing. These posts, and the discussions they provoke are immensely valuable.

Great post. For what it's worth, we use 'find, share and use' at http://www.digitalnz.org to cover off your three points.

Thank you Todd – I'm a big believer in posting files and data in multiple formats.

There are open standards and then there are defacto standards – I'm not such a ideologue that I believe things should only be available in open standards (e.g. ODF or Ogg) but that they should be available in both (so am in complete agreement with you). That said, I know this line might make some more ardent open standard folks unhappy but the fact is, a huge number of people have no idea what an ODF is and wouldn't know how to open it, so we've got to give them open standards and standards they use.

Andy – I'm a huge fan of your site.

Well, here's my spanish translation of your three laws. This hasn't been proof read by a native speaker yet. Maybe you should set up a wiki or something so that people can fix my mistakes, add the other languages, and translate the rest of the blog post. I think translating the blog post would be a lot easier than the laws, by the way.

Las Tres Leyes de Información de Gobierno Abierto:

1. Si no es accesible para las arañas de web, no existe.
2. Si no es disponible en un formato que puede ser leído y procesado con éxito por una computadora, no puede motivar.
3. Si un framework legal no permitir alguien para hacer obras derivadas, no da poder.

I really like the sentiment but not convinced on the detail, for example

1. If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
I take this to mean you want to capture these data in a search engine. Now, pointers to data, I would agree. But the data itself – can you categorically say that all data must be able to be captured in a search engine? That's might be google's view on the world, but I suspect that there are some things with DO exist but which are not suitable for catpure in a search engine..

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