Last week saw the launch of a new biannual online journal called The Public Policy and Governance Review. Started by students and faculty from universities across Canada the journal seeks to inject some new ideas and thoughts into the public policy sphere.
I would argue that it already has.
Check out this paragraph from its “About Us” page.
The Public Policy and Governance Review is in the business of promoting ideas and is not interested in proprietary rights. We believe that authors deserve credit for their work and that using any intellectual material warrants referencing, but other than that, we hope that the ideas published in the PPGR disseminate well beyond the confines of this website. As such and as a matter of principle, the Public Policy and Governance Review uses a less-restrictive licensing agreement for publication than traditional copyright. We publish as much of the PPGR as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works license. This is a licensing agreement that relaxes some of the restrictions associated with traditional copyright and allows our readers to distribute material more easily. It allows authors’ works to be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes as long as the work is not modified and attribution is maintained.
Take note – these are Masters of Public Policy and Governance students and they have chosen to use a Creative Commons license – not copyright – for their journal. Note that they WANT others to re-post and comment on the material on blogs and other sites. This is a journal interested in using the most modern technology and legal tools to do what all journals start off wanting to do: initiating interesting conversation and spreading ideas.
This alone should make senior public servants take notice. If you are a senior public servant and you think debates over copyright don’t matter to you… your next hire (and ultimately, your successor) thinks differently.
Two additional asides:
First, for real copyright geeks that are wondering, yes I actually think they should have allowed attributed derivative works… since, well, all works are derivative works of something – nothing is completely original – but, well, one step at a time I suppose.
Second, before the launch of the first edition of the Public Policy and Governance Review the editors sat down and interviewed me on the future of the public service. You can read the interview here (pdf).
eaves.ca 
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This is more a comment on your interview than on the post, but I felt that I had a few things to to add to some of the talking points you brought up. 1. I think you're dead-on when you talk about “young people” (or more accurately, maybe just people geared towards new ways of sharing, creating, and communicating) who are interested in implementing ideas becoming frustrated with how slow government/bureaucracy tends to move when it comes to adopting new ideas. I spent some time with a provincial ministry working on a wiki-type model for information sharing, and even though there was a lot of support from just about every individual person I encountered, at every level, it remains that the number of meetings and consultations that need to be held prior to doing something is… if not discouraging, certainly not conducive to encouraging ideas that go outside the status quo, and as a result I'm a lot more keen on working with smaller organizations than something as unwieldy as provincial or federal government. And again, this despite the fact I was given a lot of encouragement from everyone inside the system.2. For a certain group of people, these discussions are going to happen with or without the implicit blessing of the overarching system. For my purposes, I was able to use Twitter and blogs such as your own to find people across the country who are involved in “government 2.0” projects and solicit information and advice. As more people used to communicating in this way enter the system, this trend is only going to grown. Government (and other organizations) would be well-served to recognize and embrace it.3. I continue to be struck by the differences between the political and bureaucratic branches of government when it comes to using new technology. It seems as if almost every MP and MLA has their own Twitter feed, and yet how many ministries are there using these methods to communicate their initiatives? Even something as simple as an RSS feed attached to a Twitter account and Facebook page would increase the likelihood that people find the information at a cost of what? The two hours it would take to set something like that up? I understand there are security concerns over what would be shared over these channels, but it misunderstands the technology. Any public servant *could* use Facebook to share confidential information, but then so could any public servant send that same information out to the media using email, or print off copies and leave them in a coffee shop. We need to abandon the assumption that people can no longer exercise judgment the minute a new method of communications comes along.Thanks… this blog is always in my “must-read” pile, even if I rarely contribute to the discussion.
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This is more a comment on your interview than on the post, but I felt that I had a few things to to add to some of the talking points you brought up. 1. I think you're dead-on when you talk about “young people” (or more accurately, maybe just people geared towards new ways of sharing, creating, and communicating) who are interested in implementing ideas becoming frustrated with how slow government/bureaucracy tends to move when it comes to adopting new ideas. I spent some time with a provincial ministry working on a wiki-type model for information sharing, and even though there was a lot of support from just about every individual person I encountered, at every level, it remains that the number of meetings and consultations that need to be held prior to doing something is… if not discouraging, certainly not conducive to encouraging ideas that go outside the status quo, and as a result I'm a lot more keen on working with smaller organizations than something as unwieldy as provincial or federal government. And again, this despite the fact I was given a lot of encouragement from everyone inside the system.2. For a certain group of people, these discussions are going to happen with or without the implicit blessing of the overarching system. For my purposes, I was able to use Twitter and blogs such as your own to find people across the country who are involved in “government 2.0” projects and solicit information and advice. As more people used to communicating in this way enter the system, this trend is only going to grown. Government (and other organizations) would be well-served to recognize and embrace it.3. I continue to be struck by the differences between the political and bureaucratic branches of government when it comes to using new technology. It seems as if almost every MP and MLA has their own Twitter feed, and yet how many ministries are there using these methods to communicate their initiatives? Even something as simple as an RSS feed attached to a Twitter account and Facebook page would increase the likelihood that people find the information at a cost of what? The two hours it would take to set something like that up? I understand there are security concerns over what would be shared over these channels, but it misunderstands the technology. Any public servant *could* use Facebook to share confidential information, but then so could any public servant send that same information out to the media using email, or print off copies and leave them in a coffee shop. We need to abandon the assumption that people can no longer exercise judgment the minute a new method of communications comes along.Thanks… this blog is always in my “must-read” pile, even if I rarely contribute to the discussion.
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