Category Archives: public policy

Wikileaks and the coming conflict between closed and open

I’ve been thinking about wikileaks ever since the story broke. Most of the stories – like those written by good friends like Taylor Owen and Scott Gilmore are pieces very much worth reading but I think miss the point about wikileaks and/or assess it on their own terms and thus fail to understand what wikileaks is actually about and what it is trying to do. We need to be clear in our understanding, and thus the choices we are about to confront.

However, before you read anything I write there are smarter people out there – two in particular – who have said things that I’m not reading anywhere else. The first is Jay Rosen (key excerpt below) whose 15 minutes Pressthink late night video on the subject is brilliant and the second is by zunguzungu piece Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government” (key excerpt further below) is a cool and calculated dissection of wikileaks goals and its intentions. I’ve some thoughts below, but these two pieces are, in my mind, the most important things you can read on the subject and strongly inform my own piece (much, much further below). I know that this is all very long, and that many of you won’t have the patience, but I hope that what I’ve written and shared below is compelling enough to hold your attention, I certainly think it is important enough.

Jay Rosen:

While we have what purports to be a “watchdog press” we also have, laid out in front of us, the clear record of the watchdog press’s failure to do what is says it can do, which is to provide a check on power when it tries to conceal its deeds and its purpose. So I think it is a mistake to reckon with Wikileaks without including in the frame the spectacular failures of the watchdog press over the last 10, 20, 40 years, but especially recently. And so, without this legitimacy crisis in mainstream American journalism, the leakers might not be so inclined to trust Julian Assange and a shadowy organization like Wikileaks. When the United States is able to go to war behind a phony case, when something like that happens and the Congress is fooled and a fake case is presented to the United Nations and war follows and 100,000s of people die and the stated rationale turns out to be false, the legitimacy crisis extends from the Bush government itself to the American state as a whole and the American press and the international system because all of them failed at one of the most important things that government by consent can do: which is reason giving. I think these kind of huge cataclysmic events within the legitimacy regime lie in the background of the Wikileaks case, because if wasn’t for those things Wikileaks wouldn’t have the supporters it has, the leakers wouldn’t collaborate the way that they do and the moral force behind exposing what this government is doing just wouldn’t be there.

This is one of the things that makes it hard for our journalists to grapple with Wikileaks. On the one hand they are getting amazing revelations. I mean the diplomatic cables tell stories of what it is like to be inside the government and inside international diplomacy that anyone who tries to understand government would want to know. And so it is easy to understand why the big news organizations like the New York Times and The Guardian are collaborating with Wikileaks. On the other hand they are very nervous about it because it doesn’t obey the laws of the state and it isn’t a creature of a given nation and it is inserting itself in-between the sources and the press. But I think the main reason why Wikileaks causes so much insecurity with our journalists is because they haven’t fully faced the fact that the watchdog press they treasure so much died under George W. Bush. It failed. And instead of rushing to analyze this failure and prevent it from happening ever again – instead of a truth and reconciliation commission-style effort that could look at “how did this happen” – mostly what our journalists did, with a few exceptions, is they moved on to the next story. The watchdog press died. And what we have is Wikileaks instead. Is that good or is that bad? I don’t know, because I’m still trying to understand what it is.

Zunguzungu:

But, to summarize, he (Assange) begins by describing a state like the US as essentially an authoritarian conspiracy, and then reasons that the practical strategy for combating that conspiracy is to degrade its ability to conspire, to hinder its ability to “think” as a conspiratorial mind. The metaphor of a computing network is mostly implicit, but utterly crucial: he seeks to oppose the power of the state by treating it like a computer and tossing sand in its diodes…

…The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

– zunguzungu

Almost all the media about wikileaks has, to date, focused on the revelations about what our government actually thinks versus what it states publicly. The bigger the gap between internal truth and external positions, the bigger the story.

This is, of course, interesting stuff. But less discussed and more interesting is our collective reaction to wikileaks. Wikileaks is drawing a line, exposing a fissure in the open community between those who believe in overturning current “system(s)” (government and international) and those who believe that the current system can function but simply needs greater transparency and reform.

This is why placing pieces like Taylor Owen and Scott Gilmore‘s against zunguzungu’s is so interesting. Ultimately both Owen and Gilmore believe in the core of the current system – Scott explicitly so, arguing how secrecy in the current system allows for human right injustices to be tackled. Implicit in this, of course, is the message that this is how they should be tackled. Consequently they both see wikileaks as a failure as they (correctly) argue that its radical transparency will lead to a more closed and ineffective governments. Assange would likely counter that Scott’s effort address systems and not cause and may even reinforce the international structures that help foster hunan rights abuses. Consequently Assange’s core value of transparency, which at a basic level Owen and Gilmore would normally identify with, becomes a problem.

This is interesting. Owen and Scott believe in reform, they want the world to be a better place and fight (hard) to make it so. I love them both for it. But they aren’t up for a complete assault on the world’s core operating rules and structures. In a way this ultimately groups them (and possibly me – this is not a critique of Scott and Taylor whose concerns I think are well founded) on the same side of a dividing line as people like Tom Flanagan (the former adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister who half-jokingly called for Assange to be assassinated) and Joe Liberman (who called on companies that host material related to wikileaks to sever their ties with them). I want to be clear, they do not believe Assange should be assassinated but they (and possibly myself) do seem to agree that his tactics are a direct threat to the functioning of system that I think they are arguing needs to be reformed but preserved – and so see wikileaks as counterproductive.

My point here is that I want to make explicit the choices wikileaks is forcing us to make. Status quo with incremental non-structural reform versus whole hog structural change. Owen and Gilmore can label wikileaks a failure but in accepting that analysis we have to recognize that they view it from a position that believes in incremental reform. This means you believe in some other vehicle. And here, I think we have some tough questions to ask ourselves. What indeed is that vehicle?

This is why I think Jay Rosen’s piece is so damn important. One of the key ingredients for change has been the existence of the “watchdog” press. But, as he puts it (repeated from above):

I think it is a mistake to reckon with Wikileaks without including in the frame the spectacular failures of the watchdog press over the last 10, 20, 40 years, but especially recently. And so, without this legitimacy crisis in mainstream American journalism, the leakers might not be so inclined to trust Julian Assange and a shadowy organization like Wikileaks. When the United States is able to go to war behind a phony case, when something like that happens and the Congress is fooled and a fake case is presented to the United Nations and war follows and 100,000s of people die and the stated rationale turns out to be false, the legitimacy crisis extends from the Bush government itself to the American state as a whole and the American press and the international system because all of them failed at one of the most important things that government by consent can do: which is reason giving.

the logical conclusion of Rosen’s thesis is a direct challenge to those of us who are privileged enough to benefit from the current system. As ugly and imperfect as the current system may be Liberman, Flanagan, Owen and Gilmore and, to be explicit, myself, benefit from that system. We benefit from the status quo. Significantly. Dismantling the world we know carries with it significant risks, both for global stability, but also personally. So if we believe that Assange has the wrong strategy and tactics we need to make the case, both to ourselves, to his supporters, to those who leak to wiki leaks and to those on the short end of the stick in the international system about how it is the reform will work and how it is that secrecy and power will be managed for the public good.

In this regard the release of wikileak documents is not a terrorist event, but it is as much an attack on the international system as 9/11 was. It is a clear effort to destabilize and paralyze the international system. It also comes at a time when confidence in our institutions is sliding – indeed Rosen argues that this eroding confidence feeds wikileaks.

So what matters is how we react. To carry forward (the dangerous) 9/11 analogy, we cannot repeat the mistakes of the Bush administration. Then our response corrupted the very system we sought to defend, further eroded the confidence in institutions that needed support and enhanced our enemies – we attacked human rights, civil liberties, freedom of speech and prosecuted a war that killed 100,000s of innocent lives on the premise of manufactured evidence.

Consequently, our response to the current crises can’t be to close up governments and increase secrecy. This will strengthen the hands of those who run wikileaks and cause more public servants and citizens to fear the institutions wikileaks and look for alternatives… many of whoe will side with wikileaks and help imped the capacity of the most important institution in our society to respond to everyday challenges.

As a believer in open government and open data the only working option to us to do the opposite. To continue to open up these institutions as the only acceptable and viable path to making them more credible. This is not to say that ALL information should be made open. Any institution needs some private place to debate ideas and test unpopular theses. But at the moment our governments – more through design and evolution than conspiracy – enjoy far more privacy and secrecy than the need. Having a real and meaningful debate about how to change that is our best response. In my country, I don’t see that debate happening. In the United States, I see it moving forward, but now it has more urgency. Needless to say, I think all of this gives new weigh to my own testimony I’ll be making before the parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

I still hope the emerging conflict between open and closed can be won without having to resort to the types of tactics adopted by wikileaks. But for those of use who believe it, we had better start making the case persuasively. The responses of people like Flanagan and Liberman remind me of Bush after 9/11 “you are either with us, or with the terrorists.” Whether intentionally or unintentionally, an analogous response will create a world in which power and information are further removed from the public and will lead to the type of destabilizing change Assange wants.

I’m bound to write more on this – especially around wikileaks, open data and transparency that I think some authors unhelpfully conflate but this post is already long enough and I’m sure most people haven’t even reached a place where they’ll be reading this.

Opening up parliament and getting government IT right

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Last week I received two invitations to present.

The first was an invitation to present to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. They are preparing a report on Open Government and would like me to make a short presentation and then answer questions for a couple of hours. This is a ways out but obviously I’m treating it with a significant amount of seriousness – so if you have thoughts or comments on things you think I should share, please feel free to ping me or comment below.

(Speaking of parliament… as an aside, I want again to let developers there know that through some engagement I’ve been having with the parliamentary IT staff they’ve informed me they will be releasing a number of data sets in January including the Hansard.)

Second is, next week, I’ll be at the United Nations as part of the Expert Group Meeting on the 2012 e-Government Survey: Towards a More Citizen-Centric Approach. My main goal here is to stop getting governments to compare themselves to one another on how “successful” they are in delivering services and information online. With a few notable exceptions, most government websites are at best functional at worst, unnavigable. Consequently, comparing themselves to one another allows them to feel like all is okay, when really they are collectively trapped in a world of design mediocrity.

Yes, they aren’t pretty words, but someone has to say them.

So any thoughts on this subject are welcome as well.

More soon on the hackathon and the census.

Launching datadotgc.ca 2.0 – bigger, better and in the clouds

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Back in April of this year we launched datadotgc.ca – an unofficial open data portal for federal government data.

At a time when only a handful of cities had open data portals and the words “open data” were not being even talked about in Ottawa, we saw the site as a way to change the conversation and demonstrate the opportunity in front of us. Our goal was to:

Be an innovative platform that demonstrates how government should share data.
Create an incentive for government to share more data by showing ministers, public servants and the public which ministries are sharing data, and which are not.
Provide a useful service to citizens interested in open data by bringing it all the government data together into one place to both make it easier to find.

In every way we have achieved this goal. Today the conversation about open data in Ottawa is very different. I’ve demoed datadotgc.ca to the CIO’s of the federal government’s ministries and numerous other stakeholders and an increasing number of people understand that, in many important ways, the policy infrastructure for doing open data already exists since datadotgc.ca show the government is already doing open data. More importantly, a growing number of people recognize it is the right thing to do.

Today, I’m pleased to share that thanks to our friends at Microsoft & Raised Eyebrow Web Studio and some key volunteers, we are taking our project to the next level and launching Datadotgc.ca 2.0.

So what is new?

In short, rather than just pointing to the 300 or so data sets that exist on federal government websites members may now upload datasets to datadotg.ca where we can both host them and offer custom APIs. This is made possible since we have integrated Microsoft’s Azure cloud-based Open Government Data Initiative into the website.

So what does this mean? It means people can add government data sets, or even mash up government data sets with their own data to create interest visualization, apps or websites. Already some of our core users have started to experiment with this feature. London Ontario’s transit data can be found on Datadotgc.ca making it easier to build mobile apps, and a group of us have taken Environment Canada’s facility pollution data, uploaded it and are using the API to create an interesting app we’ll be launching shortly.

So we are excited. We still have work to do around documentation and tracking some more federal data sets we know are out there but, we’ve gone live since nothing helps us develop like having users and people telling us what is, and isn’t working.

But more importantly, we want to go live to show Canadians and our governments, what is possible. Again, our goal remains the same – to push the government’s thinking about what is possible around open data by modeling what should be done. I believe we’ve already shifted the conversation – with luck, datadotgc.ca v2 will help shift it further and faster.

Finally, I can never thank our partners and volunteers enough for helping make this happen.

The Open Data Debate Arrives in Ottawa

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The Liberals are promising to create an open data portal – opendata.gc.ca – much like President Obama has done in the United States and both Gordon Brown and David Cameron have done in the United Kingdom.

It’s a savvy move.

In May 2010 when it launched a public consultation on the Digital Economy, the government invited the public to submit proposals and vote on them. Two of the top three most voted ideas involved asking the government to open up access to government collected data. Three months after the submissions have closed it appears the opposition has decided to act on Canadians wishes and release a 21st century open government strategy that reflects these popular demands.

Today, at 1pm EST, I’ve discovered the Liberals will announce that, if elected, they will adopt a government-wide directive in which “the default position for all departments and agencies will be for the release of information to the public, both proactively and responsively, after privacy and other legal requirements are met.”

There is much that both ordinary citizens and advocates of greater government transparency will like in the proposal. Not only have the Liberals mirrored the most aggressive parts of President Obama’s transparency initiatives they are also promising some specific and aggressive policies of their own. In addition to promising to launching opendata.gc.ca to share government data the document proposes the creation of accesstoinformation.gc.ca where citizens could search past and current access to information requests as well as see response times. A third website, entitled accountablespending.gc.ca is also proposed. It would allow government grants, contributions and contracts to be searched.

The announcement brings to the Canadian political debate an exciting issue that first gained broad notoriety in early 2009 when Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, called on the world’s governments to share their data. By May of that year the United States launched data.gov and in September of 2009 the British Government launched data.gov.uk both of which garnered significant domestic attention. In addition, dozens of cities around the world – including Vancouver, Edmonton and, most recently, Ottawa – have launched websites where they shared information that local charities, non-profits, businesses and ordinary citizens might find useful.

Today, citizens in these jurisdictions enjoy improved access to government information about the economy, government spending, access to information requests, and statistical data. In the United States developers have created websites that empower citizens by enabling them to analyze government data or see what government data exists about their community while a British program alerts citizens to restaurant’s health inspections scores. The benefit however, not limited to improved transparency and accountability. An independent British estimated that open data could contribute as much as £6 billion to British economy. Canada’s computer developers, journalists and entrepreneurs have been left wondering, when will their government give them access to the data their tax dollars paid to collect?

One obvious intent of the Liberals is to reposition themselves at the forefront of a debate around government transparency and accountability. This is ground that has traditionally been Conservative, but with the cancellation of the long form census, the single source jet fighter contract and, more recently, allegations that construction contracts were awarded to conservative party donors, is once again contestable.

What will be interesting to see is the Conservative response. It’s been rumored the government has explored an open data portal but to date there has been no announcement. Open data is one area where, often, support exists across the political spectrum. In the United Kingdom Gordon Brown’s Labour government launched data.gov.uk but David Cameron’s Conservative government has pursued the project more aggressively still, forcing the release of additional and higher value data to the public. A failure to adopt open data would be tragedy – it would cause Canada to lag in an important space that is beginning to reshape how governments work together and how they serve and interact with citizens. But perhaps most obviously, open data and open government shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

Congratulations to Naheed & other fabulous people

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(On a separate note, I’m giving a talk tomorrow at 3pm at UBC.)

For those who weren’t paying attention to the Calgary municipal election last night, Naheed Nenshi came out of third place and won the mayoral race. Of course, the articles are already focusing on the wrong things: he’s Muslim, his a minority, etc…

What really matters about Naheed is that he smart, he is about ideas and he’s progressive. That he’s managed to capture the imagination of a place like Calgary speaks volumes both about how hard he campaigned and how cosmopolitan Canada’s urban centres are becoming.

But back to ideas. I first met Naheed way back when he served as lead author of Building Up: Making Canada’s Cities Magnets for Talent and Engines of Development for Canada25. Essentially for as long as I’ve known him he’s cared about cities (and his passion predates my meeting him). There isn’t much more you could want from someone who is about to become your mayor. For me personally, his work became the template for me later when I worked as lead author first on Canada25’s report written at the request of the Privy Council Office and then, of course, on From Middle to Model Power.

It also speaks volumes about the types of people I had the pleasure to meet through Canada25 and watch grow over the years. Indeed, yesterday I ended up having lunch with Chris Kennedy – another Canada25 alum – who as Superintendent of Schools with the West Vancouver School District is also driven by a sense of public service and policy. Alison Loat, Executive Director of Samara, is another passionate believer in public service and public policy. I’m not sure whether to be more impressed by her own work or simply grateful for her unfailing belief and support of me and my work. And Andrew Medd, who gave me what may have become the best advice about blogging when I first started eaves.ca years ago: “Write for yourself, as though no one will read it.” (advice that actually was fact for the first while – you should only blog if you’re prepared to be alone with your thoughts). Of course there are so many I’m not mentioning like Ross Wallace, Debbie Chachra, Mike Morgan…

Watching the celebrations taking place in Calgary, all I can think of is how lucky I was to get to meet some of these people early on and how much I can’t wait to watch them going forward.

On a separate note, it is very much worth looking at MasterMaq’s election website powered by open election data from the city of Edmonton. From Naheed’s election (in which social media paid a powerful role), to the coverage through Twitter (that’s how I followed the events), social media continues to evolve and have an impact, especially at the local level.

When Canada makes the US border thicker

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Canadians spend a lot of time worrying about the “thickening” border with the United States. This is for good reason. Given the importance of the US market and the sheer number of exports between the two countries, issues that thicken the border – like the requirement to use a passport or more strict rules around shipping goods – have an enormous impact on Canada’s economy.

Usually, Canadian officials complain that it is hard to get Americans to engage on this issue. So it is exceedingly frustrating when the Canadian government takes actions that thicken the border and simultaneously discouraging and encouraging when it is senior American officials have to intervene to make it thinner.

Last week, despite lobbying from the Mayor of Vancouver, the Premier of British Columbia, a number of business and tourism representatives and even conservative party caucus members, the Federal Goverment looked set on killing a program that saw a set of Border Guards pre-clearing trains that run from Vancouver to Seattle. Without this pre-clearance the trains would run much, much slower and so Amtrak, who runs the trains, said it would end the service.

It now appears that the border service was saved only after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. ambassador to Canada David Jacobson personally intervene. Yes, you read that right. US officials were racing trying to persuade Canadian officials to keep the border more open. The problematic nature of such a headline cannot be underscored. Yes, it is great that senior officials in the US care about ensure the Canada-US border remains as open as possible. But, as a country still dependent on an open and friction free border with the Unites States it is disturbing their intervention was necessary.

Indeed, as the country with the most to suffer when the border gets thicker (we feel the loss of exports and trade more than the Americans do) we need to model behaviour and be a leader in striving to make it as open and as accessible as possible. Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. ambassador to Canada David Jacobson intervention now means that two senior US officials may now believe that Canada’s commitment to friction free and accessible border is not as strong as we have claimed. If we aren’t concerned here, maybe we aren’t as concerned on other, even greater areas of concern regarding the increased thickening of the Canada-US border.

And the damage has not been undone. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is responsible for the decision, has only only preserved the service for one year. Indeed, in his statement he added “In this period of time, the residents of British Columbia and Washington State primarily will demonstrate whether, in fact, this is a necessary service.” Of course, the second train has already doubled the number of people traveling via rail between the two cities and, according to BC’s transportation minister, has injected $11.8 million into the BC economy.

Canadians should be thrilled that Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the government ultimately made the right decision around keeping this service in place. But as a country still concerned about the weakened economy, the US border and our relationship with the United States, we should be concerned that the government took the most painful and costly route to arrive at this decision.

OpenGovWest (BC edition): Are you out west?

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Something good is taking shape in my backyard…

From the city of Vancouver’s open data portal to Apps 4 Climate Action to the Water legislation blog, a great deal of the leadership and cutting edge work in open government is taking place in BC. Many places across the country and around the world look to what is happening on the west coast and are trying to draw lessons and see how it can be replicated.

Recognizing this fact a number of great people have been working behind the scenes for the last couple of months pulling together a conference to share this successes, talk about challenges and opportunities and generally think about what could happen next. The conference…? OpenGovWest BC.

If you are in BC and interested in open government, open data and gov 2.0, here’s a conference designed and built for you.

A number of speakers have already been publicly confirmed, others are, apparently, being held as surprises. There are also slots open for presentations if you have a project you’d like to share with the community out west.

The conference will be taking place on November 10th in Victoria, BC – if you are out west and feel passionate about these topics the same way I do, I hope you’ll consider coming.

And while we are talking about conferences, I also want to share Open Government Data Camp that will be happening in London, UK on November 18th and 19th. I’m excited to say I’ll be there with our friends from the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation, along with numerous others. Harder to get too, but also likely to be quite, quite fun…

World Bank Discussion on Open Data – lessons for developers, governments and others

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Yesterday the World Bank formally launched its Apps For Development competition and Google announced that in addition to integrating the World Bank’s (large and growing) data catalog into searches, it will now do it in 34 languages.

What is fascinating about this announcement and the recent changes at the bank is it appears to be very serious about open data and even more serious about open development. The repercussions of this shift, especially if the bank starts demanding that its national partners also disclose data, could be significant.

This of course, means there is lots to talk about. So, as part of the overall launch of the competition and in an effort to open up the workings of the World Bank, the organization hosted its first Open Forum in which a panel of guests talked about open development and open data. The bank was kind enough to invite me and so I ducted out of GTEC a pinch early and flew down to DC to meet some of the amazing people behind the world bank’s changes and discuss the future of open data and what it means for open development.

Embedded below is the video of the event.

As a little backgrounder here are some links to the bios of the different panelists and people who cycled through the event.

Our host: Molly Wood of CNET.

Andrew McLaughlin, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, The White House (formerly head of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs for Google) (twitter feed)

Stuart Gill, World Bank expert, Disaster Mitigation and Response for LAC

David Eaves, Open Government Writer and Activist

Rakesh Rajani, Founder, Twaweza, an initiative focused on transparency and accountability in East Africa (twitter)

Aleem Walji, Manager, Innovation Practice, World Bank Institute (twitter)

How Governments misunderstand the risks of Open Data

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When I’m asked to give a talk about or consult on policies around open data I’ve noticed there are a few questions that are most frequently asked:

“How do I assess the risks to the government of doing open data?”

“My bosses say that we can only release data if we know people aren’t going to do anything wrong/embarrassing/illegal/bad with it”

I would argue that these question are either flawed in their logic, or have already been largely addressed.

Firstly, it seems problematic to assess the risks of open data, without also assessing the opportunity. Any activity – from walking out my front door to scaling Mount Everest carries with it risks. What needs to be measured are not the risks in isolation but the risks balanced against the opportunity and benefits.

But more importantly, the logic of the question is flawed in another manner. It suggests that the government only take action if every possible negative use can be prevented.

Let’s forget about data for a second – imagine you are building a road. Now ask: “what are the risk’s that someone might misuse this road?” Well… they are significant. People are going to speed and they are going to jay walk. But it gets worse. Someone may rob a bank and then use the road as part of their escape route. Of course, the road will also provide more efficient transportation for 1000s of people, it will reduce costs, improve access, help ambulances save peoples lives and do millions of other things, but people will also misuse it.

However, at no point in any policy discussion in any government has anyone said “we can’t build this road because, hypothetically, someone may speed or use it as an escape route during a robbery.”

And yet, this logic is frequently accepted, or at least goes unchallenged, as appropriate when discussing open data.

The fact is, most governments already have the necessary policy infrastructure for managing the overwhelming majority of risks concerning open data. Your government likely has provisions dealing with privacy – if applied to open data this should address these concerns. Your government likely has provisions for dealing with confidential and security related issues – if applied to open data this should address these concerns. Finally, your government(s) likely has a legal system that outlines what is, and is not legal – when it comes to the use of open data, this legal system is in effect.

If someone gets caught speeding, we have enforcement officials and laws that catch and punish them. The same is true with data. If someone uses it to do something illegal we already have a system in place for addressing that. This is how we manage the risk of misuse. It is seen as acceptable for every part of our life and every aspect of our society. Why not with open data too?

The opportunity, of both roads and data, are significant enough that we build them and share them despite the fact that a small number of people may not use them appropriately. Should we be concerned about those who will misuse them? Absolutely. But do we allow a small amount of misuse to stop us from building roads or sharing data? No. We mitigate the concern.

With open data, I’m happy to report that we already have the infrastructure in place to do just that.

UK Adopts Open Government License for everything: Why it's good and what it means

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In the UK, the default is open.

Yesterday, the United Kingdom made an announcement that radically reformed how it will manage what will become the government’s most important asset in the 21^st century: knowledge & information.

On the National Archives website, the UK Government made public its new license for managing software, documents and data created by the government. The document is both far reaching and forward looking. Indeed, I believe this policy may be the boldest and most progressive step taken by a government since the United States decided that documents created by the US government would directly enter the public domain and not be copyrighted.

In almost every aspect the license, the UK government will manage its “intellectual property” by setting the default to be open and free.

Consider the introduction to the framework:

The UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF) provides a policy and legal overview for licensing the re-use of public sector information both in central government and the wider public sector. It sets out best practice, standardises the licensing principles for government information and recommends the use of the UK Open Government Licence (OGL) for public sector information.

The UK Government recognises the importance of public sector information and its social and economic value beyond the purpose for which it was originally created. The public sector therefore needs to ensure that simple licensing processes are in place to enable and encourage civil society, social entrepreneurs and the private sector to re-use this information in order to:

promote creative and innovative activities, which will deliver social and economic benefits for the UK

make government more transparent and open in its activities, ensuring that the public are better informed about the work of the government and the public sector

enable more civic and democratic engagement through social enterprise and voluntary and community activities.

At the heart of the UKGLF is a simple, non-transactional licence – the Open Government Licence – which all public sector bodies can use to make their information available for free re-use on simple, flexible terms.

An just in case you thought that was vague consider these two quotes from the frame work. This one for data:

It is UK Government policy to support the re-use of its information by making it available for re-use under simple licensing terms. As part of this policy most public sector information should be made available for re-use at the marginal cost of production. In effect, this means at zero cost for the re-user, especially where the information is published online. This maximises the social and economic value of the information. The Open Government Licence should be the default licence adopted where information is made available for re-use free of charge.

And this one for software:

Software which is the original work of public sector employees should use a default licence. The default licence recommended is the Open Government Licence.

Software developed by public sector employees from open source software may be released under a licence consistent with the open source software.

These statements are unambiguous and a dramatic step in the right direction. Information and software created by governments are, by definition, public assets. Tax dollars have already paid for their collection and/or development and the government has already benefited by using from them. They are also non-rivalrous good. This means, unlike a road, if I use government information, or software, I don’t diminish your ability to use it (in contrast only so many cars can fit on a road, and they wear it down). Indeed with intellectual property quite the opposite is true, by using it I may actually make the knowledge more valuable.

This is, obviously, an exciting development. It has generated a number of thoughts:

1. With this move the UK has further positioned itself at the forefront of the knowledge economy:

By enacting this policy the UK government has just enabled the entire country, and indeed the world, to use its data, knowledge and software to do whatever people would like. In short an enormous resource of intellectual property has just been opened up to be developed, enhanced and re-purposed. This could help lower costs for new software products, diminish the cost of government and help foster more efficient services. This means a great deal of this innovation will be happening in the UK first. This could become a significant strategic advantage in the 21^st century economy.

2. Other jurisdictions will finally be persuaded it is “safe” to adopt open licenses for their intellectual property:

If there is one thing that I’ve learnt dealing with governments it is that, for all the talk of innovation, many governments, and particularly their legal departments, are actually scared to be the first to do something. With the UK taking this bold step I expect a number of other jurisdictions to more vigorously explore this opportunity. (it is worth noting that Vancouver did, as part of the open motion, state the software developed by the city would have an open license applied to it, but the policy work to implement such a change has yet to be announced).

3. This should foster a debate about information as a public asset:

In many jurisdictions there is still the myth that governments can and should charge for data. Britain’s move should provide a powerful example for why these types of policies should be challenged. There is significant research showing that for GIS data for example, money collected from the sale of data simply pays for the money collection system. This is to say nothing of the policy and managerial overhead of choosing to manage intellectual property. Charging for public data has never made financial sense, and has a number of ethical challenges to it (so only the wealthy get to benefit from a publicly derived good?). Hopefully for less progressive governments, the UK’s move will refocus the debate along the right path.

4. It is hard to displace a policy leader once they are established.

The real lesson here is that innovative and forward looking jurisdictions have huge advantages that they are likely to retain. It should come as no surprise that the UK made this move – it was among the first national governments to create an open data portal. By being an early mover it has seen the challenges and opportunities before others and so has been able to build on its success more quickly.

Consider other countries – like Canada – that may wish to catch up. Canada does not even have an open data portal as of yet (although this may soon change). This means that it is now almost 2 years behind the UK in assessing the opportunities and challenges around open data and rethinking intellectual property. These two years cannot be magically or quickly caught up. More importantly, it suggests that some public services have cultures that recognize and foster innovation – especially around key issues in the knowledge economy – while others do not.

Knowledge economies will benefit from governments that make knowledge, information and data more available. Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to other governments in other jurisdictions. The 21st century knowledge economy is here, and government has a role to play. Best not be caught lagging.