The importance for government of respecting open source and open data copyrights

An interesting situation has arisen in Italy, with the country's Agenzia delle Entrate, the Italian revenue service and taxation authority, accused of copying OpenStreetMap without respecting the site's copyright license.

As documented on the Open Street Maps discussion list, Italy's OpenStreetMap community discovered a little over three months ago that the maps used by the Agenzia delle Entrate in the website of the Italian Observatory of the Estate Market (housing market site) closely resembled those from OpenStreetMap.

In fact, they were able to establish that the Agenzia delle Entrate had copied data from OpenStreetMaps, then superimposed other data on top.

Now given OpenStreetMaps is an open source project, crowdsourcing the streetmaps of the world, that shouldn't normally be a problem.

OpenStreetMaps' data is freely available to copy and reuse - that's the entire point of it.

However there was one factor that the Agenzia delle Entrate had ignored. That the copyright license to freely reuse OpenStreetMap data came with one condition - to credit the source.

Using a Creative Commons by Attribution license, which is also the default copyright for Australian Government information, OpenStreetMaps required only one thing of organisations and individuals reusing their data - to provide an attribution back to the source.

This the Agenzia delle Entrate had failed to do.

OK - this isn't a big issue, and the folk in Italy's OpenStreetMap community weren't that worried to start with. They simply emailed the agency to ask it to correct this omission.

No reply.

Three months later - with no formal response from the agency, and no rectification of the copyright on the site, the OpenStreetMap folk stepped up their criticism.

They created a website where Italians and others can view and compare OpenStreetMap with the Agenzia delle Entrate's site to see how the Italian government agency has violated copyright for themselves.

You can view the website here: http://agenziauscite.openstreetmap.it/

It's in Italian (naturally), so if you don't read the language an online translation tool can help, but isn't required to compare the maps.

I suggest that visitors use the search tool in the left-hand map to find 'Milan', which is the city recommended for comparison purposes. Note that the agency took its copy of OpenStreetMap a few months ago, so is not as up-to-date as OpenStreetMap itself.


The situation has grown from a simple omission into an active campaign, not only because the government agency ignored the community concerned, but also because that community now feels that if the government is prepared to ignore copyright requirements so blatantly, how is any other copyright in Italy safe.

Essentially if a government agency won't do the right thing when reusing intellectual property, why should businesses or individuals trust them - or do the right thing themselves.

It's something that every government agency should ponder.

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Don't forget to register for October's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy

On the 18th of October is the next Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy, with a focus on open data, data visualisation and new approaches to policy development through policy visualisation.

As usual we have two fantastic speakers:

Pia Waugh, an open government and open data ninja working with the ACT government as an Open Government Policy Advisor, will provide a report on her trip to the global OKFestival, a thousand-person conference focused on open government, open data and data analaysis/visualisation in Helsinki.

Evan Hill, the Methodology and Infographics Manager within the Strategy and Delivery Division of PM&C will be discussing policy visualisation and the newly launched APS Policy Visualisation Network.

For more information, or to register, go here.

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Modelling open data - new visualisation from recently released BOM data

The Bureau of Meteorology has released new data for reuse under Creative Commons licensing, ahead of the upcoming GovHack in Canberra next week, and Mark Hatcher has used it to model 153 years of Sydney weather in a short video (image to right).

The higher the temperatures, the warmer the colours.

This is a good example of how data can be reused by the public to provide different insights or perspectives into topics - providing evidence to inform different viewpoints.

These public mashups could then potentially be re-adopted (crowdsourced) and shared by governments, where they offer new insights, to better communicate with and engage the community or staff.

Of course there are technical smarts involved in this type of modelling, however tools such as ManyEyes, Visual.ly, Infogr.am and Piktochart make it easy for individuals with no technical training to create interesting views from raw data.

These tools can even be used by government agencies to model their own data - useful both for public engagement and internal engagement with staff or management. Though note it is important to only create infographics from publicly available data as the processing may be done in the cloud!

Mark's complete (41 second) video of his visualisation is below. If viewing it at work I suggest turning down the sound so as to not distract colleagues.





UPDATE:
I've received a clarification as to what data was new - and it's actually new functionality.  You can now download 'all years of data' in a single file, for daily rainfall, temp and solar exposure - hat tip to Jim Birch.

This improvement makes it much easier to produce mashups like Mark's above.

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Australian Government launches data.gov.au

Joining the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and a host of other jurisdictions already leading the way around the world, the Australian Government has now launched its official government data sharing website, www.data.gov.au

Announced by Special Minister of State, Gary Gray, in the post Release of data.gov.au on AGIMO's blog, Minister Gray said that,

...The release of public sector information in the form of datasets allows the commercial, research and community sectors to add value to government data in new, innovative and exciting ways.

Data.gov.au plays a crucial role in realising the Australian Government’s commitment to informing, engaging and participating with the public, as expressed in its Declaration of Open Government and Freedom of Information (FoI) reforms.

The new site currently lists around 200 datasets and links to other Government data catalogues such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Spatial Data Directory and the Queensland Government Information Service plus many other government data sites.

It includes tools to allow the public to suggest datasets they'd like released, to rate and comment on all datasets within the site, provide feedback and improvement suggestions and submit mashups or other data-based initiatives.

There's also a showcase of mashups and prominent Australian Government data-based initiatives.

Government agencies may submit datasets online and AGIMO has provided support for hosting datasets in a cloud-based storage solution if they're unable to host them effectively in their own sites.

It is quite an impressive site. AGIMO has clearly been listening to the community and building on the experiences of other government data sites around the world.

It will be interesting to see how rapidly the number of datasets grows and the innovative uses people put them to, developing services and new insights to support citizens, create value and drive public policy initiatives.

Below is a list of other government data sites around the world sourced from Govloop (built using Socrata) as a comparison.

Powered by Socrata

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ABS launches CodePlay competition for tertiary students

The ABS has launched the CodePlay initiative as a Gov 2.0 approach to help drive collaboration between students, developers and national and international statistical agencies.

The competition challenges Australian tertiary students to help the ABS design the next generation of open-data tools to help people access, view and use statistical information.

While I'm not sure why the ABS believes that all the great ideas will come from university students - why not include everyone - this is a strong initiative and should produce a very interesting outcome.

To learn more, visit the CodePlay website or their twitter account at @ABSCodePlay.

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What Australian government data would you like to see online under an open reuse license?

The NSW government has introduced a new service where people can provide suggestions on what government information they would like to access via a web or mobile front-end.

Thus far the eight suggestions focus heavily on public transport information - knowing when and where buses, trains and ferries may be found.

You can add your own ideas here.

However I'd like to ask a broader question.

Out of all the data that Australian governments collect or may hold, what would you like to see available online in a machine-readable format under an open license supporting reuse?

And how would you use it?

If you're short on ideas, why not check out the results of the iOpendataday & the International Hackathon, where thousands of people in over 73 cities across 5 continents participated in creating applications using open government data.

In fact it took place pretty much everywhere except Australia - bringing me in mind of Chris Moore's quote...

Here's a list of some of the applications created.

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GovHack returns - as part of Amped

Last year Australia's Gov 2.0 Taskforce initiated the GovHack event, produced by Web Directions, to showcase what could be done with open government data.

This year I'm glad to see that GovHack is returning - as part of Amped, a free 10 hour hack day, in Sydney's PowerHouse Museum on Sat 16th of October.

Whether you're a web designer or developer, interaction designer, graphic designer, project manager, writer, or just someone who has has an interesting idea, Amped is an opportunity to strut your stuff and create something of value.

Amped is fully catered, will have expert mentors on hand. The grand prize for the best hack is a trip for the winning team to Tokyo's Web Directions East.

RSVP at the Amped website.

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LobbyLens seeking funding - open government outside the public sector

I believe that one of the major shortcomings in Australia is the lack of financial support outside the public sector for open government initiatives.

The UK has the Hansard Society, the US has the Sunlight Foundation - but what does Australia have?

Granted there is the embryonic OpenAustralia Foundation, a registered charity devoted to open government. However overall it appears to me that Australia doesn't provide the level of financial support that we see for organisations with similar transparency goals in other mature democracies.

LobbyLens, one of the applications developed for the Gov 2.0 Taskforce's Mashup Australia Competition last year, is seeking $148,000 in funding to turn it into a full-blown, maintained service supporting open government in Australia.

In Club Troppo, the post Life for LobbyLens? says that Margaret Simons, freelance journalist, board member of Crikey and driving force behind the Swinburne University Public Interest Journalism Foundation has taken on revamping LobbyLens and making it publicly available through the Public Interest Journalism Foundation.

LobbyLens, which was built in less than 24 hours during Govhack in 2009, uses 12 separate publicly available databases to provide a picture of the connections between lobbyists, ministers, departments and successful tenderers. It offers a unique view on the lobbying of Australian government that is useful for both journalists and interested citizens.

The tool is also of interest to public servants who need to understand the connections between organisations for their decision-making processes.

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Disaster management using open source and social media

Some of you may be aware of the Mercury 10 national counter-terrorism exercise currently being held in Australia, involving a variety of government bodies.

While this type of scenario is only one of potentially many different types of crises or disasters that could occur, natural disasters, pandemics, rocks from space, and so on, it does raise the question for me, how is Australia using social media and open source technologies in crisis management.

We've seen quite intensive use of social media in situations such as the Haiti earthquake, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the swine flu pandemic last year.

Across the world authorities are realising how valuable social media can be to help them quickly get information out to the public, to collect information on the extent of a disaster and help prioritise relief efforts.

They are also beginning to realise how dangerous it can be to not engage online, leaving rumours and misinformation to spread even faster and more virulently than was previously possible. A good example was during the Mumbai terrorist attacks when a rumour that the Indian government was asking for all live tweeting from Mumbai to stop in order to avoid giving the terrorists information about police movements.

However the really interesting developments in disaster management are happening outside of government. Software engineers and disaster management specialists have spent the last few years developing better tools for addressing crisis situations - often without any support from the authorities responsible for managing emergencies.

Two of these platforms are Ushahidi and Sahana.

Both of these platforms are open source, free-to-use web-based platforms designed to be highly resilient during disaster situations and flexible to the needs of both developing and developed nations.

Ushahidi, developed to report on violence during the 2008 Kenya election, has been deployed more than 20 times around the world to address situations such as violence in Gaza, the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Chile and Haiti's emergency responses to their respective earthquake, track crime levels in Atlanta, medical supply levels in pharmacies across Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia and track the swine flu pandemic.

The system allows reports by mobile phone SMS and MMS and via the internet to be aggregated into a real-time map, then used to identify priority areas for relief efforts or activities. While the system can be deployed simply for reporting by authorities, it has proven to be strongest where citizens have been able to report incidents directly, allowing emergency authorities to respond with a more complete picture of events.

Ushahidi is entirely free to reuse and can be deployed within a few hours.

The group behind the service are currently working on a second service, Swift River, designed to help manage the flood of online information about a disaster in the first few hours and help both emergency services and the public distinguish between rumour and fact. While Swift River won't be launched until the end of August, a video discussing how it will work is available online.

Sahana is another free open source system developed to assist in disaster management. A a web based collaboration tool, it is designed to help manage common coordination problems, such as locating missing persons, managing volunteers and aid and coordinating efforts between a variety of aid groups, government and those impacted by the disaster.

It was originally developed in 2004 by Sri Lankan developers to support the response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and was deployed by the Sri Lanka government to support disaster recovery efforts. A second phase, funded through Sweden, saw Sahana expanded into a more generic disaster management tool with global application.

Sahana was designed to cope with many of the infrastructure issues that frequently occur during disasters, such as intermittent power, loss of network connectivity and the need to deploy the service on low-end hardware and systems. In fact Sahana can be transported on and operated from a USB stick and is extremely flexible and easy to customise, reflecting the need to adapt quickly to the individual nature of every disaster.

Sahana is in use for the Pakistan floods at the moment and it was also used for the Haiti earthquake - discussed in this case study (PDF). It has also been used in the Phillipines, the US, Peru, China, Indonesia and Pakistan for a range of disaster management needs.

There are other open source tools available for disaster management purposes. It is also possible to rapidly build a custom system for a specific need using free and low cost tools such as Wordpress (for content management), Google Maps (for geospatial representations), YouTube (for video), Flickr (for images), Slideshare and Scribd (for presentations and documents), Twitter (for real-time updates), WidgetBox (for embeddable widgets), Facebook (for group coordination), Wufoo (for forms) and services such as Yahoo Pipes to integrate and process information and news feeds.

In most cases the time required to put together these types of custom systems is significantly less than that required to have systems developed within high-end content management systems - as are normally deployed for normal business needs by government agencies.

In most cases these third party services are also cheaper, more scalable and have greater network resilience and peak usage capability - reflecting their need to cater for millions of simultaneous users, more than most government sites are engineered to handle.

So while some governments appear to be relying on traditional means of communications in disasters - brochures or media releases at carefully timed intervals - it is inevitable that communities will self-organise, create their own tools and deploy them with great speed.

Today's challenge for governments is to use social media and online tools to improve their own disaster management capability, organise the flood of information and provide better outcomes - deploying disaster management systems or throwing together custom solutions in a matter of hours rather than months.

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Targeting Gov 2.0 apps development - US government combating child obesity with Apps for Healthy Kids

The mash-up (or Apps) competitions we've seen in Australia thus far have been broad and largely untargeted. Governments have released a bunch of public sector datasets and invited developers to create a bunch of applications related to that data for their jurisdiction, but without a highly specific goal or purpose in mind, other than creating applications that add value to the data.

The US, which leads Australia in this area of Gov 2.0, initially took a similar approach. However it has now moved to a new level - Apps competitions focused on individual campaigns, themes and issues.

One such example is the Apps for Healthy Kids competition which, quoting from its website is,

part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Apps for Healthy Kids challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging software tools and games that drive children, especially “tweens” (ages 9-12) – directly or through their parents – to eat better and be more physically active.

The competition, which has received over 90 entries, requires developers to use a specific government dataset of information to develop a game or activity focused on a specific audience and campaign goal.

The prize money, $60,000, is a fraction of what it could cost a government Department to develop this many concepts to production level.

The winning entry will be used by the government for 12 months at no license cost and then reverts to the entrant's control - perhaps to become a saleable product or even be licensed by the government for ongoing use.

Besides the value of the winning application, there is substantial public relations value in holding the competition in the first place. It raises awareness of the issue, engaging people in either creating and voting for entries, or simply supporting the initiative through the 'challenge supporters' mechanism.

This type of targeted crowd sourcing approach has many different potential applications for governments from local through to federal levels. Many different issues and campaigns could provide fertile ground for these types of apps competitions.

Note that despite our current lack of targeted apps competitions, Australia isn't that far behind the US in crowd sourcing. There have been examples of online video competitions, design competitions and other approaches designed to encourage the community to engage with and produce content that can be used for the public good.

Below is the introductory video for Apps for Healthy Kids:

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New Zealand government moves to encourage use of Creative Commons licensing for public sector data

New Zealand's government has just launched a Creative Commons-based approach for the standardisation of the licensing of government copyright works for re-use.

Named the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL), the approach outlines the licensing government agencies should use when releasing copyright works and non-copyright material for re-use by third parties (preferablt 'no restriction').

The licensing approach does not apply for content containing personal or in-confidence information and various restrictions may be applied to content by using one of the variant Creative Commons licenses, though the government has specified that most public sector information should be released without restriction.

The launch announcement states that re-use of government material by individuals and organisations may have significant creative and economic benefit for New Zealand, a position that has been reflected by the UK, US and other governments.

While use of the licensing approach is not mandatory, the NZGoal document states that hoped that the NZ government hopes that agencies will embrace NZGOAL; license more of their copyright works on open terms; and open up access to more of their non-copyright material that may be of interest to the public, bearing in mind the potential benefits of doing so for both the public and agencies alike.

The Australian Government is also beginning to release material under Creative Commons licensing, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Geosciences Australia and the Department of Finance and Deregulation leading the way.

However at this stage no whole-of-government framework exists to provide guidance on how and when to release material in this fashion at federal level - although the Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) is in place in Queensland.

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Engaging with and trusting citizens to participate in the democratic process leads to great rewards for the state

The title of this post reflects the key statement that stood out for me in the London.gov.uk blog's post Economic benefits of data release

This article puts some solid numbers behind the value of open data initiatives in government, from the US's Apps for Democracy mash-up competition (50 entries in 30 days, valued at $2.5m for a $50,000 prize outlay) to Canada's exposure of a $3.2 billion tax evasion fraud when public financial data was released in machine-readable form.

We've already had several examples of open government initiatives in Australia. Both the ABS and Geosciences Australia release significant amounts of data under Creative Commons licenses, and a number of state agencies do the same. We've also had three mash-up competitions, the first by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce last year, the others through the NSW and Victorian governments.

I've not yet seen any modeling of the value of these Australian public data releases, which is a shame as I'm sure they would demonstrate value for money, however the international experience is quite clear,

Actively engaging citizens and empowering them through machine-readable data adds value to government processes and initiatives.

Now how do we share that message clearly with senior decision-makers?

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What's been the impact of Victoria and NSW's Gov 2.0 Apps competitions?

On 21 June Victoria announced the winners of its App My State competition, with prizes being given out by the Premier. A list of the winners and a video of the presentation is here.

A few days later on 24 June NSW announced the winners of the Apps4NSW competition, with their own video.

Most competitions end when the prizes are awarded. The top entries get some kudos, while everyone else goes home empty-handed, their entries forgotten.

However in an Apps competition, such as NSW and Victoria's events, the award ceremony is only the beginning.

Between these two competitions there's been about 300 Apps and ideas generated that use government data to assist citizens. The cost of developing and capturing them has been around $200,000 in prize money.

Assuming that on average these Apps and ideas could cost $20,000 each for a government to develop, the total value of these competitions has been around $6 million dollars - a direct return of 30x the prize money invested.

These Apps and ideas are now publicly accessible. This means that any other government, organisation or individual can review them and use them to stimulate further innovation, leveraging their value beyond the original competition. Some of the best Apps and ideas may be extended beyond their home states, or replicated elsewhere in the world - generating further public value.

At the same time around 500 state government datasets have been released to the public in a reusable format. This data represents millions of dollars of investment by taxpayers which is now accessible to and usable by them. Now the approach to opening data has been trialed we are likely to see more public data released into the public domain.

On top of the Apps and the data, NSW and Victoria have demonstrated that there is public interest in these types of competition, making it more likely that other jurisdictions will consider holding their own similar events.

Also this event has helped support and demystify the cultural changes required by public services to be more collaborative, transparent and innovative. The value of this to citizens is incalculable.

So what's been the major impact of these competitions?

They have helped wedge open a door to government openness and transparency that, over time, will open wider - allowing more light in, and more value out.

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100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online - the book and the wiki

Bang the Table has released a fantastic little handbook for online community engagement.

Titled 100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online the book provides 10 ideas in each of 10 topics.

The book has been released under Creative Commons (BY) - allowing organisations to reuse, share and mash it up for their own needs - provided they attribute the creators.

To help this along, and in recognition that online community engagement is a living topic, I have converted the book into a wiki, allowing anyone to add their own topics and ideas.

I hope this proves useful, and becomes a living resource for online community managers across governments and the private sector.

View the wiki at: http://engageonlineideas.pbworks.com

Or download the original book from: 100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online

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App My State a major Victorian Gov 2.0 success

Victoria's App My State competition has now closed to entries, and has already been an enormous success for the Gov 2.0 efforts in that state.

The competition attracted 171 entries, 75 applications and 96 ideas, over 12 weeks.

Judging has now commenced - with the public able to vote for the 'popular choice' award and other awards now being considered by judges, with winners announced on 7 June.

The Premier has personally tweeted his thanks, showing a level of high-level engagement with the competition,

@vicpremier: Well done to all the @appmystate applicants. Top quality entries. Looking forward to giving out the awards. JB

Regardless who wins the competition, the event has already proven to be a highly cost-effective method to gather useful ideas and generate meaningful approaches to using public sector data.

Is this a once-off success? The evidence argues otherwise.

NSW is in the process of holding a similar competition with a similar level of prizes. While the competition didn't include an ideas category (EDIT 24/5/10: the competition did include an ideas category, which received 64 submissions) and occurred during a changeover in Premiers and with significantly less online promotional support, it still attracted 55 app entries over a 14 week period.

App competitions in the UK and US have also generated significant returns for governments - in particular the first Apps for Democracy competition in Washington D.C. estimated that the value of the apps produced was over US$2.2 million, for less than US$100,000 in prize value.

There is even a set of guidelines on how to run an apps competition to support agencies and states produced by Apps for Democracy.

Below I've included a video where Victorian political leadership introduce the App My State competition. Below that is a list of some of the other App competitions that have been run worldwide.



Apps competitions
Involving public sector data - there are many other examples in commercial spaces.

• MashUpAustralia (Australia)
• App My State (Victoria, Australia)
• Apps4NSW (NSW, Australia)
• Apps for Democracy (United States)
• Apps for America (United States)
• Apps for Army (United States)
• INCA – the Innovative and Creative Application Contest (Belgium)
• Apps competitions in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands and Spain
• Apps for New York (United States)
• Show Us A Better Way competition (Great Britain)
• Apps for Climate Change (British Columbia, Canada)
• Apps for Development (World Bank)

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Open government winners and losers

One of the trends with Government 2.0 is for jurisdictions to make more of their information available online in more readily accessible, machine readable and useful forms.

We've seen the rise of data.gov, data.gov.uk and a host of open data sites for nations and states around the world. The latest addition has been the World Bank, with data.worldbank.org. There's even organisations providing platforms for public data sites to make it simple for governments to implement these services, such as Socrata.

Creating a more open and transparent government in this way has some winners. The public and media gain greater access to useful information, allowing them to better study, critique, understand and compare government decisions and activities; companies are able to better access information about their markets and environments and improve their operations and services; and governments are themselves better able to collaborate internally and discover new insights and approaches from comparing disparate data sources.

However there are also some losers in the race to release government data publicly. These are often highly politically influential organisations and individuals that have significant resources to bring to bear to resist change.

Over the last few years we've seen a level of push-back around the world by groups seeking to slow or counter drives to make more government data public. The approach often plays to government concerns; the risk of being shown up when information is not completely accurate; the risk of people taking and reusing information out of context; the perceived loss of revenue through releasing information for free rather than for significant charges; economic damage to companies or industries that rely on exclusive access to government data; or concerns that the costs of releasing data will not be sustainable over time.

While these are often legitimate considerations, there's some less often discussed reasons that are also important to consider.

In some cases those who have most to lose from government openness are those who have previously had some form of commercial or political advantage due to strict government controls over data release.

This could include organisations that act as resale agents for government, buying data under license and reselling at a mark-up (the postcode boundaries list is an example). It could include groups and individuals who have developed 'special' access to senior government figures and wish to preserve their channels of influence. It could also include groups within government who are concerned about a potential public or media response if some complex and highly contextual data became public knowledge.

I often equate the groups with these concerns about government openness as being similar to traditional media organisations, those who could afford the high cost of entry into traditional media - establishing and maintaining large-scale distribution networks, whether television, radio or newsprint.

With the rise of the internet these traditional media organisations faced a highly competitive and many-headed rival - a cheap and ubiquitous distribution network where every consumer has also become a producer and distributor of content.

Suddenly the high cost distribution networks owned by traditional media players have become vulnerable. Their revenues are falling while competition is growing, putting pressure on their owners to simultaneously increase their differentiation from the market whilst also cutting costs to suit the new world paradigm.

Similarly for groups such as government data resellers and lobbyists, the rise of the internet and growth of the open government push has reduced their ability to charge a price premium for exclusive access to data or senior figures.

In particular, making government data available free online, together with the host of free or cheap data visualisation and manipulation tools - from Manyeyes to Yahoo Pipes - severely damages the near monopoly of data intermediaries.

Some of these potential open government 'losers' have already realised that they can turn openness into a win. People will still pay for services which filter and present the range of public data in useful and meaningful ways. They are in a prime position to take on this role based on their expertise working with government data over many years.

However there may be others who still look on Gov 2.0 with some concern. They risk having their businesses become irrelevant and potentially could attempt to put roadblocks in place of government openness.

I hope that any organisations or individuals in this position realise that while they may be able to slow the train they'd gain more by getting on board. While their old business models might be less viable in the future, other opportunities will open up.

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Australian public servants told three times - open (reusable) government data is important.

The Australian Public Service (APS) has now been told three times by three different reports in the last year about the importance of releasing much of its information openly to the community.

This began with reforms to Freedom of Information which, once passed, will encourage a pro-disclosure environment within the APS and make it easier and cheaper for people to request information from government.

Second was the Gov 2.0 Taskforce Final Report: Engage, which recommended managing public sector information as a national resource, releasing most of it for free and in ways that promoted reuse in innovative ways.

Third is the report released yesterday by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for the Reform of Australian Government Administration. The report recommended that Departments should create more open government, with one of the detailed sub-recommendations being,

Greater disclosure of public sector data and mechanisms to access the data so that citizens can use the data to create helpful information for all, in line with privacy and secrecy principles;

The last two reports are yet to be responded to by the Australian Government, however I hope that Australian public servants at all levels are taking note.

Once is chance, twice is coincidence, but three times is a strategy.

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Vote for your favourite NSW Apps - closes 22 March

Public voting is now open for Apps4NSW, but only until Monday 22 March.

So if you wanted to check out and vote for applications submitted to the competition, go to the Apps4NSW public voting site.

EDIT: Note that it was entries that closed 22 March. Public voting remains open until 9 April.

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Victoria launches App my State competition with $100,000 in prizes

The Gov 2.0 genie is well and truly out of its bottle in Victoria, with the Victorian Government recently advocating that the majority of Victorian public sector information be released for reuse under Creative Commons licensing.

Their latest initiative is the App my State competition, which builds on the (currently running) Apps4NSW competition and last year's Gov 2.0 Taskforce Mash-up Australia competition.

Victoria's competition is a little different from the others in that it doesn't require entrants to use Victorian public sector data (although around 100 datasets have been released for use) - entrants can use national and other publicly available data, produce applications without using this data that are useful to Victorians or even simply submit ideas, which broadens the competition beyond programmers (a very good thing I believe).

Also, unlike Apps4NSW, all the entrants are published online - a very good thing and in keeping with the entire approach to government transparency.

The one limitation I'm a little disappointed about is that everyone submitting an entry must be Victorian - which limits the scope of sourcing innovative ideas from around Australia and even around the world. I don't believe past Victorians can enter either - which leaves me out.

Regardless of this, it is great to see the Victorians getting behind innovation and I wish them all the best in this competition. Maybe it will become an annual event...

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What does the White Pages ruling mean for Australian government data?

There is a trend towards greater openness in the licensing of Australian government data. Queensland's government a few years ago put in place a framework (GILF) for Creative Commons licensing and Victoria's government recently committing to using Creative Commons as its default copyright licensing system.

Some steps have taken place at a federal level, with both the ABS and Geosciences (see their footer) moving in the same direction.

However the recent court case where Telstra sued the publishers of Local Directories over the republishing of Yellow and White pages information - and lost - marks a further step in the process.

In the case, Telstra Corporation Limited v Phone Directories Company Pty Ltd [2010] FCA 44 (8 February 2010), the judge found that Yellow and White Pages listings were not covered under copyright law as they were not original and that (requoting from the news.com.au article Telstra loses copyright case over Yellow Pages and White Pages,

"None of the people said to be authors of the Works exercised 'independent intellectual effort' or 'sufficient effort of a literary nature' in creating the (directories)."

"Further, if necessary, the creation of the Works did not involve some 'creative spark' or the exercise of the requisite 'skill and judgment'."

This case follows a related decision in the IceTV case in 2007, where Channel Nine claimed that its TV Guide was a literary work and IceTV could not create a copy of it through independent effort.

So what does this mean for similar forms of government information released under Crown Copyright such as transport timetables, budget accounts, lists of elected officials, statements of interests and other lists and statistics which did not require 'creative spark', 'independent intellectual effort' or 'sufficient effort of a literary nature'?

I am not a lawyer and don't trawl all the legal cases reported online on a regular basis, however to my knowledge no Australian state or federal government department has recently gone to court against individuals or corporations replicating and reusing statistical data of these types. So there is no actual ruling I am aware of to test whether this government data remains legally protectable under Crown Copyright.

In at lease one case, involving NSW RailCorp in early 2009, cease and desist letters were sent by RailCorp's lawyers (to three iPhone application developers). This didn't end up in court as the resulting publicity brought the situation to the attention of the then NSW Premier who ordered RailCorp to negotiate arrangements to share timetable data with less stringent copyright provisions.

I believe that a reasonable supposition at this time is that where publicly released government data does not meet the required tests in the copyright case, it would be difficult to prove why it should be protected under Crown Copyright.

This would make copyright over lists of names and figures very hard to justify.

I do appreciate that government departments have concerns over information being used in inaccurate or misleading ways, or that people may rely on out-of-date information through third party sources (a particular concern for transport networks). However Crown Copyright may not be the most appropriate tool to mitigate these risks anymore.

Maybe we need to look at other approaches, such as making it easier for third parties to use data in the way intended - such as providing data feeds at consistent URLs for reuse (which means third-party applications will be as accurate as the government figures), ensuring that data labels are human readable and clear (to reduce misinterpretations) and including date stamps in data so it is clear when it is current from and to.

In cases where data is used inappropriately, government still has recourse through Creative Commons type licensing and other aspects of Australia's legal system to restrain this usage while supporting appropriate use.

Further comments and legal views by lawyers and interested parties are heartily welcome!

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