Information Now: Open Access and the Public Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Podcast from SMARTech (Georgia Tech): “Every year, the international academic and research community dedicates a week in October to discuss, debate, and learn more about Open Access. Open Access in the academic sense refers to the free, immediate, and online access to the results of scholarly research, primarily academic, peer-reviewed journal articles. In the United States, the movement in support of Open Access has, in the last decade, been growing dramatically. Because of this growing interest in Open Access, a group of academic librarians from the Georgia Tech library, Wendy Hagenmaier (Digital Collections Archivist), Fred Rascoe (Scholarly Communication Librarian), and Lizzy Rolando (Research Data Librarian), got together to talk to folks in the thick of it, to try and unravel some of the different concerns and benefits of Open Access. But we didn’t just want to talk about Open Access for journal articles – we wanted to examine more broadly what it means to be “open”, what is open information, and what relationship open information has to the public good. In this podcast, we talk with different people who have seen and experienced open information and open access in practice. In the first act, Dan Cohen from the DPLA speaks about efforts to expand public access to archival and library collections. In the second, we’ll hear an argument from Christine George about why things sometimes need to be closed, if we want them to be open in the future. Third, Kari Watkins speaks about specific example of when a government agency decided, against legitimate concerns, to make transit data open, and why it worked for them. Fourth, Peter Suber from Harvard University will give us the background on the Open Access movement, some myths that have been dispelled, and why it is important for academic researchers to take the leap to make their research openly accessible. And finally, we’ll hear from Michael Chang, a researcher who did take that leap and helped start an Open Access journal, and why he sees openness in research as his obligation.”

See also Personal Guide to Open Access

A Data Revolution for Poverty Eradication

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report from devint.org: “The High Level Panel on the Post–2015 Development Agenda called for a data revolution for sustainable development, with a new international initiative to improve the quality of statistics and information available to citizens. It recommended actively taking advantage of new technology, crowd sourcing, and improved connectivity to empower people with information on the progress towards the targets. Development Initiatives believes there a number of steps that should be put in place in order to deliver the ambition set out by the Panel.
The data revolution should be seen as a basis on which greater openness and a wider transparency revolution can be built. The openness movement – one of the most exciting and promising developments of the last decade – is starting to transform the citizen-state compact. Rich and developing country governments are adapting the way they do business, recognising that greater transparency and participation leads to more effective, efficient, and equitable management of scarce public resources. Increased openness of data has potential to democratise access to information, empowering individuals with the knowledge they need to tackle the problems that they face. To realise this bold ambition, the revolution will need to reach beyond the niche data and statistical communities, sell the importance of the revolution to a wide range of actors (governments, donors, CSOs and the media) and leverage the potential of open data to deliver more usable information”

7 Tactics for 21st-Century Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Abhi Nemani, co-director of Code for America: “Be it the burden placed on them by shrinking federal support, or the opportunity presented by modern technology, 21st-century cities are finding new ways to do things. For four years, Code for America has worked with dozens of cities, each finding creative ways to solve neighborhood problems, build local capacity and steward a national network. These aren’t one-offs. Cities are championing fundamental, institutional reforms to commit to an ongoing innovation agenda.
Here are a few of the ways how:

  1. …Create an office of new urban mechanics or appoint a chief innovation officer…
  2. …Appoint a chief data officer or create an office of performance management/enhancement…
  3. …Adopt the Gov.UK Design Principles, and require plain, human language on every interface….
  4. …Share open source technology with a sister city or change procurement rules to make it easier to redeploy civic tech….
  5. …Work with the local civic tech community and engage citizens for their feedback on city policy through events, tech and existing forums…
  6. …Create an open data policy and adopt open data specifications…
  7. …Attract tech talent into city leadership, and create training opportunities citywide to level up the tech literacy for city staff…”

From open data to open democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by : “Such debates further underscore the complexities of open data and where it might lead. While open data may be viewed by some inside and outside government as a technically-focused and largely incremental project based upon information formatting and accessibility (with the degree of openness subject to a myriad of security and confidentiality provisions), such an approach greatly limits its potential. Indeed, the growing ubiquity of mobile and smart devices, the advent of open source operating systems and social media platforms, and the growing commitment by governments themselves to expansive public engagement objectives, all suggest a widening scope.
Yet, what will incentivize the typical citizen to access open data and to partake in collective efforts to create public value? It is here where our digital culture may well fall short, emphasizing individualized service and convenience at the expense of civic responsibility and community-mindedness. For one American academic, this “citizenship deficit” erodes democratic legitimacy and renders our politics more polarized and less discursive. For other observers in Europe, notions of the digital divide are giving rise to new “data divides.”
The politics and practicalities of data privacy often bring further confusion. While privacy advocates call for greater protection and a culture of data activism among Internet users themselves, the networked ethos of online communities and commercialization fuels speed and sharing, often with little understanding of the ramifications of doing so. Differences between consumerism and citizenship are subtle yet profoundly important, while increasingly blurred and overlooked.
A key conundrum provincially and federally, within the Westminster confines of parliamentary democracy, is that open data is being hatched mainly from within the executive branch, whereas the legislative branch watches and withers. In devising genuine democratic openness, politicians and their parties must do more than post expenses online: they must become partners and advocates for renewal. A lesson of open source technology, however, is that systemic change demands an informed and engaged civil society, disgruntled with the status quo but also determined to act anew.
Most often, such actions are highly localized, even in a virtual world, giving rise to the purpose and meaning of smarter and more intelligent communities. And in Canada it bears noting that we see communities both large and small embracing open data and other forms of online experimentation such as participatory budgeting. It is often within small but connected communities where a virtuous cycle of online and in-person identities and actions can deepen and impact decision-making most directly.
How, then, do we reconcile traditional notions of top-down political federalism and national leadership with this bottom-up approach to community engagement and democratic renewal? Shifting from open data to open democracy is likely to be an uneven, diverse, and at times messy affair. Better this way than attempting to ordain top-down change in a centralized and standardized manner.”

Open Data and Open Government: Rethinking Telecommunications Policy and Regulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Ewan Sutherland: “While attention has been given to the uses of big data by network operators and to the provision of open data by governments, there has been no systematic attempt to re-examine the regulatory systems for telecommunications. The power of public authorities to access the big data held by operators could transform regulation by simplifying proof of bias or discrimination, making operators more susceptible to behavioural remedies, while it could also be used to deliver much finer granularity of decision making. By opening up data held by government and its agencies to enterprises, think tanks and research groups it should be possible to transform market regulation.“

Chicago: Increase and improve City data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Initiative 14 of the Chicago Tech Plan:  “The City will continue to increase and improve the quality of City data available internally and externally, and facilitate methods for analyzing that data to help create a smarter and more efficient city.”
Releasing data is a crucial component of creating an open and transparent government. Chicago is currently a leader in open data, capturing and publishing more than 400 machine-readable datasets to date. In 2012, Mayor Emanuel issued an executive order ensuring that the City continues to release new data, and empowering the Chief Data Officer to work with other City departments and agencies to develop new datasets. The City is following an aggressive schedule for releasing new datasets to the public and updating existing sets. It is also working to facilitate ways the City and others can use data to help improve City operations.
Chicago Shovels Plow Tracker
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2000/https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/iframe/plow_tracker.html
 

Open Data Success Story: ChicagoWorks
A collaboration between Alderman Ameya Pawar and local graphic design company 2pensmedia, ChicagoWorks is a free app that is changing the way Chicagoans interact with government. Using the app, residents can submit service requests directly to 311
and track the progress of reported issues. So far, more than 3,000 residents have downloaded the app.18

Open Data Success Story: SpotHero and Techstars Chicago
The app SpotHero makes residents’ lives easier by helping them find and reserve parking spots online. Developed in Chicago, the app had its start at Excelerate Labs, a Chicago start-up accelerator, now Techstars Chicago, that provides mentorship, training, and networking opportunities to 10 selected start-ups each year. After graduating from the program, ranked as one of the top 3 accelerators nationally, SpotHero attracted $2.5 million in VC funding. With this funding, the company is hiring new staff working to expand to other cities.19

Open Data Success Story: OpenGov Hack Night
Chicago boasts a community of “civic hackers” who are passionate about using technology to improve the city. An example of this passion in action is the OpenGov Hack Night. Organized by Open City, an organization that builds web apps and other tools using open government data, the Hack Night attracts civic hackers and curious residents eager to explore the intersection of open government data, smart cities, and technology. Every week, the Hack Night provides a collaborative environment for residents to learn about open data, working on cutting-edge projects and networking with passionate civic technologists.20

Facilitating scientific discovery through crowdsourcing and distributed participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Antony Williams in  EMBnet. journal:” Science has evolved from the isolated individual tinkering in the lab, through the era of the “gentleman scientist” with his or her assistant(s), to group-based then expansive collaboration and now to an opportunity to collaborate with the world. With the advent of the internet the opportunity for crowd-sourced contribution and large-scale collaboration has exploded and, as a result, scientific discovery has been further enabled. The contributions of enormous open data sets, liberal licensing policies and innovative technologies for mining and linking these data has given rise to platforms that are beginning to deliver on the promise of semantic technologies and nanopublications, facilitated by the unprecedented computational resources available today, especially the increasing capabilities of handheld devices. The speaker will provide an overview of his experiences in developing a crowdsourced platform for chemists allowing for data deposition, annotation and validation. The challenges of mapping chemical and pharmacological data, especially in regards to data quality, will be discussed. The promise of distributed participation in data analysis is already in place.”

Talking About a (Data) Revolution

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Dave Banisar at Article 19: “It is important to recognize the utility that data can bring. Data can ease analysis, reveal important patterns and facilitate comparisons. For example, the Transactional Access Clearing House (TRAC – http://www.trac.org) at Syracuse University uses data sets from the US Department of Justice to analyze how the federal government enforces its criminal and civil laws, showing how laws are applied differently across the US.
The (somewhat ICT-companies manufactured) excitement over “E-government” in the late 1990s imagined a brave new e-world where governments would quickly and easily provide needed information and services to their citizens. This was presented as an alternative to the “reactive” and “confrontational” right to information laws but eventually led to the realization that ministerial web pages and the ability to pay tickets online did not lead to open government. Singapore ranks near the top every year on e-government but is clearly not an ‘open government’. Similarly, it is important to recognize that governments providing data through voluntary measures is not enough.
For open data to promote open government, it needs to operate within a framework of law and regulation that ensures that information is collected, organized and stored and then made public in a timely, accurate and useful form.   The information must be more than just what government bodies find useful to release, but what is important for the public to know to ensure that those bodies are accountable.
Otherwise, it is in danger of just being propaganda, subject to manipulation to make government bodies look good. TRAC has had to sue the USA federal government dozens of times under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the government data and after they publish it, some government bodies still claim that the information is incorrect.  Voluntary systems of publication usually fail when they potentially embarrass the bodies doing the publication.
In the countries where open data has been most successful such as the USA and UK, there also exists a legal right to demand information which keeps bodies honest. Most open government laws around the world now have requirements for affirmative publication of key information and they are slowly being amended to include open data requirements to ensure that the information is more easily usable.
Where there is no or weak open government laws, many barriers can obstruct open data. In Kenya, which has been championing their open data portal while being slow to adopt a law on freedom of information, a recent review found that the portal was stagnating. In part, the problem was that in the absence of laws mandating openness, there remains a culture of secrecy and fear of releasing information.
Further, mere access to data is not enough to ensure informed participation by citizens and enable their ability to affect decision-making processes.  Legal rights to all information held by governments – right to information laws – are essential to tell the “why”. RTI reveals how and why decisions and policy are made – secret meetings, questionable contracts, dubious emails and other information. These are essential elements for oversight and accountability. Being able to document why a road was built for political reasons is as crucial for change as recognizing that it’s in the wrong place. The TRAC users, mostly journalists, use the system as a starting point to ask questions or why enforcement is so uneven or taxes are not being collected. They need sources and open government laws to ask these questions.
Of course, even open government laws are not enough. There needs to be strong rights for citizen consultation and participation and the ability to enforce those rights, such as is mandated by the UNECE Convention on Access to Environment Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice (Aarhus Convention). A protocol to that convention has led to a Europe-wide data portal on environmental pollution.
For open data to be truly effective, there needs to be a right to information enshrined in law that requires that information is made available in a timely, reliable format that people want, not just what the government body wants to release. And it needs to be backed up with rights of engagement and participation. From this open data can flourish.  The OGP needs to refocus on the building blocks of open government – good law and policy – and not just the flashy apps.”

Beyond Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book on Open Data and the Future of Civic Innovation: The rise of open data in the public sector has sparked innovation, driven efficiency, and fueled economic development. And in the vein of high-profile federal initiatives like Data.gov and the White House’s Open Government Initiative, more and more local governments are making their foray into the field with Chief Data Officers, open data policies, and open data catalogs.
While still emerging, we are seeing evidence of the transformative potential of open data in shaping the future of our civic life. It’s at the local level that government most directly impacts the lives of residents—providing clean parks, fighting crime, or issuing permits to open a new business. This is where there is the biggest opportunity to use open data to reimagine the relationship between citizens and government.
Beyond Transparency is a cross-disciplinary survey of the open data landscape, in which practitioners share their own stories of what they’ve accomplished with open civic data. It seeks to move beyond the rhetoric of transparency for transparency’s sake and towards action and problem solving. Through these stories, we examine what is needed to build an ecosystem in which open data can become the raw materials to drive more effective decision-making and efficient service delivery, spur economic activity, and empower citizens to take an active role in improving their own communities….
This book is a resource for (and by) practitioners inside and outside government—from the municipal chief information officer to the community organizer to the civic-minded entrepreneur. Beyond Transparency is intended to capture and distill the community’s learnings around open data for the past four years. And we know that the community is going to continue learning. That’s why, in addition to the print version of the book which you can order on Amazon, we’ve also published the digital version of this book on this site under a Creative Commons license. The full text of this site is on GitHub — which means that anyone can submit a pull request with a suggested edit. Help us improve this resource for the community and write the next edition of Beyond Transparency by submitting your pull requests.
Code for America is a national nonprofit committed to building a government for the people, by the people, that works in the 21st century. Over the past four years, CfA has worked with dozens of cities to support civic innovation through open data. You can support this work by contributing to the book on GitHub, joining the CfA volunteer community (the Brigade), or connecting your city with CfA.

GitHub and Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New site: “Make government better, together. Stories of open source, open data, and open government.
This site is an open source effort to showcase best practices of open sourcing government. See something that you think could be better? Want to submit your own story? Simply fork the project and submit a pull request.
…

Ready to get started on GitHub? Here are some ideas that are easy to get your feet wet with.

Feedback Repository

GitHub’s about connecting with developers. Whether you’re an API publishing pro, or just getting started, creating a “feedback” repository can go a long way to connect your organization with the community. Get feedback from current and potential data consumers by creating a specific repository for them to contribute ideas and suggestions for types of data or other information they’d like to see opened. Here’s how:

  1. Create a new repository
    • Choose your organization as the Owner
    • Name the repository “feedback” or similar
    • Click the checkbox to automatically create a README.md file
  2. Set up your Readme
    • Click README.md within your newly created repository
    • Click Edit
    • Introduce yourself, describe why you’ve joined GitHub, what you’re hoping to do and what you’d like to learn from the development community. Encourage them to leave feedback through issues on the repository.

Sample text for your README.md:

# City of Gotham Feedback
We've just joined GitHub and want to know what data would be interesting to our development community?
Leave us comments via issues!

Open source a Dataset

Open sourcing a dataset can be as simple as uploading a .csv to GitHub and letting people know about it. Rather than publishing data as a zip file on your website or an FTP server, you can add the files through the GitHub.com web interface, or via the GitHub for Windows or GitHub for Mac native clients. Create a new repository to store your datasets – in many cases, it’s as easy as drag, drop, sync.
GitHub can host any file type (although open, non-binary files like .csvs tend to work best). Plus, GitHub supports rendering certain open data formats interactively such as the popular geospacial .geojson format. Once uploaded, citizens can view the files, and can even open issues or submit pull requests with proposed fixes.

Explore Open Source Civic Apps

There are many open source applications freely available on GitHub that were built just for government. Check them out, and see if it fits a need. Here are some examples:

  • Adopt-a – This open source web app was created for the City of Boston in 2011 by Code for America fellows. It allows residents to “adopt” a hydrant and make sure it’s clear of snow in the winter so that emergency crews can locate them when needed. It has since been adopted in Chicago (for sidewalks), Seattle (for storm drains), and Honolulu (for tsunami sirens).
  • StreetMix – Another creation of Code for America fellows (2013) this website, www.streetmix.net, allows anyone to create street sections in a way that is not only beautiful but educational, too. No downloading, no installing, no paying – make and save your creations right at the website. Great for internal or public community planning meetings.
  • We The People – We The People, the White House’s petitions application hosted at petitions.whitehouse.gov is a Drupal module to allow citizens to submit and digitally sign petitions.

Open source something small

Chances are you’ve got something small you can open source. Check in with your web or new media team, and see if they’ve got something they’ve been dying to share or blog about, no matter how small. It can be snippet of analytics code, or maybe a small script used internally. It doesn’t even have to be code.
Post your website’s privacy policy, comment moderation policy, or terms of service and let the community weigh in before your next edit. No matter how small it is, getting your first open source project going is a great first step.

Improve an existing project

Does you agency use an existing open source project to conduct its own business? Open an issue on the project’s repository with a feature request or a bug you spot. Better yet, fork the project, and submit your improvements. Even if it’s one or two lines of code, such examples are great to blog about to showcase your efforts.
Don’t forget, this site is an open source project, too. Making an needed edit is another great way to get started.”