Open, accessible government data really seems to be hotting up.
Last week, the White House launched Data.gov, a website that promises to “make a broad array of U.S. Government data available.” Also last week, Vancouver City Council passed a motion (PDF) to endorse the principles of “making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.”
Vancouver’s announcement follows in the footsteps of other North American cities like Washington, D.C. and Toronto.
This Wednesday, Nora will interview Andrea Reimer, the Vancouver city councillor behind the open city motion. They’ll talk about the costs and benefits of open data, how it can affect civic engagement, and the privacy and security concerns Vancouver will have to consider as it opens up its municipal data.
The interview is slated to run on the June 3 episode of Spark. If you have questions about open data for Coun. Reimer, leave them in the comments below.
[Original image by illustir]
May 25th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
It isn't really a question about open government, it is about the data that is available in google maps etc. Is it accessible yet? Where are the API's etc. I had a friend tweet the other day about it. He said..
"Yes, government transparency, but also the political economy of geodata in general in an era of Google Earth/maps api "
It got me wondering, where is it? Surely people are creating already? Or are they waiting for the data to come, then building it?
May 25th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Geographic data is being gathered by the Open Street Map project. It’s open data, freely available for re-use (unlike Google’s map data). Check http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page for info.
–Bob.
May 26th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hi Bob,
Our correspondent, Cyrus Farivar, went to the Where 2.0 conference last week, where he interviewed one of the people behind OpenStreetMap. It will be on next week's show, if you want to check it out!
May 26th, 2009 at 10:25 am
I have no questions for Councillor Reimer, but I’d like to get some feedback from the City of Toronto’s Open Data initiative. I heard an excerpt of Mayor Miller’s presentation at Mesh09, but the Web site he mentions, http://toronto.ca/open is still only an “Under Construction” page.
Considering that Mayor Miller apparently got things going at the City of Toronto Web Summit in November I’m getting the impression that this was all talk and no action. That was half a year ago! In Internet time that’s enough to go from idea to startup to IPO to flameout!
–Bob.
May 26th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Who pushed for this? Why?
Was anyone opposed? Why? How were their objections addressed?
May 26th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Gussy makes a very good point. Where are the API's is one of the first steps, and then it quickly becomes, what is the format of the data? Or does the traditional government obfuscation still exist within this online data? The good point is the first step becoming available begs the subsequent steps of; a published format of the data, and other schedule, currency, structural information requirements associated with the API.
May 26th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Gussy and Peter: the point you raise has been debated at length in the open government community. The prevailing position is that it is best that third sector organizations such mySociety in the UK or the Sunlight Foundation in the US use the data to create readable explanations. This being said – others have suggested that the government release a clear precis of the most interesting data.
A question you could ask is whether the Vancouver government would cooperate with a Canadian organization (such as Visible Government, which was mentioned on Spark a few weeks ago) to create a program that allows people to mobilize publicly available data in order to directly ask questions of their councilor?
May 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Best international examples of how open data has affected change for citizens?
May 26th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Hi,
I'm wondering about several points regarding this new policy. Democracy is about openness, so moving to openness is a nobrainer. It seems the city is proposing is to develop a culture of sharing. But as always the devil is in the details or in how this policy will be implemented. This entails certain questions:
1. What is the city's position on copyright? Will it be rejecting traditional, restrictive views of copyright and seeking to share its data and programs in as free a fashion as is possible? Will it be creating city standards based upon existing public standards such as Creative Commons licencing, GNU General Public Licences, OASIS, and so on?
2. What about interoperability? How deeply committed is the city to requiring that data be accessible by all its citizens, regardless of the hardware and software they choose to use? Will the city be using multiple proprietary (closed) data file formats or moving to adopt open file formats such as Open Document?
3. How important is data longevity to the city? When corporations, contemporary hardware and software no longer exist, what are the city's plans to access its archives in the long term?
3. With regards new computer programs that the city develops, and makes available to its citizens, will it also be making the source code for these programs available so that citizens and other municipalities can modify and improve them for their own use?
5. With respect the programs that the city develops, will the city be endorsing the Free Software Foundations principals in any way? Will it be:
A. Ensuring that programs can be used for any purpose?
B. Ensuring that users have access to the source code and the freedom to adapt it for their own uses?
C. Ensuring that users have the right to redistribute city programs in order to help their neighbors?
D. Ensuring that users have the right to redistribute their modified versions of a program?
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html
Thanks.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Can Coun. Reimer give us a sense of the breadth and depth of data that might be made available? (Presumably she can't make any promises yet.)
May 27th, 2009 at 2:01 am
First, a huge THANK YOU to Councilor Reimer. With this motion, you have given Vancouver something truly wonderful.
Now a few questions:
1) Is it reasonable to expect that GPLv3 (or AGPLv3 in network applications) will be Vancouver's choice of license for all software that is publicly funded and developed?
2) Will the City of Vancouver be releasing a list of all proprietary software that is currently licensed from commercial entities with a time-line for migrating away from them in favour of free (and open) solutions?
3) Will the City of Vancouver consider offering grants to the local software development community to create the software it needs to run city affairs in a manner that is consistent with this motion?
Again, thanks very much for your support.
May 27th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
[...] also asked crowdsourced questions from the Spark community, including Michael, Randall Ross, and [...]
May 28th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
How is any of this going to save money? Converting from application X from SAP (Oracle/IBM) to Y (Open Source Z) takes effort and re-training and data conversion routines which need to be validated. This will not be free even though the actual software maybe (which itself is unlikely) and there will be the usual — it is in the next version syndrome.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
It is true that it will cost to convert to open source. But then compare that to converting to a technology solution that involves a commercial database product such as MS Access. You still need to pay for retraining, conversion, and licensing fees (gasp!), but with an Open Source solution, it will cost less, and the consumer (in this case government) is FREE to modify that solution to their needs, rather than the needs of the software vendor.
Does it really make sense to pay more than necessary, especially in this economy? IMO, open source is the most sensible way to go.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Any change costs money. Upgrading from Microsoft XP to Microsoft Vista costs money. The immediate cost is only part of the issue. Costs associated with a change to Open Source amount to short term pain for long term gain – spending money to save money in the future. The use of Open Source applications in the future will ***substantially*** reduce overall software costs as many applications are available without price. As far as your example goes, Vancouver will not be the first to switch, much of the work has already been done and will cost Vancouver nothing.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
The city of Chicago saved money on its IT infrastructure by adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux on both the desktop and their servers. Is Vancouver planning a similar infrastructure for open access to government data?
May 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
If you are doing anything other than "play and show and tell" with MS Access than the Organization has much bigger issues than going to Open Source. You are dealing with an organization culture which keeps data on a napkin or match-book cover.
So going to Open Source, we will now be paying for employees who will be working on things not related to the work but improving the Open Source code?! If these people want to work on Open Source System Development" then work someplace else and not on taxpayer money. Conversion costs in lost time and perhaps lost data and the ever present "consulting fees".
What will happen when Open Source Product X becomes Proprietary Product Z and not to be seen again?
Solutions looking for Problems will not save us any more money.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Are you saying that Open Source will not have "Upgrade Costs"? It all depends on what software you want to use and how much you value your data and access to it.
As to it not costing Vancouver anything, I would be really interested in knowing the figures. As far as I know, everything in Vancouver always costs; they are just good at book-keeping entries. Otherwise these same pople would not have been making a mess of the Olympics budget.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Read what I said. "Any change costs money."
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
The point is that if the data is stored in an open format, then eventually we can get off the proprietary software treadmill.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Is Vancouver going to hire In House programmers to fix problems that pop up, or source the work to local or overseas programmers?
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:38 pm
We have had the Acceee to Information for a long time. The people responsible for gving access are the very same ones who are working extra hard to make sure we do not get the information we asked for. Do you think it will be any different this time around?
Better to spend the energy and effort (and I am sure the money) on the homeless and the sick.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:42 pm
What will the savings be over a five year period? Did moving to Linux not require any new software that would have been running on the previous Operating System? And if it was new software, was there no training necessary? No down time?
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
To have data in an open format only needs your willingness to do the storage in that manner. Nothing to do with the OS or the software you use, is it?
You can run Oracle in Linux and have the data encrypted or not and have the problem of a million records floating around when the laptop gets "stolen"/"misplaced". If that data was in "open format" how happy would you be?
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:51 pm
And do I need to incur the costs when I do not have to? Just for the sake of a philosophical concept?
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Are they all not doing that already? All the contracts go the the big players who then farm out the work to their off-shore "partners". Then we wonder why the local economy does not support the purchase of $30K cars.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Hi,
I attended the follow up session between the local IT community and City Hall IT Director Shari Wallace at Open Web 2009, June 11-12.
This initiative is not going to fly.
Competition isn't welcome. Or in SW's words we don't want to be fighting any battles. You can bet that existing vendors would fight to protect their turf from any sort of competition such as replacing Office with Open Office. Monopolies and entrenched vendors have a definite interest in suppressing the kind of conflicts that could lead to change. .
SW doesn't have a background in working with Open Source or Open Data.
Rather than explain what sort of help the city might need from the community she dismissed that as a purposeless chicken and egg sort of question "What do you want"? "What have you got"? The point of course should be how do you move forward.
I'm very disappointed. I had great hopes for this initiative, but it's clear that it's going to die the "Death of a Thousand Cuts" in the implementation phase.