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“Its gunna cost ya” – who pays?

Hi I’m Seb Chan.

I’m really excited to be on the Taskforce. And you can read about what I do over at my work blog at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

I’m simplifying things a bit for brevity here but one of the big issues around access to government data is that of cost.

Creating, collecting, and preserving data costs. Whilst your taxes are paying for this, many government agencies have also been asked, over the years, to generate revenue from selling data and/or access to it.

This revenue sometimes generates a profit, but other times it doesn’t even remotely get near covering the cost of selling it. The business units that sell this data rely upon clarity in terms of intellectual property in order to develop their business models and thus they’ve been encouraged to operate to protect their own interests and data (even when they might now run counter to those of the community).

Add to this the complexity of government IT systems and where there are legacy systems involved, getting the data out can incur substantial costs. At the very least there are time and resource costs. And because of prior policy decisions around outsourcing there are also now often third party fees payable to outsourced IT service providers.

So this is a tricky area to venture into and there need to be some clear ways of addressing questions around these matters.

With my team I’ve done a fair bit at the Museum around the Creative Commons licensing of all our text-based research content on our website as well as the release of a whole lot of historical images to Flickr with ‘no known Copyright restrictions’. Now we do run a business unit selling images, and we sell our text-based research through the exhibitions and publications we produce.

So how can we justify “giving it away”? Well, our mission is closely aligned with education and to better serve citizens, students and the community it makes sense to. Perhaps surprisingly, it also makes good business sense in the digital age.

One of my team at the Powerhouse, Paula Bray, recently published a paper looking at the cost implications of making these historical images available for free via Flickr. As it turns out, we are selling more now than ever before – even though ‘customers’ can get them from Flickr for free! (In fact our referrals from Flickr which result in sales are up too!)

Similarly the ABS is finding out that since they’ve made their data freely available the online usage of their data has shot up. This results in new business opportunities just as others evaporate.

The Inquiry Into Improving Access To Victorian Public Sector Information & Data covers these issues in some detail in Chapters 7 (Pricing) and 8 (Technical Infrastructure).

However all this extra usage also ends up generating additional costs. Think of all the extra enquiries, the extra requests that this extra usage and access generates. At the Powerhouse making our collection research more accessible, more usable, and  more ‘open’ we have seen the volume of public enquiries more than triple and we struggle with answering all the enquiries we now get from all over the world. For us, this is an exciting opportunity – but it is also a huge challenge.

So how are we, as a society, going to pay for all this data – not just the collection and storage, but access and increased usage?

Access to PSI – Who is doing what?

We know that there are many people already working (both in and outside of government) on making PSI more accessible and useable.

For example over the last five years I have worked closely with a number of government projects designed to develop policy, technical and licensing solutions – such as the Government Information Licensing Project (GILF) (see its Stage 2 Report).  Our team has also worked closely with federal agencies such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics who are now providing free PSI under CC licences, AGIMO and the Cross Jurisdictional Chief Information Officers Committee (CJCIOC). 

I know that most governments in the country are now doing work in this area and many individuals and industries are also active.

Can people let us know what they are doing, proposing to do or want to do in this space?  Preferably for the record, make a comment on this blog but if you wish communicate with us is in some other way. 

(Note, this is intended to be a first cut at a project which the Taskforce may wish to do in a more systematic way, and as a result we’re likely to return to the subject more formally. But in the meantime, I thought this would be a useful preliminary exercise).

Accessibility and Government 2.0

Guest Blogger Post from Scott Hollier: Media Access Australia

Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.
– Ron Mace

One major issue to face the Government 2.0 taskforce will be how to meet the needs of people with disabilities.  In my role as Project Manager for Media Access Australia and as a person with a vision impairment, I’ve been fortunate to have both a profession and personal perspective on access issues so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the topic.

Government 2.0 Taskforce Guest Blogger Policy

During the life of this Taskforce we will invite a range of people with interesting views and perspectives to bring to the Government 2.0 debate to submit guest blog posts on specific issues. We intend this to add to the debate and encourage discussion.

There is very strong interest in the work of the Taskforce and due only to resource limitations we are not at present accepting unsolicited blog posts. This is not intended to stifle the debate and we encourage participation through comments on the blog and through other tools that will come online as the work of the Taskforce proceeds.

We will be running regular open threads on which people can talk about whatever they wish providing it conforms with our moderation policies seems reasonably relevant to the work of the Taskforce.

If you wish to nominate someone whom you think can contribute as a guest blogger please e-mail us on blogpostproposals@gov2.net.au stating who you feel we should invite to post and why. Include their name and contact details, as well as the topic on which you think they can contribute, and links to existing on-line work or references to offline work. If we invite a guest post, we will nevertheless reserve the right to decide subsequently whether we wish to publish the post on this blog.

Posts should preferably be approximately 500-1000 words and written in blog style (conversational, provocative, engaging, preferably with links to other resources).  They should  focus on some microcosm of our agenda and how it relates to the issues of Government 2.0

The author of the guest post should follow the comments on their post and engage with readers by responding to comments.

As you would expect, posts will reflect the authors views and will not necessarily be those of the Taskforce.

Congratulations Ben Crothers – designer of our banner and logo!

Well I must say, I’m excited.  At a meeting of the Taskforce yesterday, there were lots of different views about which designs were best.  Some wanted to have images of people in the design. Isn’t Web 2.0 about people? Others thought the design with Parliament House was fitting for our theme. Others agreed with a commenter, that a picture of Parliament House – perhaps a picture of any building – wasn’t quite ‘getting it’ about Web 2.0.

Then there were your votes.  Nick Morton’s design was well represented in the voting, but Ben Crothers’ designs, considered as a whole were even more popular.  His four designs scored 30% of the vote, but of those four, the three in the family chosen (see illustrations above) scored nearly a quarter of the votes.  For reasons already explained, we didn’t intend to stick rigidly to the popular vote if it led us too far astray from our own sense of what was best, but we were pleased that our own collective judgement seemed to line up with the collective judgement of our audience.

Speaking personally I am very excited about the wining designs.  Given what it takes to come up with a logo, you wonder how we keep getting good ones.  I mean how many compelling new ways are there that combine some simple image like the shape of our continent using only a few dots, or simple shapes and colours?  But I think designs 10, 11 and 12 do it simply and compellingly.  I can’t be sure what the designer intended, but to me the logo captures the idea of the diversity of Web 2.0.  And it’s fresh.   I think it looks terrific.  We’ll be in touch with Ben Crothers with a view to using all the designs he’s provided and or variants of them.  And we’ll be acknowledging his work, as I’m doing here.

So thanks everyone for sending in your ideas and your handiwork, thanks and congratulations to Ben for what I think is a fabulous design and a great outcome.

Postscript: I’ve just rung Ben and given him the good news. He drew my attention to the supporting text he’d sent in with his entry which is as follows. “The idea behind the circles is again conversations and interactions popping up around the country, with the ‘water pools’ evoking ‘ripple effect’, harmonising with each other and rippling through each other.  The colour implies variety, optimism and vitality.”  That was certainly the message I took from it.

Ben Crothers’ designs are below the fold (and now above us on our banner!). His website is here.

Government 2.0 and Society 1.0

At the Personal Democracy Forum in New York last week danah boyd (now spelled correctly) spoke on the way people access online tools such as Myspace and Facebook. I recommend reading the full text of the talk. She notes that it applies specifically to a US audience, but there are lessons for us.

Her premise is that the divisions that exist in society exist in on-line society. The truth of this has important implications for engagement online:

One thing to keep in mind about social media: the internet mirrors and magnifies pre-existing dynamics. And it makes many different realities much more visible than ever before.

Help choose our banner

We have received a great response to our banner competition from across Australia.  You will find the entries we are considering beneath the fold in the order in which they were sent to us and we’d like to invite you to help us out in choosing the winner by giving us your view in a vote. A voting facility has been provided below.  Your votes will be influential, but we will make the final decision largely because it is too difficult for us to be confident that the result of a popular poll represents the views of a representative sample of participants on our blog and the ease with which such competitions can be influenced by campaigning and multiple voting.  But rest assured, we will be interested in and influenced by your votes.

Entries are displayed in chronological order of us receiving them.

Because virtually all the entries in the banner competition included logo type designs, we are intending to choose a single design – or possibly a family of related banner designs.  It is likely that we will choose the logo within the banner design we choose, but have also included one entry which is for a logo only which we will consider in our final judging.

We will be deciding on the winner at the Taskforce’s teleconference on Thursday of this week so we cannot promise to consider any votes cast after start of business on Thursday.

(continued – over the fold – the banners and voting).

What I know to be true

What I know to be true and what I hope for the taskforce

I’m Alan Noble, serial entrepreneur, technology junkie, and head of engineering at Google Australia/NZ. I’m delighted to be on the Gov2.0 taskforce in a personal capacity. After 25 years living and breathing technology, here’s what I know to be true and here’s what I hope to drive forward on the Gov2.0 taskforce.

Information is more powerful when it’s set free

Information is becoming a pervasive and free resource, driving the growth of the digital economy worldwide. And yet very useful, publicly funded, non-confidential public sector information, such as public transport data, is still locked up either behind Government firewalls or encumbered with onerous copyright restrictions, of little use to anyone. I want to see this PSI freely available to all. This will promote great social benefits, not least the immense potential for innovative new products and services to be developed here.  Google’s Victorian bushfires map is a great example, and was only possible because the Victorian Country Fire Authority had the foresight to put an RSS feed on their site.

Transparency promotes democracy and demands accountability

Australians want answers to questions like “How are you spending my money?” Government can do much more to promote a culture of pro-disclosure and transparency. Making government information more accessible online has the power to make Government more accountable and to increase participation from Australian citizens. This will go a long way in restoring trust in Government.

Change begins at home

In promoting the digital economy and fostering a culture of transparency and information sharing, Government must walk the walk and get with the digital program. The vast majority of computing  and information will be in the cloud and a younger generation will not know any differently. Our leaders today should embrace online communication and collaboration tools to be active participants in the community and open up a dialogue with citizens.

Some early reflections

A few quick thoughts from the initial launch of the Task Force…

There was some early discussion about the credibility of the task force itself and its lack of obvious ‘heavy’ web/tech representation.   Actually the group is pretty balanced and has a good mix of perspectives.  But I made the point at the Web 2.0 in Govt conference last week that people shouldn’t fuss too much about the TF and its membership, but rather see the announcement as a crack that ‘let’s the light in’ as Leonard Cohen might put it!  It’s an opportunity and we all need to play a role in making the most of it.

It’s reasonable to expect that TF will demonstrate the principles and culture of Web 2 in its own operations and keep the conversation as open and “outside in” as possible. 

We have to work out ways to engage these issues with key public sector leaders and policy makers.  The point about Government 2.0 is that it is fundamentally a discussion about government itself.  So we need to ‘mainstream’ its deliberations and conversations so it can’t be parked as a tech-driven side show.

 We will also have to think carefully about the best way to talk with the communities we want to engage, including the already active and highly connected and those who may not yet be counted amongst the technorati but who have forceful views and great insights to share.

I think the task force is a massive opportunity to connect three big conversations – one about the emergence of a new public sector (culture, institutions, processes etc), one about improving service delivery and another about lifting the quality, reach and impact of citizen/community engagement.  We should always try and keep the ‘frame’ of our deliberations as wide as possible to show how these three  conversations, transformed by the instincts, tools and culture of the new social media, merge into a larger story.

Maybe we can see the TF as a combination of ‘platform’ (ie a space in which we can draw a sustained and energetic discussion, including linking to spaces where that discussion is already happening), a show case (to illustrate what’s possible and how it adds value) and offering helpful advice (to give government some practical guidance about how to accelerate the adoption of Web 2.0 tools, capabilities and behaviours in the public sector…).   This last one especially…”don’t lecture us”, one public servant said the other day at the Web 2.0 conference…”give us advice and encouragement”. Good point…

Finally, it’s inevitable I guess that the conversations here on the blog and elsewhere will diverge in all sorts of directions.  But we have a chance gradually to ‘sort and sift’ the ideas into some larger themes.  A bit of structure won’t hurt!  That’s not about narrowing the discussion but simply the reality that we need to balance the open debate with the need to respond to the specific questions we’ve been asked to consider.