[Aust-NZ] Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data

[Cameron Shorter]

Introductions:
Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) meet
the Australian/New Zealand chapter of the Open Source Geospatial 
Foundation (OSGeo).
(and visa-versa)

As I understand it, individuals from both email lists are planning to 
write a response for this Public Access to Data Proposal and I suspect 
all responses will have a similar message.

In particular, interest has been shown from:
Brendan Scott, Adam Crow from OSIA
Bruce Bannerman, Bruce Bannerman, and maybe Rob Atkinson from OSGeo Aust/NZ.

I suggest consider writing a polished joint submission which should be 
better as it has more inputs and reviewers.

Rob Atkinson wrote:
> These are key points I think the FOSS community should debate and
> reach a consensus (if possible) on...
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Robert Coup
> <robert.coup at onetrackmind.co.nz> wrote:
>   
>> Hi Rob,
>>
>> Good points - comments/questions inline...
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Rob Atkinson <robatkinson101 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>     
>>> 1) There should be a general position regarding accountability, like
>>> the intention (but not current practice!) of FOI laws, that taxpayer
>>> funded activities should support free and open access for
>>> non-commercial use to relevant information. This includes all spatial
>>> information, with the well understood exceptions of personal private
>>> details and national security. Specifically there should be a
>>> presumption of public interest, with only commercial exploitation
>>> restricted.
>>>       
>> What do you mean by commercial exploitation here? If BigCo wants to resell
>> free and publicly accessible data for $100K per user per year and can find
>> suckers to sign up for that, whats the problem?
>>
>>     
>
>
> IMHO there is a danger (maybe a certainty) that we wont get legitimate
> access to data that is currently also sold commercially.  If we
> disallow resale for commercial purposes, then public-interest access
> can be supported without changing all existing commercial
> arrangements.  I dont we think we really care how the cost is
> apportioned within governments either, just that non-commercial uses
> (public interest, researc, non-commercial software development and
> testing, education etc) should not be prejudiced by any potential
> commercial value of the data.
>
>   
>>> 2) There should not be a technical cost associated in accessing data -
>>> i.e. it should not be bound to a proprietary on in-house custom
>>> technology.  FOSS has an obvious role in providing a baseline for what
>>> is thus acceptable - there should be an onus on data access methods to
>>> provide a FOSS reference implementation, and this should apply
>>> automatically. Critically we mustnt contemplate building private data
>>> distribution arrangements without a commensurate capability to make
>>> the same data visible and accessible using open standards and
>>> licenses.
>>>       
>> Standards are the key things here imo, if the data is available in standard
>> formats or through standard service interfaces then it doesn't matter what
>> software is in use to deliver it. Whether governments should be
>> using/preferring Open Source Software is a different topic from providing
>> open access to public information. I'd much prefer data released today in
>> any format, than in five years via a standard format. Governments (and all
>> of us) should be striving to push standards but getting data out there is
>> more important than getting it in the "right" form.
>>
>>     
>
> Agreed - for example a FOSS reference implementation that reads an
> ESRI shapefile would be acceptable - to the extent that the shapefile
> meta model  (aka Simple Features Level 0 Profile) is useful for data
> transfer of anything but cartographic data products.
>
> Open standards will be required for many data products, because there
> is no de-facto proprietary standard that meets metadata needs. Even if
> you ship boundaries as shapefiles, a protected area for example has
> metadata that wont fit into a single database column. This needs to be
> accessible too, as part of any real data product. We should plan for
> this capability.
>
> I also think the stronger requirement that there is a test against
> FOSS reference implementation is valuable in practice. I've seen too
> many "open standard conformance claiming" proprietary implementations
> that just arent usable. With much more rigorous open standards
> conformance capabilities in place this could be relaxed,
>
> Rob (or was that B1?)
>
>   
>> Looks like Victoria is heading in healthy directions though :)
>>
>> Other Rob.
>>
>>
>>     
> _______________________________________________
> Aust-NZ mailing list
> Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/aust-nz
>   


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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