government

You are currently browsing the archive for the government category.

ParlVu

March 20, 2008 in Access, canada, federal government, government by Tracey | Permalink

ParlVu is apparently bringing Parliament to your desktop! Well then! It seems like you can access live feeds of meetings in progress while access to

archived audio files are only accessible to those within the parliamentary Intranet (members, senators, press gallery, and staff within the parliamentary precinct).   I am told eventually they will be made accessible to the public, but no idea when.   If you`re willing to contact someone with access to ParlVu archives you could hear it.   Otherwise, ParlVu is a tool for a live feed. (email correspondence from a helpful clerk)

aboriginal australia map

March 16, 2008 in geo, government, maps by Hugh | Permalink

A great map of Australia, as seen by traditional aboriginal tribes. I can’t imagine the Canadian government doing something like this.

One curious note, below the map, the fine print says:

Disclaimer and Warning: Not suitable for use in native title and other land claims

[via: foe]

One Nation Under Google

March 6, 2008 in academia, conference, government, politics by Hugh | Permalink

This should be good, and pose some questions to the mission of datalibre.ca … questions we ought to be able to answer, if we are serious about what we’re trying to do.

One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic

A public talk by Professor Darin Barney
Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, McGill University.

Friday, March 14, 2008
Arts W-215, 853 Sherbrooke Street West, McGill University, Montreal
18h30, free

Does more technology equal more freedom? While the nuts and bolts of technological progress – computers, cellphones, internet access wired and wireless – become accessible to more and more people, the promise of increased civic engagement enabled by these gadgets seems to have eluded our wired society. There’s a lot more to technology, and to democracy, than wires and buttons, and it has a much deeper affect on our lives than simply being tools we can use well or badly.

In Dr. Barney’s words, “technology is, at once, irretrievably political and consistently depoliticizing. It is at the centre of this contradiction that the prospects for citizenship in the midst of technology lie.” Presenting a range of examples from YouTube to the hidden networks of food production and government bureaucracy, Barney contests the common notion that technology necessarily leads to enhanced freedom and improved civic engagement. One Nation Under Google examines the challenge of citizenship in a technological society, and asks whether the demands of technology are taking over the practice of democracy.

Presented in collaboration with CKUT 90.3FM

The next stop should be Helsinki

March 3, 2008 in geo, government, maps, open access, R&D, web by admin | 1 comment

Check out what open public transit data is available in Finland:

http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/

I suspect a small minority of transit authorities in Canada may actually have GPS units on board buses, but I haven’t heard of any making the data publicly accessible — and not in such fine form. This is really beautiful to see, but it fills me with shame that we are light-years behind.

Original article in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/28/research.transport

Is anyone aware of any real-time data being made available in Canada?

Aussies go Creative Commons?

February 17, 2008 in government by Hugh | Permalink

When you’re dealing with a flooding emergency in the middle of the worst drought for many years, the last thing you need is barriers to the sharing of geographical and meteorological information.

Yet that’s the situation faced by Australia. The authorities’ response is to consider the widespread adoption of Creative Commons licences for public-sector information.

From The Guardian UK, via Free Our Data.

This encapsulates, to me, the most compelling argument for free data. That getting access to data helps us better solve problems; barriers to data make for a less innovative, less healthy country.

political tag clouds

January 30, 2008 in canada, federal government, government by Hugh | Permalink

Civic data comes in many guises, and this is a neat way to analyze a politician’s speeches:
wordcloud

Last year’s 2007 State of the Union Tag Cloud was such a hit, I decided to follow up again this year…

[from Boing Boing]

Would be nice to do this systematically for every politician, maybe just based on their web pages? Or published documents, anyway.

Well, why not? Why not, indeed? Here is:

Stephen Harper:

created at TagCrowd.com

Stephane Dion:

created at TagCrowd.com

Jack Layton:

created at TagCrowd.com

Gilles Duceppe:

created at TagCrowd.com

EU Guidelines for Open Access

January 13, 2008 in academia, government, policy, R&D by Hugh | Permalink

Peter Suber reports that:

The Scientific Council of the European Research Council has released its Guidelines for Open Access [pdf]…

Here is the text:

  1. Scientific research is generating vast, ever increasing quantities of information, including primary data, data structured and integrated into databases, and scientific publications. In the age of the Internet, free and efficient access to information, including scientific publications and original data, will be the key for sustained progress.
  2. Peer-review is of fundamental importance in ensuring the certification and dissemination of high-quality scientific research. Policies towards access to peer-reviewed scientific publications must guarantee the ability of the system to continue to deliver high-quality certification services based on scientific integrity.
  3. Access to unprocessed data is needed not only for independent verification of results but, more importantly, for secure preservation and fresh analysis and utilisation of the data.
  4. A number of freely accessible repositories and curated databases for publications and data already exist serving researchers in the EU. Over 400 research repositories are run by European research institutions and several fields of scientific research have their own international discipline-specific repositories. These include for example PubMed Central for peer-reviewed publications in the life sciences and medicine, the arXiv Internet preprint archive for physics and mathematics, the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank nucleotide sequence database and the RSCB-PDB/MSD-EBI/PDBj protein structure database.
  5. With few exceptions, the social sciences & humanities (SSH) do not yet have the benefit of public central repositories for their recent journal publications. The importance of open access to primary data, old manuscripts, collections and archives is even more acute for SSH. In the social sciences many primary or secondary data, such as social survey data and statistical data, exist in the public domain, but usually at national level. In the case of the humanities, open access to primary sources (such as archives, manuscripts and collections) is often hindered by private (or even public or nation-state) ownership which permits access either on a highly selective basis or not at all.

Based on these considerations, and following up on its earlier Statement on Open Access (Appendix 1) the ERC Scientific Council has established the following interim position on open access:

  1. The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate research repository where available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access within 6 months of publication.
  2. The ERC considers essential that primary data – which in the life sciences for example could comprise data such as nucleotide/protein sequences, macromolecular atomic coordinates and anonymized epidemiological data – are deposited to the relevant databases as soon as possible, preferably immediately after publication and in any case not later than 6 months after the date of publication.

The ERC is keenly aware of the desirability to shorten the period between publication and open access beyond the currently accepted standard of 6 months.

Peter has some good analysis.

What is the NRC’s policy on Open Access?

stephenson on transparency

December 21, 2007 in federal government, government by Hugh | Permalink

David Stephenson writes a great piece arguing for freeing government data:

I suspect my presentation today will be the first time many of you have heard of “transparent government.” It is an exciting new way of treating government data that will blossom as Web 2.0 apps, and what I call the Web 2.0 ethos of cooperation, become commonplace.Among other benefits, transparent government can:

* build public confidence in government
* improve the quality of public debate
* improve delivery of government services

and may even reduce the cost of those services.

[more…]

(via jon udell)

Principles for Open Data

December 10, 2007 in copyright, datasets, government, international, policy, Uncategorized by Tracey | 1 comment

An excellent post on the development of Government Open Data Principles. These were developed at an O’Reilly and Associates workshop. Ethan Zuckerman provides some excellent background on his blog and a Open Data WiKi is accepting comments and of course collaboration. Has this been done anywhere else?

Government data shall be considered open if it is made public in a way that complies with the principles below:

1. Complete
All public data is made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations.

2. Primary
Data is as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.

3. Timely
Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.

4. Accessible
Data is available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.

5. Machine processable
Data is reasonably structured to allow automated processing.

6. Non-discriminatory
Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.

7. Non-proprietary
Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.

8. License-free
Data is not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.

Ecologo

November 24, 2007 in canada, datasets, federal government, government, international, policy, resources, tools by Tracey | Permalink

Ecologo is an excellent example of a Government of Canada consumer data and information service that facilitates the making of informed decisions on how and what to consume.

I discovered it this morning while reading an article about greening computers in the Globe and Mail. I pay attention to electronic waste on my personal blog but think Ecologo is also relevant here as it is a program that provides data on green consumer product certification to Canadians using a rigorous review system. There is also a tinge of national pride here when I read the following even though I know that Canada as a green country is a myth, nonetheless Ecologo was:

launched by the Canadian federal government in 1988, EcoLogo is North America’s oldest environmental standard and certification organization (and the second oldest in the world). It is the only North American standard accredited by the Global Ecolabeling Network as meeting the international ISO 14024 standard for Type I (third-party certified, multi-attribute) environmental labels.

Environment Canada has always been excellent at developing sustainability and other quality of life criteria and monitoring measures. It is one of those interesting departments that is both science and policy, and they stick to good science in their methods to communicate, evaluate and disseminate – budgets permitting of course!

EcoLogoM certification criteria documents (CCDs) are developed in an open, public and transparent process, with a broad base of stakeholder participation including user groups (e.g. procurement associations, institutional purchasers and consumer protection organizations), product producers (e.g. industry members and associations), government / regulators, general science-based representatives (e.g. academics, life cycle experts and other scientists), environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), and other environmental advocates. The criteria address multiple environmental attributes related to human health and environmental considerations throughout the life cycle of the product. Currently, there are 122 Certification Criteria Documents addressing over 250 product types.

You can look up just about anything and discover products in their impressive list. I like that there is a rigorous system in place that is about making informed choices. This is what data are for! They also have an excellent purchaser’s tool box organized by product, category or company.

Hmm! Wonder if we could ever develop a criteria to evaluate organizations on their access, preservation and dissemination of data? What would be the key criteria in such an evaluation? Would an organization get a Free and Open Knowledge certificate (the acronym is terrible! we need Michael Lenczner‘s help here!)? A CivicAccess gold, silver or bronze stamp of data democracy and liberation?

« Older entries § Newer entries »