Unopen Government #nlpoli

The idea of open data has been around for a while.

In government, it means that government would make information like census data,  statistics,  licensing information easily and freely available for anyone to use, free of charge and any restrictions. It's a way of sparking creativity, crowd-sourcing new information, and basically spending less time and scarce resources in government trying to hide useful information the public should have anyway.

Officially, the provincial government here adopted the idea as official policy in 2014 but they have been typically very slow to put anything into action.

Case on point:  an access to information request for data collected from caribou monitoring collars.  The maps in the download are all stamped with a restriction that they are for the use of the original recipient only.  No one bothered to black them out, which would be the easiest thing to do... if the restriction didn't still apply.

More importantly, though,  the request was just for spot data shown on maps, as opposed to the actual latitude and longitude tracking information.  A government genuinely committed to open data would have just dumped this stuff into the public domain in the first place, in bulk. That would have saved the expense of converting it into maps into the first place for this request, no matter how small the dollar cost actually was.

There is soooo much that begs to be fixed in the provincial government's access to information world.

-srbp-

Opening the doors on government information

There are lots of good ideas floating around that could make Newfoundland and Labrador a stronger and better place to live.

One simple one would be to emulate British Columbia:  throw open piles of government information so that people can use it.  The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the most secretive, backwards administrations in Canada.

Open the vaults on data that no one – even the government officials themselves – is using.  It’s not that people wouldn't;t use the information or that they shouldn’t have access to it.

The problem is they just can’t get access to it, at all. As the Globe put it:

The idea is a simple one. In the past, governments collected tax dollars from citizens. Government employees inside the boundaries of government created services that were delivered back to the citizens. This exchange of tax dollars for services will continue, but, courtesy of the Internet, there’s an expanded model of government whereby government acts as a platform.

There’s an enormous amount of data inside government, such as data about climate change, the success of entrepreneurs, radon gas, bicycle accidents and so on. With governments starting to make this raw data available to citizens, people will self-organize to use the data to create value. This is not about outsourcing or privatization. This is about a new division of labour in society about how we create public value. The result is better government services and a government that costs less.

Political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador won;t adopt such a policy in the current election platform.  At least two of the parties have vested interests in keeping control of information. The other might just not give a toss.

Here’s another area where it would be nice to be proven wrong but your humble e-scribbler is not holding his breath waiting. Experience is a cruel teacher.

- srbp -

Info commissioners and ombudsmen call for open government

Information commissioners, privacy commissioners and ombudsmen from across Canada issued a call on September first for government sin the country to adopt open government principles.

They issued the call from their joint meeting held this year in Whitehorse.

Specifically, the commissioners resolved:

1. The Commissioners endorse and promote open government as a means to enhance transparency and accountability which are essential features of good governance and critical elements of an effective and robust democracy.

2. The Commissioners call on the federal and all provincial and territorial governments to declare the importance of open government, including specific commitments for stronger standards for transparency and participation by the public.

3. Governments should build access mechanisms into the design and implementation stages of all new programs and services to facilitate and enhance proactive disclosure of information.

4. Through ongoing consultations with the public, governments should routinely identify data sources and proactively disclose information in open, accessible and reusable formats. Public access to information should be provided free or at minimal cost.

5. In implementing open government policies, the federal and all provincial and territorial governments should give due consideration to privacy, confidentiality, security, Crown copyright and all relevant laws.

- srbp -