the power of public information – richard allan southampton, 16 th october 2008

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 1

The Power of Public Information – Richard Allan

Southampton, 16th October 2008


Context - Public Information Examples

Public Services

Public Culture

People and Places


Context – Website Free For All

After ten years of uncoordinated growth, the Government does not know exactly how many websites it operates, although it could be as many as 2,500.

The Cabinet Office and the Central Office for Information are reducing the number of websites, beginning with the closure of 951 by 2011. To prevent a recurrence of the proliferation of government websites, no new ones should be established without the agreement of the Government’s Chief Information Officer in the Cabinet Office.

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, HC143, Government on the Internet, 2007


Context – Re-use Abounds


Context - PoI Model – An Introduction

Data LayerData Layer

Analysis LayerAnalysis Layer

Presentation LayerPresentation Layer

Interaction LayerInteraction Layer

Access LayerAccess Layer

Access LayerAccess Layer


Exemplars – Opening Up Parliament

2008 TheyWorkForYou

gets video

2004 TheyWorkForYou

licensed

2000Activists create

FaxYourMP

1995Hansard goes

online

19th CenturyHansard

recognised

18th CenturyReporting banned


Exemplars – TheyWorkForYou.com


Exemplars - PoI Model Revisited

MP Websites

Hansard

Scraper Click-Use license

PublicWhip

XML Data Creative Commons

TheyWorkForYou

Comments Blogs Media

Data LayerData Layer

Analysis LayerAnalysis Layer

Presentation LayerPresentation Layer

Hansard

Clerks/Library Analysis

www.parliament.uk


Exemplars - we asked the public to show us a better way..

•Plain English •No technical knowledge required•Prize•Cast net very wide•400 entries•Global coverage


Access Layer – Key Enablers

DISCOVERY – can I find the data that I want?

LEGAL – am I allowed to use the data?

TECHNICAL – is the data in the right format?

COMMERCIAL – can I afford the data that I need?


Discovery – Search


Technical – Methods


Legal – Licensing


Commercial - Costs

"Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free speech'', not "free beer.'' - Richard Stallman, the Free Software Definition, fsf.org


Challenges - Control

A note to Tony Blair:

Tony Blair has gone on record in the past week as stating that early intervention strategies are necessary for at risk families and children. we argue that this is completely unachievable in practice.

We say, "it is just not possible to predict on a computer at risk families. you cannot predict, for example, which mothers are likely to suffer from postnatal depression, which father will become violent or an alcoholic, or which parents have no family support and find it hard to cope with young children or which children will have developmental problems. To support parents in bringing up their children to be good, happy and healthy citizens, there must be a support service available to all mothers, not just those that seem to tick the right boxes. That is the role of the health visitors. please ensure the primary care trusts stop reducing the health visiting support service."

Hospitals (UK) - patientopinion.org.uk

Police (US) - ratemycop.com

Prisons (UK) - visits.sicamp.org


Trends – Generation ‘Y’ Civil Service


Trends - US References

‘Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.’

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1138083, David Robinson, Harlan Yu, William P Zeller, Edward W Felten.

‘Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities…’

‘Employing technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networking tools, to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision-making.’

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/ (pre-convention)


Evolutionary PressuresCivic Activists

Technology

Political Leadership

Workforce Culture

Commercial Interests


Ambition - Unlocking Creativity

I just had this idea… let’s try it.

“cumulative innovation in a knowledge economy”


Further Information –powerofinformation.wordpress.com

email: [email protected]

the power of public information – richard allan southampton, 16 th october 2008

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