Towards a public digital infrastructure: why do governments have a responsibility to go open? | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog

pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks 2012-11-01

Summary:

The most common argument in favor of open data is that it enhances transparency, and while the link may not always be causal, it is certainly true that both tend to go hand-in-hand. But there is another, more expansive perspective on open government data: that it is part of an effort to build public infrastructure. Does making a shapefile available with all Montevideo’s traffic lights make Montevideo’s government more transparent? We don’t think so. But one of our duties as civil servants is building the city infrastructure. And we should understand that data is mainly infrastructure. People do things on it, as they do things on roads, bridges or parks. For money, for amusement, for philanthropy, there are myriads of uses for infrastructure: we should not try to determine or even guess which those uses are. We must just provide the infrastructure and ensure it will be available. Open data should be seen as a component of an effort to build a public digital infrastructure, where people could, within the law, do whatever they want. Exactly as they do with roads. When you see open data in this light, several decisions become easier... But of course the infrastructure required to enable people to create an information society goes beyond data. We will give you four examples... [1] The most direct infrastructure component is hardware and communications. The Uruguayan government recognises this, and is planning to have each home connected with fibre by then end of 2015, with 1 Gb traffic for free for everybody with a phone line ...  [2] Secondly, services. Sometimes it’s better to provide services than to provide data. Besides publishing cartography data, in Montevideo we provide WMS and WFS services to retrieve a map just using a URL. Services, as data, should be open: no registration, no access limit. Open services allow developers to use not only government data, but also government computation power, and, of course, government knowledge: the knowledge needed to, say, estimate the arrival time of a bus.  [3] Thirdly, sometimes services are not enough, and we have to develop complete software components to enable public servants to do their work. Sometimes these software components should also be part of the public digital infrastructure. The people of Brazil are very clear on this: in 2007 they developed the Portal do Software Publico Brasileiro, where applications developed by or for the government are publicly available.  [4] Finally, there is knowledge. We, as the government, must tell the people what we are doing, and how we are doing it. Our knowledge should be open. We have the duty to publish our knowledge and to let others use it, so that we can participate actively in communities, propose changes, and act as an innovation factor in every task we face. Because we are paid for that: for building knowledge infrastructure..."

Link:

http://blog.okfn.org/2012/11/01/towards-a-public-digital-infrastructure-why-do-governments-have-a-responsibility-to-go-open/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.infrastructure oa.crowd oa.brazil oa.geo oa.floss oa.uruguay oa.wms oa.wfs oa.psi oa.okfn oa.data oa.latin_america oa.government oa.south

Date tagged:

11/01/2012, 07:45

Date published:

11/01/2012, 13:05