In Development

Democracy, like culture itself, must be a collaborative project
(Siva Vaidhyanathan, http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-copyrightlaw/creativecommons_2596.jsp)

Te Whainga Aronui The Council for the Humanities and its project Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand are proud to introduce you to this draft framework outlining the State Services Commission’s guidance on open access to, and licensing of, government held information and copyright works.

We see a shared purpose in the creation of this draft framework, because its intent and our vision encircle a mutual desire to see that all people can access all relevant public sector information, information from which we can collectively build and apply knowledge to create wellbeing and innovation, both socio-cultural and economic.

The six New Zealand Creative Commons licences are enablers for the sharing of both copyright information and the licensed materials. They are the keys that will further open up public sector information to a public that can use and reuse its data. This framework has the potential to usher in an era of national knowledge sharing, translating not only into cultural and economic benefits for us all, but also facilitating a truly democratic exchange and dialogue between the Government of Aotearoa and its people.

These are lofty ideals, but point a real way forward, not only for New Zealand but the world. Open access to public sector information is the crucial first step that will truly enable ‘government for, with and by the people’- no longer a distant democratic dream, but a very real possibility. Open access will ensure scrutiny and transparency of government processes, public engagement in policy making, greater participation in political debate leading to better policy, conversation and dialogue in the democratic exchange of different perspectives and, ultimately, unforeseen private and public sector collaboration and innovation around the opened data. But even democracy 2.0 is not the ultimate ‘GOAL’.

The world stands poised at crisis point, environmentally and economically. As early as 2003, Douglas Rushkoff predicted the widest outcomes of open access. We are at the moment where

An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time.
(Open Source Democracy, 2003, p.61)

Releasing the data and information the Government holds on behalf of its people through open access and liberal licensing, and working in closer partnership with those people is the only way we can hope to solve the very complex issues we face as an ‘endangered species’ on this planet. As the Global Voices Online Draft Manifesto states,

We believe in the power of direct connection. The bond between individuals from different worlds is personal, political and powerful. We believe conversation across boundaries is essential to a future that is free, fair, prosperous and sustainable – for all citizens of this planet

In the same draft manifesto, Global Voices Online puts it even more urgently. This reiterates why we are so very pleased to support the draft NZGOAL:

This is a small planet in need of some big ideas. The more people there are in the conversation, the more likely we are to find them.
(www.worldchanging.com/archives/001769.html)

In doing so, we add our voice to the process of open and participative democracy. The draft NZGOAL framework enables us as national and global citizens and netizens to join the conversation. We encourage you to add your own voice to this framework in the form of constructive and collaborative feedback.

Stephanie Pietkiewicz
Executive Director
Te Whainga Aronui The Council for the Humanities

Jane Hornibrook
Project Developer
Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand

Congratulations Keitha, and everyone involved. It’s great you’ve got this out there right in time for the Open Govt BarCamp!

Personally, I’m dusting off my list of “what can we licence easily?” items and setting up meetings to kick this into action at the National Library next week.

Courtney

Great, Courtney. We would like to work closely with agencies such as the National Library to test the policy principles and review and release processes in a ‘live’ situation.

Keitha

Congratulations on getting this out and on all the hard work. I look forward to reading the framework.

One tiny thing about the new blog layout - please don’t include trackbacks from twitter (or similar) in the comments thread. Most simply are pointers back to this post and contribute nothing substantive to the discussion, but require time and mental energy to scroll through. When I read blog comments, I want to read real comments, not trackbacks.

Have you considered technologies like OpenURL (http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/openurl/default.htm) and OCOinS (http://ocoins.info/) for licensed content. It is a technology that allows access to copyrighted content, when the user already has an access license elsewhere. There is also a FireFox plug-in to use the technology (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/policy/0/4150/53543).

This is great work and I’m promoting it across the pond.

Is there an official dialogue currently between Australian and NZ around Gov 2.0 policy and practice?

The Gov 2.0 Taskforce here (www.gov2.net.au) is working in similar areas.

Cheers,

Craig

Thanks for your comments, Daniel. What we are proposing is that New Zealand government agencies clearly state how their copyright works and their non-copyright information should be licensed for re-use by others. This means that people wanting to re-use it can do that legally.

Why don’t you read the draft framework itself (it is to the right of the blog post. It will answer your questions. If you prefer a pdf version, you will find it at http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/information-data/nzgoalframework.html.

You may also enjoy the presentation at the bottom of the page at http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/information-data. This illustrates why we are going to the trouble of making it easier to licence government information and data for re-use.

Hope this all helps.

Keitha