Discoverability and Accessibility of Data and Information-What you had to say
Further in the series- Issues raised in Submissions on Draft National Action Plan
Commitment 3.2 Understand the use of freedom of information
From the PM&C round up:
Justin Warren PivotNine (consultancy)
Curious about the use of the term ‘public data’. Information in many of these datasets is supplied by individuals – it is still mine, not public – no consent for it to be used for purposes other than that of obtaining government services. Greater consideration should be given towards how individual consent is managed with regard to the requirements of the Privacy Act.
Angus King Switched on Solar!
Commend the growing availability of data on data.gov.au. Especially support proposed improvements for online access to the 2017 SoE report and its underlying data. Providing valid, unbiased and uninfluenced information on the impacts of non-conventional fossil fuels is an important message to provide.
Jack Mahoney OGP Support Unit
The ambition section could have more detail about how this will happen.
Carole Excell OGP Natural Resources Working Group (World Resources Institute)
Status Quo – Environmental Information: Could include a commitment to amend the regulations to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to require minimum reporting requirements for the State fo the Environment Reports (which there are currently none)
Dr Madeleine Roberts
Published government transparency information must be in a central location, not spread across blogs and obscure pages. This resulted in the poor reception on the consultation on the NAP
Kate Irvine National and State Libraries Australasia
Australian libraries provide local and global digital content through services such as Trove – an example of a highly used and successful central portal.
Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer Pirate Party
Introduction of a freedom of information classification scheme, similar to security classifications, under which documents are automatically assessed under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth).
Automatic indexing of all documents at the time of creation, so that lists of documents can be made publicly available.
Natasha Molt Law Council of Australia
Agrees with the general objective of establishing platforms and tools to improve the accessibility of government information and public data. Observes that publication of information about the availability of grants and the disclosure of the Department of the Environment’s State of the Environment reports appear to be steps of a routine nature that should be taken, and do not merit special mention as means for achieving the overall objective
Gianluca Garbellotto IPHIX
Suggest that the primary focus should be on improving the quality and
meaningfulness of datasets using data standards and metadata/semantics.
Suggest: “Milestone 2: PM&C to work with Data61 to create, circulate and gather feedback on:
• new publication policies and methodologies for data.gov.au datasets that
establish a broader and deeper use of semantics in the context of a cross-government semantic registry, and of standardized data publication formats; and
• design concepts and prototypes for improved search functionality and user
experience on the data.gov.au platform.”
Similar changes suggested for milestones 3 and 4.
Robyn Cochrane
A reference to CSIRO alongside ‘Data61’ might add clarity.