Release of High value Datasets-What you had to say
Further in the series- Issues raised in Submissions on Draft National Action Plan
Issues raised include ownership of data as per Productivity Commission draft paper, copyright issues, problem of defining ‘high value’, publish register of data sets, publication of specified national interest data sets , importance of commitment to long term access to data.
Cropping up in many submissions: Privacy considerations, adequacy of Privacy Act, importance of breach notification and privacy cause of action legislation.
Ben Minnerds on current text: “The coverage of privacy in the OGP seems to be focused on government image damage control.”
From the PM&C round up:
General- on three Public data commitments:
Allison O’Beirne OGP Open Data Working Group
All commitments are clearly described and include defined objectives and milestones.
Commitments are achievable, with measurable milestones, and focus on specific actions or initiatives.
Consideration should be given to adding or reframing some commitment text to focus on the particular importance of engagement with marginalized or underrepresented groups (indigenous communities, youth, rural communities, immigrants, etc.) in order to ensure that open government initiatives, and particularly open data initiatives, support more equitable social and economic benefits.
Nick Hossack Benchmark Analytics
Supports the data commitments in the National Action Plan – uses public datasets as part of business.
Amanda Lawrence Australian Policy Online
Useful to have a definition of data and to also consider that ways in which data and other types of information – documents, records, images etc – produced by government also need to be made public and properly managed. And integrated approach to information management should be the aim.
Melissa Ford Individual
Does not support the open data agenda or digital government services. Individuals should be given the option to opt out of the digitisation of their data and online interaction with the government.
Commitment 2.1 Release high-value datasets and enable data-driven innovation
Cobi Smith Individual
All Australians should have free and open access to information about how our society operates. It is important to consider the values and priorities behind data release and presentation.
What makes a “high value” dataset – uniqueness; up-to-date rather than poorly maintained; reusability (concept of frictionless data); comparability – need more common web standards. Investigating which pages of government websites had the most hits/downloads of data can also help inform which datasets to release.
Stephen Gates Individual Data in the ANZLIC Foundation Spatial Data Framework is high value and should be released for free. Makes it possible to join many other datasets together.
The adoption of the Open Contracting Data Standard is a good first step in publishing data using an open standard. Need to describe the process you will follow to collaboratively agree on other open standards and openly publish the collection of adopted standards. A challenge is that standards that are mandated by law are not openly accessible (e.g. AS1428.1 Design for Access and Mobility must be purchased).
Support the principle that Australian Govt entities will ensure all new systems support discoverability, interoperability, data and information accessibility, and cost-effective access to facilitate access to data. Should expand beyond systems (e.g. copyright issues in consolidating data for the National Public Toilet Map and the Australian Flood Resource Info Portal). Need public guidance on avoiding these issues.
Angus King Switched on Solar!
Support the commitment, especially including the not-for-profit sector (would like to be involved), but there is a challenge in quantifying what are considered high-value datasets.
Should consider reducing or removing fees for datasets when the data becomes less current (e.g. BOM weather data). Encourage release of citizen science datasets to the public.
Marie Lintzer OGP Natural Resources Working Group (Natural Resource Governance Institute)
It could be worth expanding on the Australia’s Government’s concept of “openly available”. E.g., noting that data which is openly available should be released in a machine-readable open data format.
Could also be worth committing to identify specific priority sectors for this work, such as the extractive sector given its importance to the economy.
Jack Mahoney OGP Support Unit
Milestones 2-4 – provide information on the scope of the roundtable discussions. Will they inform policy decisions/changes?
Milestone 6 – can there be more specificity on the proposed expansion? Too little detail.
Milestone 7 – what is the public consultation on? What will it inform?
Main commitment text talks about releasing high-value datasets, but actual release of datasets isn’t in the milestones.
Not clear from the milestones how the Govt will support the use of data to launch commercial and non-profit ventures, conduct research, make data-driven decisions and solve complex problems.
Daniel Marsh Sociometry (consultancy)
Not clear how the consultation process that has been designed would measure against the expectations set out in the IAP2 Quality Assurance Standards.
The need for additional deliberative capacity – particularly data analysis – seems to be recognised. The US has developed capacity in applying behavioural science to obtain value from ‘big data’ through the Social and Behavioural Science Team – the work of this group may be a model that can be adapted for Australia.
An explicit pricing formula for funding access to data and making that data more open should be within the remit of the Plan. It is not clear if this new national resource will be given away for free, if ‘open data’ means it is provided at cost, and when it will attract royalities.
Carole Excell OGP Natural Resources Working Group (World Resources Institute)
Relevance – “identifying and prioritising high-value datasets for priority release”: recommend including climate, natural resource management as specific sectors
Relevance “understanding how Australian businesses and not-for-profits are using public data”: Creating a demand driven open data approach is critical and important to be mentioned explicitly.
Chris Russell LGA of SA
The Smart Cities and Suburbs Program has the potential to support Councils already leading in the open government space – however, the US National Action Plan references challenges facing the US municipal sector and commitments to overcome these challenges, incl.:
– local government represented on the Fedearl Open Data Working Group;
– a commitment to sharing models/templates (such as machine readable government organisation charts) with other governments; and
– there is a commitment to support a Municipal Data Network.
Allison O’Beirne OGP Open Data Working Group
Consider reframing text of milestones to include references to specific activities, eg PC Inquiry, Smart Cities and Suburbs Program so that the milestones are more measurable and time-bound.
Steering Committee of the Australian Open Government Partnership Network
“High value” is poorly defined and unsuitable criteria for decisions on open data release. Value is defined differently to different people – public servants may not have full knwoledge of what datasets maybe valuable to the community, companies or other agencies. This will lead to agencies prioritising “low-hanging fruit” – datasets that are easy to release or deemed high value based on political or agency considerations.
A better approach is in the Public Data Policy Statement – which provides all non-sensitive data is to be released by agencies by default, without insisting on the ‘high value’ definition. This commitment should be redefined to meet the Public Data Policy Statement – to take an data inventory and publicly publish an audit/list of all non-sensitive datasets, together with a release timetable through data.gov.au.
Final form of this commitment should be informed by the observations of the Draft PC Report.
Dr Madeleine Roberts Individual
The starting point should be individuals should have to opt in, not opt out of their data being used in any way by any organisation to which the data was not originally given.
Before researchers are granted access to the available datasets, they must agree to abide by the principles set out in the 2016 OECD Research Ethics and New Forms for Data for Social and Economic Research Report – just as expected to abide by the guidelines for human ethics committees at universities Australia wide.
Rosie Williams Individual
(Release) High value (National Interest) datasets:
• Commonwealth Tenders
• State Tenders
• Commonwealth Grants
• State Grants
• Lobbyist Register
• Donations to political parties (both state and federal)
• Pecuniary interests registers (both state and federal)
• Parliamentary entitlements (both state and federal)
Focus should be to increase transparency and accountability of business and government to the citizenry rather than provide commercial opportunity to business or research.
Data on public sector contract procurement can help to expose corruption. Ensuring ABN/ACN can be matched across datasets would help expose relationships between Gov and business.
Data needs to be accessible (not pdfs or handwritten docs) and standards need to be applied.
Sue McKerracher Australian Library and Information Association
Libraries play an important role in storing data and making it accessible, making data discoverable and helping other find the data they need.
The Trove platform, developed by the National Library of Australia, is considered a high-value dataset by humanities researchers, and is the fourth most visited federal government website.
Natasha Molt Law Council of Australia
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner should be consulted in relation to any datasets proposed to be made public, particularly those that contain personal information.
Amanda Lawrence Australian Policy Online
High value’ is poorly defined and an unsuitable criteria for decisions on open data release. It would be sensible to redefine this commitment around meeting the Public Data Policy Statement, with government agencies required to undertake a data inventory and publicly publish a list of all their non-sensitive data sets, together with a release timetable.
Gianluca Garbellotto IPHIX
Should give equal importance within this commitment to the usability of those datasets. Data standards play a key role in this, including technical formats, semantics and metadata, identifiers (such as ABNs)
Robyn Cochrane
Explicit references to local government as a ‘government actor’ and inclusion of a local government ‘milestone’ might be useful additions.
Melissa Ford Individual
High-value datasets should not include health data – the most sensitive of all datasets. Individuals should be able to opt out of any and all e-health, across all levels of government and across the private sector