After a long day in the office of my government employer, as I sit listening to Triple J streaming online, reading Anabel Crabb’s gargantuan speech on the Drum and contemplating the shoe throwing incident on Q&A that left The Australian again denigrating the use of twitter I find myself thanking my lucky stars that I live in such a fantastic and open country. In my humble opinion, the ABC is the greatest provider of old media services and its amazing, innovative and cutting edge use of new media sits it apart from all the other media providers in Australia. Possibly the only media organisation to surpass it is the BBC and I am sure if there were a contest it would be a close run thing. But what more could the ABC do to jump to the next level? What could (and should) a government funded media organisation do to really give the people what they want?

Annabel Crabb, herself a recipient of some of those taxpayer funded dollars, talks of free information in her speech for the AN Smith Memorial Lecture at the University of Melbourne. She seems to be less than impressed by the conundrum faced by journos the world over and offers some wonderfully concocted advice and some fascinating insights into her world. I believe her dream of “an end to the old media new media wars”  is being well fought by her employer the ABC and praise be to them.

Can I offer some advice too, Annabel? Your dream may come sooner if the ABC was to embrace the Government 2.0 Taskforce advice for government organisations to use Creative Commons licensing. Incidentally, (as I am sure you are aware) your speech was published verbatim on The Australian website moments after it was posted on The Drum (or perhaps simultaneously, it is hard to tell) I wonder what copyright arrangements were made for that process to occur. Was the content licensed through a prior arrangement or was there some laborious process to make it happen? I am not for a moment suggesting any wrong doings or dodgy dealings, merely musing on the IP of your speech and what processes made it available in two places so soon after the speech was completed. My point being that it would have all been so much easier if you added a CC BY licence to the end of your work. Just a thought….

The ABC’s Q&A program has lead the way with infusing old media with new media resulting in mixed and often polarised attitudes (as well as the occasional shoe throwing) just like the rest of the program. The Australian is no big fan that’s for sure but only because they are not brave enough to mix it with the new media types, (look at the lack of comment opportunity on the page deriding the Q&A Twitter stream). Certainly I (an avid Twitter user) have often wondered at the usefulness of those tweets aired on the program but according to Peter McEvoy the blend has only served to increase the ratings and the sheer volume of tweets containing the #QandA tag go a long way to support the argument. It has been argued that you couldn’t copyright a tweet but I wonder if there is copyright to be had in the aggregation of those Q&A tweets. If so, does Auntie own the copyright? Q&A are happy to use CC licensed images for their Mashups so why not provide some back?

Auntie is experimenting with Open Access ideas as evidenced in the ABC Open Beta and some dabbling on the BTN site but by and large it is the standard Copyright Notice that you come up with on most ABC web iterations. If the ABC starts to get on board the Creative Commons wave I think that Annabel Crabb will be closer to at least one of her dreams, the ABC will smash the BBC in that contest, and people will get what they really want but what Annabel thinks doesn’t exist: valuable free content.

• The Government 2.0 Steering Group | AGIMO Blog
  The AGIMO blog is the official mouthpiece for Government 2.0 in Australia. This article details the Steering Group members responsible for championing the recommendations of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. Although not the most interesting of posts on the AGIMO blog this article is nevertheless quite important in terms of Government 2.0 take up in Australia because it is the first major article after the caretaker period of the recent national election and it contains links to Steering Group meeting summaries for the first time which is a good step towards transparency.

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• Welcome to the Government 2.0 Taskforce | Government 2.0 Taskforce
  Doctor Nicholas Gruen was responsible for the Government 2.0 taskforce and wrote this historic post with embedded video of himself and the then Minister Lindsay Tanner. The post and video combined launched the Government 2.0 Taskforce and subsequently attracted over eighty comments from active members of the Australian web2.0 community. Many comments were vocally supporting the Taskforce but many were also cautious about the Government’s agenda for being in and driving departments toward the Web2.0 space.
• CC & Government Guide: using creative commons 2.5 Australia Licenses on Government Copyright Materials
  This referenced article by three of the leading minds in Australia in support of Creative Commons (CC) is targeted at existing and intending CC users and copyright owners in the Australian Government sector. Supported by links to important CC documents and definitions, the document is more than a how to guide. It provides useful flowchart images for effective license selection and highlights many of the legal and intellectual property issues and requirements that government organisations face when entering the CC space.
• Open data, democracy and public sector reform
  Presented here as a series of connected chapters and sections for the purposes of facilitating paragraph by paragraph commentary, this thesis, written for a Masters of Science dissertation by Tim Davies, forms a cohesive and well referenced document. The ideas presented and discussed hone in on effective and innovative implementations of Open Government Data but also broadly refer to wide reaching implications that require further and closer inspection. Although the document has attracted few comments, the potential for comment offered by presenting in the digress.it platform is much higher and easier to achieve than if the document was presented only in .pdf form.
• Gurstein’s Community Informatics Blog
  This blog by Michael Gurstein provides well balanced an informed commentary as well as insightful views on Community Informatics and the use of Open Data throughout the world. Gurstein's posts are well written and often attract comment from interesting and informed contemporaries and contain links to quality information including referenced articles and government papers. The tagline of the blog is “enabling and empowering communities with information and communications technologies” and this is largely the focus of blog posts however there is often parallel lines between Community Informatics and the use of Open Data and this is touched on often in the commentary.
• We’re in open government’s beta period. Extending and analyzing the conversations from Gov 2.0 Summit.
  A recap of the Government 2.0 summit 2010 by Alex Howard and containing extensive links and video footage of presentations at the conference. The article looks closely at the statements made by presenters and keynote speakers and analyses the underlying issues surrounding the hot topics at the conference. The author who is well regarded and prolific on the subject of Government 2.0 topics, addresses some of the pitfalls that the Government 2.0 initiative is now falling into highlighting some key areas for concern around transparency, data clarity and secrecy.

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photo credit CC BY NC ND Flickr @occhichiusi

When you share some one’s CC content you know you are sharing. When you share some one’s traditionally licensed content it is likely that you are also taking from them and they would call it stealing. I think it is a bad thing for people to steal from others and I reckon that most people don’t want to get in trouble for stealing. Worse would be stealing from the government. I reckon you could get in a lot of trouble for that. I work for local government as “Web Development Project Leader”. It is a long title I know but it is relevant here because my job title aptly describes what I do.

Because I am responsible for developing a  web site for a local government organisation and I am worried about people getting in trouble for stealing and I like sharing so much, I thought I could use CC licensing on the local government website that I am developing. That journey is new to me and in fact new to most people in local government organisations. So in the interests of sharing (did I mention I like sharing…..) this blog is about sharing experiences, thoughts, links, documents and whatever else might come to the party on my journey towards a local government organisation “Stepping Into the Commons”. Soon I hope to help people to share the content on my organisation’s site legally and easily without them unknowingly or otherwise being guilty of stealing.

Lunchtime

Originally uploaded by mikecogh

The Creative Commons Roadshow rolled into Adelaide last week (I am only now getting around to writing about it because of such a busy week and a trip to Melbourne) and for a great summary of what went on the Wrap Up on the CC Australia site has the best info. The usual Adelaide crowd were there and the buzz in the room was brilliant. The chat at lunch was really captured by Michael Coghlan’s image (shown on this post) and was remarked upon by @adelsali.

For me this day was a wonderful learning experience. It added a lot of pieces to the puzzle of how to get the CC licensing happening on the new site for my employer. Particularly valuable was the fact that my boss came along and she too can now see the benefits of applying CC licensing to content, especially government content. These are great steps for our journey and coupled with the links stories and information that came out of the day we are already making some more baby steps on the road. Today a meeting about the new website contained quality discussion about CC with key people in the organisation. A road map is starting to emerge and the word is starting to get around in the organisation.

Some non CC observations:

• the delegates and speakers were a mix of State Government employees, educators, lawyers, champions, practioners, inovators, online producers and bloggers among others. I know this because a couple of the speakers talk a quick census.
• the speakers were all interesting and had great stories
• Local Government was under represented
• Adelaide is tiny….. the usual six degrees of separation is cut in half in Adelaide

• The Government 2.0 Steering Group | AGIMO Blog
  The AGIMO blog is the official mouthpiece for Government 2.0 in Australia. This article details the Steering Group members responsible for championing the recommendations of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. Although not the most interesting of posts on the AGIMO blog this article is nevertheless quite important in terms of Government 2.0 take up in Australia because it is the first major article after the caretaker period of the recent national election and it contains links to Steering Group meeting summaries for the first time which is a good step towards transparency.
• Welcome to the Government 2.0 Taskforce | Government 2.0 Taskforce
  Doctor Nicholas Gruen was responsible for the Government 2.0 taskforce and wrote this historic post with embedded video of himself and the then Minister Lindsay Tanner. The post and video combined launched the Government 2.0 Taskforce and subsequently attracted over eighty comments from active members of the Australian web2.0 community. Many comments were vocally supporting the Taskforce but many were also cautious about the Government’s agenda for being in and driving departments toward the Web2.0 space.
• CC & Government Guide: using creative commons 2.5 Australia Licenses on Government Copyright Materials
  This referenced article by three of the leading minds in Australia in support of Creative Commons (CC) is targeted at existing and intending CC users and copyright owners in the Australian Government sector. Supported by links to important CC documents and definitions, the document is more than a how to guide. It provides useful flowchart images for effective license selection and highlights many of the legal and intellectual property issues and requirements that government organisations face when entering the CC space.
• Gurstein’s Community Informatics Blog
  This blog by Michael Gurstein provides well balanced an informed commentary as well as insightful views on Community Informatics and the use of Open Data throughout the world. Gurstein's posts are well written and often attract comment from interesting and informed contemporaries and contain links to quality information including referenced articles and government papers. The tagline of the blog is “enabling and empowering communities with information and communications technologies” and this is largely the focus of blog posts however there is often parallel lines between Community Informatics and the use of Open Data and this is touched on often in the commentary.

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• Videos | Creative Commons Australia
  The Australian Creative Commons home provides an abundance of links, case studies and information with a particular slant on Australian issues. The video page is populated with links to international videos but also highlights the Australian videos with the characters Mayer and Bettle effectively detailing how Creative Commons licensing works in lay terms. Of particular value in this site is links to real people and key users and advocates for Creative Commons in Australia as well as details of free industry events. The site is regularly updated.
• Linking Open Data dataset cloud
  This link map of publicly available and Open Datasets is an invaluable tool for any person or organisation looking to mashup data. The circles link to the hosting site of the actual datasets. The circle size and arrow direction provides insights into how the data is already being used. Currently maintained by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch, the next version will be based on CKAN. The version history lets the reader get a feel for the worldwide uptake of the #opendata movement.
• http://civiccommons.com/
  The Gov2.0 initiative has been given a boost in the United States by the advent of the Civic Commons site which encourages empowers and enables Local Government Authorities in the US to contribute and share code with other organisations. The site only went live on September 8, 2010 so is still in it’s infancy but there are already a host of LGAs contributing. The service was launched at the http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010 and is likely to result in huge interest if the current buzz continues. Though not strictly “creative commons” the ideology is intrinsically linked to the #creativecommons and #opendata ethos.

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I have this bee in my bonnet. I love the idea of getting our tightly held interesting data into the wild. I want to let the people have access to our data to keep us transparent, hold us to task, mash up the info, share cool things.

So I go to my managers and I say “I want to put some open datasets on our new website” and the say “hunh? Who would want to use our data and why would they want to use it?” Tim Berners-Lee displays in this video some of the awesomeness that can come from mashups of open data.

I find this all very exciting…. but I am now also tempered into wondering what ill effects there could be for sharing all this information. The posts and subsequent comments on Michael Gurstein’s blog have a balancing effect on the initial thrill of the ideas of the good that could be done. Certainly I still believe that open data is the way of the future but if we are going to take on board any of the suggestions of Gruen’s Government 2.0 Taskforce then we also need to consider the risks involved.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to fullfill the needs of the unit WEB206 which I am studying at Curtin University. Assignment one of that course is an annotated bibliography which is to be published via delicious.com . I have automated an RSS feed of my delicious bookmarks tagged with #web206annotated. The posts will be (hopefully) be automatically published with content from this RSS feed on a weekly basis. I will see how this goes for now and turn it off if it becomes problematic.