"If you want my suggestions as to what to focus on for more open data, I think that, rather than pushing for more even more data from organisations (such as the OS) which have already gone a long way down the open data route,"
Just to be clear, the current email campaign is targeting Michael Fallon, responsible for the Shareholder Executive, and is about the PAF and Royal Mail, although OS would be impacted by the wider call for an open national address database. The immediate issue is that BIS is seriously considering privatising the PAF along with Royal Mail. Should the ODUG take home the message that the UK "civic hacker" community thinks this is not an issue? " it would be better to concentrate on the departments and agencies which so far have been more resistant. The Department of Justice and the Environment Agency are two which could do with being poked with a considerably large stick." The ODUG is hosted at the Cabinet Office, but it is attached to the Data Strategy Board, which is a bastard project currently living at BIS but fathered by Francis Maude. Its current official remit is to deal with the trading funds under the Shareholder Executive, in particular the Public Data Group. There are discussions about making it a central point of for all of government data policy, but it could go the other way and simply die away. Justice and EA are clear candidates. Justice has a transparency board and a strategy for data releases. EA, which I agree has very important data, I think is way behind and will be a hard nut to crack. -- Javier Ruiz [email protected] +44(0)7877 911 412 @javierruiz www.OpenRightsGroup.org Winners of Liberty's Human Rights Campaigner of the Year Award 2012 On Wednesday, 6 February 2013 at 10:27, Mark Goodge wrote: > On 05/02/2013 07:34, Javier Ruiz wrote: > > So what do you think the Open Data User Group should be working on? I > > am sure they would be very keen to get your input. They are focusing on > > location and the PAF following consultation with a broad network. > > > > But maybe this is not working as well as it should? > > I think that postal address location data is going to get a lot of > people asking for it to be released as open data, because it's very > widely used and a large number of organisations pay a lot of money to > use it. Nearly every courier firm, every major online retailer, etc, > makes extensive use of it. So there is a huge demand for it to be > available for free rather than as a chargeable dataset. > > However, I'm not sure that commercial organisations wanting something > free rather than having to pay for it is necessarily a strong > justification for opening it up, and certainly won't be seen that way by > the government. The counter-argument will be that the people who need it > are the ones who can afford to, and currently do, pay for it, so making > it free simply subsidises their commercial activities from public funds. > > A much stronger argument for releasing data under the OGL is the benefit > it will provide to community groups, non-profit organisations and > individuals who would like to be able to use the data but, currently, > cannot afford to. A second major argument is the benefits which follow > from a permissive licence that allows derivative works rather than > restricted terms of use. That includes commercial uses which are > desirable, but currently not possible within the current licensing > framework. > > Now, I have to admit that I'm struggling a bit to see where either of > those two justifications will be served by opening up the PAF under the > OGL. Unlike basic postcode geolocation, it doesn't have a great deal of > use outside commercial applications, and those applications themselves > are reasonably well-served by the available licences - there isn't all > that much which people would like to do with it that they can't already do. > > There's also the fact that the PAF is genuinely an expensive dataset to > maintain, and the prices charged for its use reflect that. There's > nothing stopping any other organisation - such as a courier firm, or > trade organisation representing them - from generating their own list of > geocoded delivery addresses and either using them internally and/or > reselling them, but the fact that they prefer, instead, to pay for > access to the PAF strongly suggests that, commercially, the price of it > is reasonable. > > If you want my suggestions as to what to focus on for more open data, I > think that, rather than pushing for more even more data from > organisations (such as the OS) which have already gone a long way down > the open data route, it would be better to concentrate on the > departments and agencies which so far have been more resistant. The > Department of Justice and the Environment Agency are two which could do > with being poked with a considerably large stick. > > Mark > -- > http://mark.goodge.co.uk > > _______________________________________________ > developers-public mailing list > [email protected] > (mailto:[email protected]) > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > Unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/javier%40openrightsgroup.org >
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