In a small way, we made history. Last Saturday, an ad hoc group of citizens interested in improving an aspect of public policy sat down informally with the civil servants responsible and designed a web service to do the job. In all, it took less than five hours.
The event was a barcamp held by the National Archives as part of its response to the Cabinet Office's "government 2.0" report, the Power of Information (PDF). What's a barcamp? Dude, you've obviously been out of the loop for the past, ooh, seven weeks. It's the buzzword for a self-organising meeting to tackle an issue of interest. Everyone welcome, no timetable, no rules, no speakers' podium; lots of laptops, flipcharts and Post-It notes. You get the idea.
This barcamp's purpose was to explore how the government can electronically collect and assess requests to re-use information gathered and held by public bodies. Last summer the government agreed to set up such a channel....
I went along for two reasons. First, the web channel is very much in line with Technology Guardian's Free Our Data campaign. We think there is vast potential for businesses and communities to build new services based on government information. It's our strongly held belief that this resource - possibly the government's most valuable asset - is underused because of the difficulty in finding data and negotiating its re-use. The proposed web channel would address both issues.
The second reason for going along was a long-standing interest in the way governments design information systems. Too often, I have seen users consulted only after crucial design decisions have been taken. The barcamp approach offers an attractive alternative....
We opened with a couple of case-study presentations...That led to a useful discussion on the difference between an individual's freedom to view official information and their freedom to mash or otherwise republish it - and whether that distinction can survive in the web age....
After lunch, barcamp really got down to business. With a bit of jollying along from Steinberg, we reached a consensus on what the web channel should aim to do, who the users would be, what sort of requests it should handle and very roughly what would be on the home page....
By teatime, we'd pretty well covered it. [John] Sheridan [of the National Archives] folded up the flip-chart sheets and promised to start work (after similar consultations with academics and IT suppliers). No one could quite believe it was happening. Even [Tom] Steinberg [co-author of the government report] marvelled: "No one in government IT will ever have done anything like this before." ...
Also see Jonathan Gray's blog notes on the BarCamp (London, January 12, 2008).
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/18/2008 03:38:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
