Panel: Open Data --> Open Gov't - The government should open source everything! Hosted by SilverStripe
Alanna Irving
Public
Seen by 441
"The Government should open source everything" is not strictly about technology, it is talking about open source not as a product, rather as a process. This will thus include ideas of open data, open democracy, open source policy creation, open security etc. We will ensure there is a good mix of social and technology questions.
This panel is being hosted by SilverStripe.
We want to hear from you - what are your burning questions open open data and open government? What would you like to ask the speakers below?
Bene Anderson, Senior Product Manager, The Department of Internal Affairs
Bene manages the New Zealand Government’s Common Web Platform (CWP), which is an open source platform-as-a-service offering for the creation and hosting of government websites. Bene comes from a web and digital background, and prior to joining Internal Affairs, spent five years as a web project manager and information architect in the private sector.
Ben Balter, Head of Open Government, GitHub
Named one of the top 25 most influential people in government and technology, Fed 50’s Disruptor of the Year, and described by the US Chief Technology Officer as one of “the baddest of the badass innovators,” Ben Balter is the Government Evangelist at GitHub.
Laura O'Connell Rapira, ActionStation
Laura O’Connell-Rapira is the Campaigns Director of ActionStation focusing on membership engagement. She’s been doing amazing things with RockEnrol and Oxfam.
Cam Findlay, Community Awesomeness Manager, SilverStripe
Cam looks after the SilverStripe open source community ensuring it is a valuable, collaborative environment where participants can share knowledge and create great open source software. He has a cross-discipline background with over a decade working as a web developer and more recently completing a business degree in information systems, with a focus on communities as social knowledge systems. Communities are of great interest to Cam, both in practice and academically. He has interest in the ideas of social learning and how communities act as an informal, living store of knowledge often co-existing alongside commercial organisations. Having worked in private organisations, advising public sector and as an independent consultant, he brings a wide range of experience technically, and on the people side of the IT industry to the SilverStripe community.
Pete Herlihy, Product manager, UK Government Digital Service
Pete is one of the founding members of the acclaimed UK Government Digital Service (GDS). He is responsible for the delivery of a number of high profile, innovative digital services including: e-petitions, online voter registration and the UK Government’s award winning single domain website www.gov.uk. He works extensively with a number of governments all around the world (including NZ), swapping knowledge and expertise, both informally and through networks such as the D5.
Cam Findlay Tue 14 Apr 2015 4:22AM
@andrebate I'm going to play my 2nd "why" on your points above... Why do you think parties (or the people within them) believe that making financing more transparent increases the political risk of losing votes? (I'm trying to drill down to a core question we can play with on the panel ;) )
Stephen Olsen Tue 14 Apr 2015 6:24AM
I'm interested in the roles that independent statutory agencies charged with oversight play allied to NGO projects like the Project On Government Oversight http://www.pogo.org in the US and difficulties in sourcing official information regardless of the enabling legislation to make that happen (OIA, FOI...)
A leading question: Shouldn't sites like https://www.fyi.org.nz have been an initiative sustained as part of a public service (government) responsibility?
Nicole Williams Tue 14 Apr 2015 8:59PM
I'm interested in hearing what the panelists think are the biggest barriers to the NZ govt taking an open by default approach to code. Also what international governments should we be looking to as examples of best practice? How have they overcome these barriers?
Andre Bate Tue 14 Apr 2015 9:53PM
Thanks @camfindlay1 My thought on your second "why" question is that parties would see a risk of losing votes if the public don't vote for them after seeing politicians/parties serving special interests rather than general interests (especially after being influenced by funding from special interests). If a sufficient number of voters don't learn about what's happening and care, then making data more transparent wouldn't help. One other thought is that open data could help a healthy public service to be more effective, even if the public don't care. So I guess that a thing for the panel to discuss could be how you can get the public to engage with open data enough that it'd influence decision makers.
Cam Findlay Tue 14 Apr 2015 10:02PM
@andrebate yes! that is a good question.
Connor Boyle Tue 14 Apr 2015 10:25PM
Excellent questions regarding use of Open processes and platforms to engender a more accountable and transparent public service, very keen to hear the ideas in these areas.
While there is talk of both opening data between government departments to improve efficiency, and opening government data to the public for the myriad reasons listed here, I'm very excited about the intersection of these two concepts. In particular I'm interested in what could be enabled by linking the enormous, rich datasets of government, and already open data, with spatial data.
What could giving access to interrelated ministry's data attached to spatial data do for public, private and institutional research? Sure, the headaches of managing privacy to create such a system are significant, but the potential is quite incredible.
Connor Boyle Tue 14 Apr 2015 10:31PM
Another line of questioning that burns my brain in this area is how the potential for open gov data could re-conceptualise privacy and responsibility.
Currently we keep the vast majority of gov data private for the sake of protecting the individual. E.g. in the case of education data we keep truancy data private in order to protect the child or family, however if we accept that the concept that the concept of The Family as being the most important social unit to be fundamentally problematic in terms of fostering the greatest benefit to the individual, family, community and society, then perhaps we can look at how giving access to such data to the community within which that child lives we can enable a shift towards community responsibility for the individual, as opposed to that responsibility being solely on the family. If it takes a village to raise a child, then how can open gov data enable the creation of better villages and better villagers?
Maya Meyer Fri 17 Apr 2015 12:27AM
on embracing our storytellers (Laura O'Connell). we need people to interpret complex language to share the data on policy making. making it accessible, simple and compelling. (indeed it is a case of relating to all sorts of humans)
Maya Meyer Fri 17 Apr 2015 12:33AM
Q to Pete Herlihy; maybe Open means to change the way government data is CLASSIFIED? What is the classification system based on ? if it is interconnected with a capitalistic mentality, this needs to shift. There was mention of concerns of Damaging info, which must include financial survival and protecting private data, but this is part of the fear which must change first. Is there info on who, why and how often the classification system is monitored?
Cam Findlay · Tue 14 Apr 2015 4:17AM
@theodoretaptiklis I remember reading some of @benbalter 's work on public policy consultation and participation via GitHub. I imagine he'll be able to chime in on these points :)