Subscribe:
RSS feed
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
April 10, 2012
There is it appears, two worlds of "Open Government Data"--one the world of smart phones, and Ipads, of apps and upscale "demographics" of interest to sponsors like Proctor and Gamble; and the contrasting world of slum dwellers without access to sanitation, of populations subject to systematic mal-and even corrupt administration --worlds where app providers and the folks who make the OGD available to them go public with multi-million dollar IPO's and ones where those with the courage to pursue public information may be putting their lives at risk.
July 11, 2011
The idea of a possible parallel “data divide” between those who have access and the opportunity to make effective use of data and particularly “open data” and those who do not, began to occur to me. I was attending several planning/recruitment events for the Open Data “movement” here in Vancouver and the socio-demographics and some of the underlying political assumptions seemed to be somewhat at odds with the expressed advocacy position of “data for all”.
July 3, 2011
I spent the last couple of days at a fascinating (and frightening) event in Berlin—OKCon—a convention for the (in this case mostly European) uber-geeks who are in the process of recreating governments and potentially governance itself in Western Europe (and beyond).
February 15, 2011
Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net Call for Papers: Special Issue Community Informatics Rebuilding Egypt, Tunisia…
December 29, 2010
Clearly to ensure that “open information” is not a series of “leaks” and ensuing scandals or becomes a form of information based cooptation and manipulation, those advocating for “open information” and those who are agreeable to providing it must provide a framing and contextualizing as effective use which goes much beyond anything provided by WikiLeaks in partnership with its press collaborators or beyond simply making various statistical runs or information files available to public users.
December 1, 2010
Certainly it is very hard to fault (or even disagree) with any of the above except that this definition and the following paper seem to not understand that lack of access in most developmental contexts isn’t simply a failure of reasonable people to understand that they should proceed in an “open” rather than a “closed/restrictive” fashion. The lack of access in many if not most cases serves the interests of some quite well including many who gain considerable advantage from lack of transparency, restrictions on use of government data, the use of security designations in inappropriate contexts. In these instances a lack of access is most frequently a function of a lack of power in a particular social and economic context and that articulating the good feelings attendant on an “openness” strategy are as unlikely to change those restrictions as were the thinking of good thoughts sufficient to stop the flow of oil from the BP Gulf catastrophe.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
February 3, 2013
20