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.
December 29, 2010
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