Institutions have to disseminate freely reusable information, not to build websites

Version française 
Source InternetActu, http://www.internetactu.net/2008/06/20/les-institutions-doivent-construire-des-donnees-reutilisables-pas-des-sites-web/
By Hubert Guillaud, 20/06/08

According to David Robinson (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com ), Harlan Yu, William Zeller and Ed Felten from Centre policies of information technology at Princeton University, institutions and U.S. administrations should abandon the dream of developing websites and have to focus on building databases of their decisions, their votes, their funding. The data should be made public, interoperable and free for any use by everyone they explain it in their study.
(To download the study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1138083#PaperDownload  )
According to researchers, the private sector knows better how to organize and present information than the public sector. In many cases, particularly in relation to the American public Internet, the private sector has already produced the best achievements to the users. And to refer to GovTracks, developed by Joshua Tauberer, which is expected to present Legislative information in a much better way than its official competitor, Thomas, maintained by the Library of Congress. The Princeton researchers suggest that, once the private sector will have solved the irritating difficulty of extracting data from government web sites, we should see proliferation of web sites allowing people to search, distribute and analyze their data in multiple ways.

Last fall, Jerry Brito of TechLiberation and researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University had also published an article entitled "Hack, and Peer Mash" in which he explained that release of raw data and open and use of structured formats make sites and actions of government agencies more transparent and accountable.

Still, as reported by ArsTechnica that this release idies still cause problems. Jerry Brito recounts the story of a Washington Post journalist who had discovered "delights" on the site of the U.S. Senate, such as  an XML file containing the votes of the congress. But the webmaster has removed access on the pretext that senators have the right to present and comment on their votes as they wish. In other words, to allow access to data structured votes expose senators to a stronger public visibility, which they still find it hard to accept. (Google modified translation)

References:
Permalink and comment: http://www.internetactu.net/2008/06/20/les-institutions-doivent-construire-des-donnees-reutilisables-pas-des-sites-web/ ( french language )
Paper download :
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1138083#PaperDownload (Robinson)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1023485#PaperDownload (Mason)
GovTrack: http://www.govtrack.us/
Open Congress: http://www.opencongress.org/
Participatory Politics Foundation http://participatorypolitics.org/
Thomas (Library of Congress): http://thomas.loc.gov/

Comments

[Jack Thurston]

If only the Commission had followed this principle in relation to the new EU Financial Regulation's provisions on budget transparency.

Unfortunately, the implementing regulations on the CAP spending part (a shade under half of EU spending) require exactly the opposite: that each member state must build a web search tool that displays data on farm subsidy recipients.

The first MS to do this was Austria, on 23 June this year, see:

http://www.transparenzdatenbank.at/trans/see.through?init

The website is a masterclass in how to design for a poor user experience. Fortunately we at farmsubsidy.org have screen-scraped the entire website and present the same data in a much more accessible format at www.farmsubsidy.org/austria

We would MUCH rather if member states just published the raw data in CSV, XML or other easily-accessible digital format. It does take time to screen-scrape, and this is time we would rather spend on other things.

It is regrettable that the Commission should have required member states to build websites rather than disseminate freely reusable information.

[Kablenet]

eGov Websites fail on life events

New research has shown that UK government websites are falling short in efforts to support key life events

Source: Kablenet , 11 June 2008: http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/FrontpageRSS/AC63E01625053F6E802574640057F579!OpenDocument

[Some proposed best ideas]

http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/call/ideas/index.html

UK gov competition

[The UK Government wants to hear your ideas]

What would you create with public information?

Ever been frustrated that you can't find out something that ought to be easy to find? Ever been baffled by league tables or 'performance indicators'? Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large?

The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here.

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition. Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people.

We're confident that you'll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don't have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.