New Zealand’s Open Government (#opengovt) barcamp
The long week last week ended with my joining the Open Government Data barcamp event that several folks have been busy organizing in Wellington.
It is clear from the topics that were discussed that there is lots of great work going on in this area in NZ already.
As I spend more time in New Zealand I’ve noticed that there always appears to be discussion at this type of event around how we don’t want NZ to get left behind in whatever area of new technology is being talked about, in this case I’m pretty confident that it is just the opposite and that the NZ community is much closer to the leading edge than similar groups in other countries.
The output from the day and the details of the conversations will eventually be well documented on the wiki that is being set up, so I thought I would avoid general commentary and just share a thought that was with me as I left the event on Saturday.
Listening to the presentations I was trying to think about three different constituencies and how the topics that were being presented were relevant and would be received by them.
The first group is an obvious one and it is the one hundred and sixty or so participants at the barcamp event itself along with others from around the country who have an interest in this topic, many of whom are already working on solutions of one type or another. For this group the conversation brings obvious benefits, sharing ideas and best practice is always a good thing, as is knowing who else is working on projects that might be able to prevent expending effort on initiatives that may be duplicative.
The second hat I tried to wear was that of the general citizen. Transparent government, open government and participatory government are all great goals, but are not always top of mind for the general citizen (whoever that is). Over the last decade we have learned a great deal about this area while working on various eGovernment solutions, focus groups have frequently told us that what they want is a less intrusive government, and to pay lower taxes – most other noble goals end up being secondary.
Not quite as forward thinking as the citizenry that many of us would wish for, but a frequent reality all the same. For many taxpaying citizens solutions that build upon open government and open data have to slide quietly into processes that they already interact with, or disappear under the covers completely to be dealt with by a third party group or agency.
Finally, as a third group, I tried to think about how government agencies themselves would view the conversation. While we like to think about a government agency as “our government” with a duty to serve us, we also have to consider the fact that an agency is a business much like any other. Money is raised in the form of taxes, grants or loans and gets spent on carefully planned projects.
Additional projects like building applications that use or publish open data sets have to be funded somehow, in many cases that involves cutting existing projects or in extreme cases finding ways of raising more funding.
For this conversation to be highly relevant to government I still think there needs to be some thought around what the business case for an agency would look like, and how ministers would be encouraged to drive policy that makes open data relevant to the way government operates on a daily basis.
It is the intersection of the objectives of at least these three groups that would eventually deliver the environment that would have to exist for open data sets to be an every day reality in New Zealand’s governance structure.
It was a thought provoking day, personally I enjoyed it, hopefully I’ll get invited back to the next one… and next time around I have a few ideas of my own that I would like to throw in to the conversation!
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Nice thought provoking blog. As a basis for better governance, how is NZ addressing the question of how much public money is spent on what, or whom, in a place. Pretty vague question on the face of it, however a core one to make open participatory government a reality.
The UK for instance has launched a Total Place initiative to that effect. Worth a quick google. My guess is you guys may have already been there? If so, you’re well ahead.
Through such initiatives public service and public spend are pit into perspective for the responsible citizen to participate effectively.
“For this conversation to be highly relevant to government I still think there needs to be some thought around what the business case for an agency would look like, and how ministers would be encouraged to drive policy that makes open data relevant to the way government operates on a daily basis.”
Which is why one of the projects to come out of the barcamp is the Data Release Case Studies. The sole aim of this is to generate case studies around data that has already been opened so we can point to positive news stories around how open data can help those in government agencies.
Glad you enjoyed the day.
Glen
Thanks Glen, that will certainly be helpful.