Australian Gov't: Not In The Public Interest For The Public To Be Interested In Secret Anti-Piracy Negotiations

Last month Techdirt wrote about yet more secret meetings between the copyright and internet industries, this time in Australia, where the federal government there was "encouraging" them to come up with ways of tackling online copyright infringement. 

On Techdirt.

Spreading the Word about Open Government Data

One of the most amazing - and heartening - developments in the world of openness recently has been the emergence of the open government movement. Although still in its early stages, this will potentially have important ramifications for business, since one of the ideas at its heart is the opening up of government datasets for anyone to use and build on - including for commercial purposes (depending on the particular licences). The UK and US are leading the way in this sphere, and an important question is to what extent the experiences of these two countries can be generalised.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Marriage Made in Hell: FOI+DRM

This is not as it's supposed to be:

Secretive management at Southampton University are undermining the spirit of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, if not necessarily contravening the letter.

Reg reader and founder of website publicwhip, Francis Irving, draws our attention to a fairly innocuous request to the University requesting details of the "total amount received by the purchase of printer credit at the University of Southampton for the academic years 2006/7, 2007/08 and 2008/09".

Hardly earth-shattering information. The author of the request, Adam Richardson, was therefore very surprised to receive back from the University – about a month later than the law suggests – a copy-protected PDF document, which requires the recipient to swear that they are indeed the person who made the FOI request before viewing the rest of the document.

...

In addition to these technological barriers, the University also adds an "Intellectual Property Rights Notice" which would appear to be a direct contravention of the law in this area. They claim to "reserve all intellectual property rights" in respect of material provided under the FOI request. The material may not be further used without the "written permission of the University".

They're claiming what? - intellectual monopolies on the facts? Talk about being true to the spirit of the law....

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An Open Letter to Sir Tim about Open Government

Without doubt, one of the most exciting recent developments in the world of openness has been the sudden fervour with which the British government is espousing transparency. Of course, it is only doing so after some enforced openness showed what goes on in the absence of scrutiny; but these things attain a momentum of their own, so whatever politicians might *really* think or want, they are probably now trapped in a one-way street of openness....

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Presumption of Openness

Remarkable:

Public bodies should automatically release all information that does not need to stay secret, the information commissioner is expected to argue.

Richard Thomas, who is stepping down, will say all but the "crown jewels" should be released without waiting for Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

He will add that the MPs' expenses row was a "coming of age" for openness.

Well, it ain't going to happen overnight, but the fact that the "o"-word is flavour of the month - even arch open data fan Sir Tim Berners-Lee is being brought in to advise - should mean that more will get done in the next few months than in the previous decades. What we're aiming for is nothing less than a presumption of openness for government.

Is Transparency Coming Out into the Open?

Maybe something good can come out of the unholy mess of the MPs' expenses:

Mr Brown said that politicians had to "prove themselves worthy of the public trust" and said the allowances system must be reconstructed to ensure transparency.

At the first Prime Minister's Questions since the expenses scandal broke, he gave his support to a proposal from David Cameron for all future claims to be posted on the internet by the Fees Office.

Now, that would be be truly wonderful, because it would not only solve most of the problems associated with the expenses, but it would provide a beachhead of transparency that people - we - can build on for the future.

And if that sounds hopelessly optimistic, here's another extraordinary straw in the wind:

Minister of Justice Michael Wills has told ZDNet UK that the UK's Freedom of Information Act is to be extended. Currently requests under the act can only be made to public bodies, but Wills said that the government had been considering modifying it to allow requests to private companies working in the public sector.

"We are going to announce the result soon. There is going to be an extension", he told our reporter Tom Espiner at the Private Data, Open Government conference today in London.

Keep those transparent fingers crossed.

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Heather Brooke: Breaking the MPs' Silence

If any one person deserves credit for bringing openness to MPs' expenses, it is Heather Brooke, who almost single-handedly has fought for their publication. As she points out in her latest post, the MPs haven't given up, or even conceded the principle that we, the electorate, have a right to see what they spend our money on:

Some have asked why I haven’t updated my site to take into account the publication Friday in the Daily Telegraph of MPs’ expenses. Frankly, I’ve just been too busy. I was speaking at a conference for members of the Information Tribunal Friday morning and then doing all the television news rounds that afternoon and evening.

One highlight - debating Stuart Bell of the Members Estimates Committee on Channel 4 news (scroll down to watch). In the Green Room before the show, Bell told me Labour’s latest reactionary plan to hive off the auditing of expenses to a private company ‘like Capita or CapGemini’. These companies apparently picked at random by him. I assumed these were just his initial brainstorming thoughts. But no, apparently this was the government’s latest ruse to stop us, the people, getting a look directly at MPs receipts.

More interesting, perhaps, is the following:

I have a plan which I hope to announce in the coming days. I’m going to set up some mechanism to register the public’s demand for change in Parliament. We need a new system for MPs expenses. One that is simply, transparent and gives the final scrutiny to those people in the best position to provide it - the constituents.

Much more to say, but the demands of work are pressing upon me and unlike MPs I have no taxpayer-funded staff to help me.

Ask, and I'll do my bit - both directly, and in terms of getting the message out to others.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

As I Was Saying...

I just knew this was coming:

Labour and the Tories left the door open today for a future move to exempt the full details of MPs expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

They just cannot contemplate letting us see what they do.

Memo to Gordon Brown...from Barack Obama

In the light of Gordon's recent wobbly over our Freedom of Information Act, lets hope he reads carefully the following memo from his new mate Obama:

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of
the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

"In the face of doubt, openness prevails": couldn't have put it better myself. (Via EFF.)

Ordnance Survey: Right Out of Order

I always thought that the Ordnance Survey had a rather, er, Olympian view of things that was more suited to the top-down twentieth century than the bottom-up one we inhabit. Some fine FOI work by the Guardian has confirmed that they really are as out of order as I surmised:

An extraordinary picture of a state body carrying out political lobbying on the issue of free data has emerged from documents obtained by the Guardian.

The correspondence reveals that Ordnance Survey (OS) is targeting MPs from Westminster and devolved assemblies, civil servants and leading figures in the free data debate. The agency openly attends party conferences and other political events to promote the value of geographical data. However, earlier this year a Parliamentary question revealed that it had paid a company called Mandate £42,076.20 plus VAT since August 2007.

So here we have a state body using *our* money to pay for lobbyists to advise on how to stop oiks like *us* from gaining free access to the information *we* largely foot the bill for.

The one consolation is that if they are prepared to stoop to stupid tactics like this, they are clearly running very scared: anyone remember Eric "pitbull" Dezenhall, another consultant brought in a desperate attempt to stave off open access...?

A Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen

I was already teetering on the brink of opting out of the NHS patient database; this just pushed me over:

A new national database of confidential patient records is being opened to access by NHS staff who need no professional qualifications - despite official assurances that records will only be accessed by specialists who are providing care or treatment.

A document obtained by Computer Weekly under the Freedom of Information Act also provides evidence that NHS Connecting for Health - which runs part of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT] - has quietly decided to weaken assurances given to patients about the confidentiality of records.

Doctors are angry because they say that patients were given an assurance that non-clinical staff would be unable to access the national summary care record database which is being trialled at NHS trusts in various parts of England.

It's a Fair Cop (But Society's To Blame)

Here's a heartening sign that the change of management at the top of the UK government (no names, no pack drill) is resulting in a little more rationality.

A few months ago, the government announced its intention of reining in the Freedom of Information Act by making it possible to refuse to give information on the basis that it would cost too much to do so (trust Tony to use tricks like this to get what he wanted.) Now that nice Mr Brown has killed this absurd idea:

In the consultation process, the majority of respondents opposed the proposed changes to the fees regulations. This was particularly the case with responses from media organisations, other non-governmental organisations and members of the public.

However, some public authorities, especially local authorities, welcomed the prospect of some relief from the administrative burden of the FOI Act.

Taking account of the range of responses received, the Government has decided to make no changes to the existing fees regulations.

It does intend, however, to deliver a package of measures to make better use of the existing provisions to improve the way FOI works and to meet the concerns particularly of local authorities.

The last par is still a bit worrying, but kudos to the government for actually *listening* to people when they were asked for their opinions.... (Via The Reg.)

Opening Up the Euro-Augean Farms

Openness and governments go together like horses and horseless carriages, so I was heartened to come across what sounds like a major victory for open access to key information in the shape of FarmSubsidy.org:

Farmsubsidy.org uses freedom of information laws to force European governments to release detailed data on who gets what from Europe's €48.5 billion annual farm subsidy payments. We then make this data available online.

There's a good history of how this happened, which also provides something of a blueprint for further openness. (Via WorldChanging.)

The Man Who Invented Freedom of Information

Anders Chydenius is hardly a well-known name; it should be:

Last year, the Anders Chydenius Foundation celebrated the 240th anniversary of the world's first Freedom of Information Act. Sweden and Finland were one big empire in those days, and the Swedish-Finnish law -- passed in 1766, two hundred years before a similar law was passed by the U.S. Congress, and ensuring open access to all government papers and other kinds of information under a "principle of public access" -- was largely the product of one man's visionary ethical ideas.

Good news, though: you can read his masterpiece, The National Gain, which seems to be pretty similar to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, but predating it by 11 years, online and in English thanks to the Anders Chydenius Foundation.

Free, of course.

A Study in Official Openness

It is probably hard for those outside the UK to appreciate the extent of the secrecy that has pervaded public life here for centuries. The clearest manifestation of this is the pernicious Official Secrets Act, which makes pretty much anything a secret if the Government says it is.

Against this presumption that the public has no right to know anything, the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 2000 was a major milestone, and credit must be given to the current Government for finally making it a reality. This is especially the case since it is clear that the information released by Act is proving a major embarrassment at times, thanks to both an increasingly demanding public and a commendably independent commissioner, Richard Thomas.

As the foreword to his first Annual Report makes clear, he is acutely aware of the central position that his department occupies in today's world, where there is an inevitable tension between his two main tasks: promoting openness and protecting privacy:

Never before has the threat of intrusion to people’s privacy been such a risk. It is no wonder that the public now ranks protecting personal information as the third most important social concern. As technology develops in a globalised 24/7 culture, power increases to build comprehensive insights into daily lives. As internet shopping, smart card technology and joined-up e-government initiatives reduce costs, respond to customers’ demands and improve public services, more and more information is accumulated about us. According to one estimate, information about the average working adult is stored on some 700 databases. New information is added every day. Much of this will be confidential material which we do not want others to see or use unless we say so. There are obvious risks that information is matched with the wrong person or security is breached. The risks increase substantially as information is shared from one database to another, or access granted to another group of users. Real damage can arise when things go wrong – careers and personal relationships can be jeopardised by inaccurate information. Identity theft can involve substantial financial loss and loss of personal autonomy.

The vast majority of information that is held on adults, and increasingly on children, serves a useful purpose and is well intentioned. But everyone recognises that there must be limits. Data protection provides the framework. It raises questions about where lines should be drawn. What is acceptable and what is unacceptable? What safeguards are needed? What is the right balance between public protection and private life? How long, for example, should phone and internet traffic records be retained for access by police and intelligence services fighting terrorism? Whose DNA should be held, and for how long, to help solve crime? What safeguards are needed for commercial internet-based tracking services which leave no hiding place?

All power to Mr Thomas' elbow.