 Can I just get some idea, I mean this is not a very exciting title is it, but there is something, there are some interesting messages in this initiative. Can I just get an idea where some of you are from, my background is physical sciences, so I'm quite relatively new to ANS. Can I just get an idea of the sort of areas that you people from? Computer science. Computer science, library, physical sciences. Physical sciences, where do they ask? I wasn't part of the business, but now I'm going to research. Just one or two of you sir. Computer science. Technology. IT. Okay, anyone from the government here? No? Okay, that gives me a reasonable idea. Alright, what I'm going to cover today is the Government 2.0 initiative. I'm the first one of those speakers. The other person is Andrew. He actually wrote this, now I'm not part of it. Now, so that we get some level of engagement, please feel free to comment or make questions as we go, so that we get some understanding. As you'll see, this Government 2.0 has got a life of its own in the last couple of months. There is a lot happening at the end, I'll give you some examples. So I guess, for some of you researchers, the opportunities are fairly great as a result of this. I think anyway. Now, just reiterating, if I don't make myself clear, if you have a question or comment, please make it in the middle. I'll talk for about 20 or 25 minutes, I guess. The first point is that this Government 2.0 relates to department's data. Now, that might seem like a strange thing to say, but if you Google the Australian Government, you can get a list of agencies which comprise the Australian Government. The ABS would be one, Geoscience Australia CSRO is actually in that list, but that list is about 60 institutions long, and as far as I can tell, in spite of what the task force recommended, which is here, Gov 2.0 relates mainly to department's data, data created for or provided to government departments, and that list is a discrete list. So in other words, it doesn't include a lot of things like libraries, schools, hospitals and cultural agencies. That's why I've suggested seeing that list of Australian Government agencies. So Gov 2.0 relates mainly to department's data. What characterises it, in essence, it is an adaption of Web 2 concepts. I think that will become clearer as we go. What is Gov 2.0? It is Government making an attempt to take advantage of, if you like, what's available from Web 2.0. Now, probably everyone in this room is more on top, more likely to be on top of Web 2.0 than I am, although I'm reading on IT. Basically, when preparing this, we thought, what is the simplest way to, if you like, to serve between those two technologies? One, the Web 1.0 or just Web 1 was essentially one way. If you put something out there, people can read. At best, they can provide an email back to you. Web 2.0 is sometimes referred to the social web, and I'll give some examples, but the point of this next slide is that this is only a small part of Web 2.0. You see MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, there's just, that's just a subset of them. And there are very, very many users. So this is, if you like, a slice of the social web. But Web 2.0, at least as the government looked at it, is a lot more than a social media or medium. It's about sharing and collaboration between users. Now, I've written down a few URLs here. And this might be one, if you're interested, I suppose, probably many of you know this one anyway. It's go to Web 20 or Web 2.0.net. That is, if you like, a Web 2, a real sort of overview of what Web 2 can do. And some people would argue that Web 3 is on its way. But let's actually get into this a bit further. Here are some examples of Web 2 applications. And you can see these are not social network things necessarily. So there is as big a list here as there were on the social aspect of it. It is about a two-way, a two-way interaction between the people who host the site or create the site populated and those that use it. But this talk, this little talk is mainly about the Gov 2.0 task force. And we'll get to that in the recommendations of that in a moment. From the perspective of the government, which this initially started some years before finance and deregulations that department took the running on it, the rationale or the objective from the government's perspective was about engaging more directly with citizens. Now, I paraphrase this next one because this is actually a quote, sorry, it's a paraphrase from the Gov 2.0 task force report. It says the overriding aim is to reduce the cost of government web presence. Well, I didn't find that terribly convincing because if you look at some of the government websites like where I used to be, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, you'd be bored to death. You wouldn't go past the first page. It's so dull and often so out of date to be quite frank. But I think the real reason, the real purpose behind it was to increase the impact of government and that is really code for increasing the effectiveness of government. Now, we'll get into some examples and there are some pretty powerful examples out there now of where governments have basically taken a different view of engaging with the people they're supposedly governing or providing policy for. So I would say, and listening to Minister Tanner talking about this, the main reason is not really about the cost of the websites, but it's really about improving the effectiveness of government. By the time the task force was initiated here in Australia, I must say that other government reforms were already underway in the previous two years, 2008, 2009. And having said that, again, I'm keeping this quite simple, the report which I'll link you to later on goes into this in a fair bit of detail. In the United Kingdom and the USA in particular, this idea of government 2.0 is several years old and really has a life of its own. And the state of California has really done some amazing things. I mean, they really have in some ways changed the way governments relate to people and it is quite something to look at. Now, I must say there's also some pretty powerful speeches from President Obama when he came to power on his view of government 2.0 and they are really worth reading or listening to. The common theme of these is the release of more public sector information and the enhancement of opportunities for its sharing and reuse. So deeper underneath this more effectiveness of government is this idea that if it's public sector information, remember I've reduced that down now to essentially government departments because public sector is a lot bigger than government departments but at the moment the emphasis from government is on government departments and I know I'm reiterating a bit there. But the common theme is the government saying if it's being paid for by the department or for the department then it should be available for use in re-use and I'm going to show some examples of that. There is a great belief among sub-ministers in the present government that both economic and quite deep social benefits are doing this but the economic ones I think are also fairly strong. Having it used and re-used there are great benefits and those benefits can be measured different ways. Another feature of this is if for instance a department is making strong policies let's say on biosecurity it is much more convincing I think from the public's point of view to see the data on which those decisions and policies are being made and I'll show a couple of examples of that fairly shortly. Any other questions so far? Am I going too quickly is another thing because I want to do that. Greg, does SCAP 2.0 cover all levels of government or just federal? I will get to that actually. The drive, I would say that the drive appeared to be coming out of the Department of Finance and Deregulation and DISA Innovation, Industry, Science and Research but you'll find the Queensland Government has pushed very, very hard on this and if you want to look at an initiative it's called GILF not a particularly snappy acronym but if you look at GILF it is basically an automatic licensing of creative commons data so the Queensland Government is I would suggest half a lap ahead of the other state government so really it is filtering down in some ways but in terms of the states they're all onto it and some states are really pushing hard on this. I mean it really has a bit of a life of its own. Can I just get a clarification, maybe I wasn't concentrating but at the beginning you were saying is it all government departments or all government agencies I didn't get your distinction? That's a beautiful question, it is both. It is, as best I see it is the Commonwealth Government. It's all agencies. Yes. So the Bureau of Rural Sciences which is an agency with inside of depth is covered but the response of the individual agencies differs. That list of agencies is government departments and business units inside of that but that's a great question and when we get to the Freedom of Information Act just being amended you'll see that that covers the Australian Government which is also covered for the Commonwealth. Back just briefly now, we will be well well within time briefly the task force, the task force was, it ran for six months I just want to check that I did not miss a slide it was like 2009 I just failed to mention that it ran for six months. Now it commissioned a number of additional reports we're now speaking about the GOV 2.0 task force which was chaired by Dr Nick Brun a very prominent blogger and economist this one you might want to take down if you're interested in the additional projects the additional projects some of which were referred to in the recommendation some not but some of these are extremely interesting examples of any research and applications. So you could just Google GOV 2.0 just GOV 2 will do but it is GOV 2.net.au projects again if you got onto the DISA website and just Google GOV 2.0 you would find the Grun report as well as the commission report because there are about 12 or 13 of those reports it ran for six months and if you take six months away from that date is when it started its report was released on the 22nd of December last year there are 47 recommendations I don't suppose you would write this down but if you Google the GOV 2.0 task force you will find it there it's under finance it's also on the DISA website 47 recommendations I'm not going to go through those mercifully but I will go through the ones that might be of interest to you and these are they under start at the bottom the freedom of information bill has just been amended has just been cast now in essence the bill has now changed the balance of power from all of those levels of what you have to do to get information is basically flip the whole thing over saying that the fault is the cost this is a big shift to have legislation behind this means that it is more than just vapour wear in someone's mind now I have not been able to obtain a copy of this revised bill but I'll get back to this in a moment in essence unless there are overriding reasons if it's public sector information I mean department and agency information there must be a reason why it's not going to be available through the comments that's a very, very big shift let's just go through the recommendations of them all these are the ones that I think are of interest here and generally number six make public sector information open accessible and reusable in recommendation seven while addressing the issues if you like the conduct of copyright in Australia that's a pretty complex set of laws the default now is the commons now these are the recommendations from the report but in parallel with this which is why I read the one in one first the FOI bill has been amended to reflect these changes that happened only about a week or two ago what do you mean the default is the commons it means that if a department if a department has had a dart has commissioned a dart set or created a dart set the default for that dart set it is to be made publicly available that's the default now whereas before you had to mount a case of why why you want to see no DAFs data so now unless there's an overriding reason and it's as I understand it that's not code for keeping things the way they were an overriding reason could be a biosecurity reason, a health threat security and defence but the vast majority of the data would not be covered by those so the default now is the commons and that is by far the greater proportion of data collected by all four agencies how do you see this effect being departments that charge the dart it's there, it's there look when we get to Geoscience Australia I'm going to give you a couple of examples hopefully I said I'd finish well under time and I will maybe have you in the chat about that can I put that one on notice because there might be a couple of departments there is no mechanism yet if a department creates lots and lots of data and like the ABS has done and puts it in the commons and finds people using it or reusing it and in a sense that is measurable in terms of GDP there is no mechanism for the ABS to go to doff and say look what we've done fund us a little bit more so there is no mechanism yet for them to recoup the cost of doing that although the cost in terms of GDP is sorry the value the benefit in terms of GDP is very clear so hopefully we'll pick that up in the discussion particularly when we get to the end this again refers to government departments and agencies they the recommendation was that information there was a scheme for the publication of information the requirement is now there must be plans so the agencies or departments are now required to have annual plans for how they are going to publish their data it is going to be one of the the means by which departments effectiveness is being looked at and measured it will of course eventually trickle down into funding for departments but there is no direct mechanism for that so the next slide there is no funding that came with this either so that might cause you concern very explicitly here I won't go into detail here but within those 47 I think recommendations one of them is very strong here and that is that whilst there might be a great deal more data than you do in the comments the privacy of individuals in small groups must be protected at all costs so there is no alteration no individual by any means must be able to be identified not by differences or by sectaring or any of those statistical techniques so the rules, those rules about protecting your privacy have not altered if anything have been strengthened slightly and that probably is a fair bit of a fair bit of necessity and that the default is effectively the commons I think that covers those points the response though there is no sort of actually quite a number of months between the if you like tabling of that report and the response through that report and I might go into it in detail simply because we don't have time and I've covered most of the most of those all of those recommendations on the previous slide have been accepted by government interestingly if you want to follow this part of the debate search for AGIMO which I think stands Australian Government Information Management Office interestingly run out of the Department of Finance and Deregulation so in a sense the Gov 2.0 seat is in this organisation called AGIMO or AGIMO so if you Google AGIMO you'll find that it has provided a response essentially in agreement with the recommendations of the task force there are some if you like caveats in this the implementation timetable is not specified and there is no specific budget being very coy words aren't they no specific budgets that's code for the agencies are going to have to at least in these the agencies are going to have to find the money to do this this is going to become government policy it is it has legislation but it will filter through the public sector you have to have plans annual plans for publishing certainly significant parts of it you have to have a timetable you have to have an annual plan you have no budget now here are two modern web presences if I could use that term on the government response so just again Google AGIMO which you've seen Minister Tannis department authority or agency within Minister Tannis department now a little bit more about the creative commons and data can be found on the ANS website and here is here is a page I think yes this is a page from the ANS website again just Google AMDS I'm sure you all know all about what the Australian National Data Service does but there are some interesting things about the creative commons and here I'm putting up this slide because whether it's AGIMO or whatever department slowly but surely they are going to be required to make a significant part of their data holdings public and in the commons freedom of information the act has been amended it only took a couple of weeks to get through its readings so there is a change if you like in the way people are thinking about the availability of data and the value of it do the recommendations specify that it's just a new data order applied retrospectively it doesn't specify and that's again that might be something for an interesting discussion it doesn't specify but it implies starting today so I think that probably I think Dr Gruen or Nick Gruen and his task force I think they are aware that for instance if we just take the Bureau of Meteorology prior to 1957 most of the weather observations are on paper and I think they are aware of that and the cost of digitizing those is phenomenal so I would say that there will be some the Australian Bureau of Statistics have kept their data in an information warehouse for the last 10 years they will probably try and go back as far as 1980 because it's all electronic it's not specified and there is no budget for it that is a very interesting very interesting point now I wanted to give just a couple of examples we are well on time we've only got a couple more slides when discussing my first cut of this little presentation with Margaret she suggested to me wisely that I might try and dig up a couple of examples well I didn't have to look very far I just draw your attention I mean don't you love when people put up slides with this size of pitch and ask you say oh you can't read it but this is actually pretty important there is the creative commons that is like the first level of creative commons which is a mailing attribution this is a screenshot of Geoscience Australia taken last Friday afternoon I think and down the bottom it says unless otherwise noted all Geoscience Australia's material on this website is licensed under the commons attribution 2.5 license now topographic mapping earth observation, geodesy and GPS marine, coastal oil and gas carbon capture and storage onshore energy let's just have a look now here is this is really showing my background in the physical science this is electronic maps called UK 250m resolution map of the whole country available for $90 that cost thousands of dollars a few years ago thousands, it was set $100 map sheet that gives you an idea of just the extent to which Geoscience Australia's view I hope this will tie up with your question earlier their view is that by putting out the sense like these and one of these is a digital elevation model of the whole country on a 250m grid 9 seconds of arc I guess that would be by doing that they are seeing spectacular use of reuse of people creating products ironically the demand for and the revenue from these products has gone up as a result of you know you had sort of 50 sales of $20,000 $90 it's just an interesting they haven't turned over the books to me as they have a look at this Greg I hope you can still add up but that is basically these were some of their most important dark sets now it will tie this up in the next I have a pretty annoying habit of repeating myself but I think it is important to send the message that everything that we have been talking about so far is about government data and our focus and here I am talking about hands is not really about data but it is about researchers the people doing the work so there is nothing in Gov 2.0 or the FOI that says anything about museums or libraries for those non-government organizations and institutions but now to tie this up hopefully about researchers and the toolbox I must make reference to the code, the Australian code for responsible conduct of research look I would be right to say you all know about this pretty well don't you probably better than I do you can see it is backed by if you like the big end of town certainly in terms of funding and the only reference that I could find in the code about the commons or about the use of data is this one the potential value of material for future research should be considered that is it I don't want to be controversial here but that is a long, long way short of amending the freedom of information act and saying to government departments that starting tomorrow meaning in your annual plans you now have to have a publication schedule of your key data sets not just a schedule you would actually do it but significant shows out there in New Zealand essentially free so you can see now why I am putting up this is the second last slide I am putting this up because you can see that there is now a disparity I suppose between data that is funded by government, public sector information and data created by funding through the tertiary sector essentially so these two are not they are not in simple data so of course it begs the question is it time to amend the code to some extent to reflect where 2.0 and government 2.0 thinking that is just a question and it has to be I have to finish on this slide this is a quote from Hector Barbosa when he says the code is more what you would call guidelines than actual rules welcome more of the black film this turn if you know that scene it is a funny scene that is it we are one minute under time questions and comments that was funny no no we are less sorry Margaret forgive me but I just had to look at that slide up there so you don't think I am just too serious I don't think you are probably a great copy of that is it international purposes you are not a copy of it I haven't done your wallet what of that just a couple of comments I suppose just on the nature of government 2.0 there is a bit of a tendency to sort of imagine all that technology and the often about equation is that government 2.0 I mean it is looking at ideas of participation and transparency more broadly not just about sort of specific technologies for enabling participation and that goes over to other sectors as well and we have now a movement called archives 2.0 which is not just about applying with 2.0 technologies to archives it is about rethinking notions of authority and transparency and participation across what happens in archives so I think it is important to make that point that it is not just about technology also that it is not just a top down movement we had the government task force and we have had great things happening in the US and UK but in some respects they are actually a response to what people are already doing and activities are already in place you have things like the Sunshine Foundation in the US which was working to extract various types of government data and do things with it so that they could interact with government in new ways and in the UK you have things like the Fix My Street which was a new mode of sort of interacting with local government so you have these things already happening so you have, so GOP 2.0 is also about sort of citizens seeking to take control of information and do new stuff with it and to bring about it is that notion that access to data that can actually change as modes of participation it enables new forms of transparency and in the GOP 2.0 ultimately that it really sort of can influence the nature of our democracy and there is probably some interesting parallels that tease out there in relation to the research sector the sorts of things that Robin was talking about yesterday about how e-research can actually change the nature of research and the nature of research in GOP 2.0 we are talking about changing the nature of democracy I suppose and also just one other thing to point out is where this sort of activity is happening you might like to check out some of Kate Lundy's stuff which is essentially the ACT she's been very active in this sort of area so it's worth checking out some of her things and she's had a number of events called public spheres to address some of the issues around GOP 2.0 and there has been some discussion recently about a possible public sphere on data sharing as part of the task force activities last year of course some of you may know that there was a slide set up which was about exposing government data sets and there were a number of data sets there at the moment there in the process of thinking about how that site is going to develop and at ANS we've got to think about how we interact with them in the development of that site but if you haven't looked at that GOP.IU is probably going to have a look at that and thinking about what they're doing and how that might evolve I was beautifully said if you go to the task force report all the things that you mentioned are in detail for instance the change in the if you like the power and the opportunities of democracy takes up about 10 pages of the report so I really have taken if you like a very practical rather pragmatic slice through it but what Tim says is absolutely, absolutely true the report large public report it goes into detail about democracy and if you like the opportunities for citizens and the opportunities for public servants to actually engage online I mean this is quite amazing amazing stuff so thank you I absolutely agree I think this gentleman here might have just We are heavy users and assuming that we're all out on day one I have two questions one is how do we influence which data sets that work first and the other question is we're also very heavy users of the data set called CUR which is a bureaucratic absolute bureaucratic nightmare and it's absolutely private absolutely confident and they come and mortgage you regularly to make sure that there's medical research data and it's not decorsimizing so we the hospitals that they're not on for that data that is essential to our medical research that doesn't fit under they're there absolutely fits under privacy and confidentiality how does web 2.0 and government deliver a better service to us and our researchers for that data one of the two questions one is if I give you the top 10 data sets at the Bureau of States would that help the Bureau of States to decide which ones are going to work first and second is it looking at the data that is confidential and private really difficult questions I have to knock the second one off and say I don't know it's very I the second one you might address to Claire she might have a better but the there is an answer I was actually a director of the APS at the beginning of it's opening up of unit records for researchers they have an information officer now are you contact and therefore potentially lobby and influence about the APS has been extremely proactive under the I think under the guidance of Dr. Suming Tan is headed up if you like to go for 2.0 APS perspective so they actually have an information officer now it can be contacted and what they will not do is release unit records about if you like individual unit records so that's gobbledygook unit records are your census form your form your form is now assigned a block code which is probably 20 houses and that is aggregated to something else so the APS is at least now able to take data from these unit blocks mesh blocks and ID buyers from New Zealand I might add and aggregate up to a shape that you might have for particular reason delivery, medical thing now the question your second question, one about these really sensitive medical records absolutely and totally out of my depth I would not, Claire might be able to help, Margaret might have a view but I absolutely don't it's very liberating to say this I don't know I think a lot of it comes with the implementation of these of these recommendations will occur within the relevant authorities and Anne's will not have a role within that unless we were specifically asked to provide advice on particular issues but I mean Anne's will not be going into APS and so we think we should do this this is not data that's ever going to be going to the court can I just ask? I mean in terms of the public centre data people, there's three of us here I think we'd be interested in hearing researcher use cases where you've got researchers who are interested in particular types of government data and what they're interested in sort of be interesting to us to hear those sorts of examples in those use cases it's not just using it for research purposes it's not going to be a lot of use of data about universities it's not going to be too high for data to be used but we're going to be using it to know what's going to be about those who get it I'll give you an example of what some of our researchers would like access to and that's the indigenous information that is with whoever is the odd national products modeler they've got a whole stack of data and information that would be useful for anyone in that field so a couple more between the government's desire to have government 2.0 and their political activities because no sooner did the my school's website go up and somebody took the data away and represented it the government had this reflex action of no they mustn't do that and yet under what was charged for by this other mashup that somebody had made so under government 2.0 they should really have just butted out and let it go but no they weighed in and heavily told them no you mustn't do it so I suspect if this kind of making everything more available does also spread into the university sector we would see the same kind of tension there we want to share everything but not that one much for it and a lot of them I was we gave you this data how did you charge for it and they said we took this data they took the data they massaged it they produced the product the same topic so I actually know the folks who put the my school's website up and they were actually lobbying the government that they should release it under least data principles that would crash it up the reason it crashed the night it went live because these papers were scraping the website so if they'd actually followed government 2.0 principles the website would have been fine interesting anecdote we've got obviously a few more few more questions which is great but just bear in mind those that cautious warning from Margaret and that is and it's very appropriate we are a facilitative organisation we are about making the infrastructure happen so we don't go and lobby departments or agencies I mean we may well put a submission to NH and MRC or ARC about amending the code but that's just completely appropriate but we wouldn't be going in and banging on assuming Tams door and saying listen this data from the last census that's not our role it's also a caution because we are playing a fairly delicate role in that if I could say that sorry it wasn't directed at you at all you didn't get to ask I was just going to ask about the view of meteorology they had a lot of people really won't get that but that's how they absolutely refused to release it and they are the reason I understand that is that in the past they've been sued by some of these going out in a store and they have a lot of information from a viewer which was never intended but people haven't been sued so they are very alive so is that a reason for not providing data? No I don't think that's a bit of a top spin on that one the two cases I'm not sure I want my answer to this to be honest if that's possible the two cases and I was involved in both of them where it affects the mandates of people involved in the order of the environment if it's the case through the information that has to be released that's a fantastic question I would say this is my opinion it would be about interagency rivalry it would be about saying we will have if you like the expertise in observing environmental data or should I say maintaining it my private my private answer to that would be they did such a good job taking on water but it seemed it seemed because of the extremely comfortable organization it was ideological with environmental data which is an expansion of the area that would be added to them but I would suggest that crowdsourcing is the thing for the future for environmental data it won't be stream gauging and that kind of stuff if that's what you're hinting at I think there's a follow on there's also a follow on with companies I'm wanting companies for example to do environmental surveys there's I think it's a three year time period but I have to expose this data companies like that I'm starting with BP I don't know you would think that if the world is changing if the world of government is changing the government view and that goes through the governments and states you would think that eventually there would be a culture change within that sector as well