All posts in Meeting the Minister today: The Open Government Ninjas: NZ Open Government Online Groups

On 15/10/2009, at 9:54 AM, Nathan Torkington wrote: > At 12.30 today I'm meeting the Minister for Internal Affairs, Nathan > Guy. He's been given the Open Data mantle by Bill English, from > what I've heard. I want to learn what he knows, what the Government > wants to achieve, and how we can work together. (Not to mention: > where we'll be in opposition) Sorry for the delay in replying: Thursday night turned out to be very busy. I had a full 30m with Nathan Guy on Thursday. He referred to Bill English's speech about "public policy challenges" <http://bit.ly/ IpwYG> and said that it pretty clearly laid out what kind of open data the government had in mind. I quote from that speech: > He suggested that more information could be released about 3600 > schools, $10 billion of hospitals and $13 billion of houses. I asked Nathan Guy whether education and healthcare were the first priorities for data release, and he confirmed this. He cited the Obama Administration as making these areas their priorities as well. He said he has the mandate within Government to make the open data stuff start to happen, though he works through the Ministerial committee with the other IT-related Ministers. I spent most of my time laying out open government, and open data in particular, as I (and hopefully we) see it: - central and local level have different data, different problems, much to offer business and citizens. - the Obama folks take "open government" to mean not just transparency but also collaboration (efficiencies, bizdev) and participation (greater democracy, policy development). - I passed on Rod Drury's fantastic brief about "government should create web services and not web sites" and explained what this meant. "Every new web site is a compliance cost" resonated, though I got the sense that this is because there's already a "fewer web sites" push within Government rather than because he knew intimately the problems caused to business by too many web sites. - APIs as bizdev, as small low-cost public-private partnerships that have no risk for the state. - retail data vs wholesale data. - what Open New Zealand is, what we try to do, how we represent and aggregate consumers of government data. - MySociety. Covered TWFY (Rob's and the UK's), FixMyStreet, and WhatDoTheyKnow. - how Zillow in the US is powered by open data, vs Zoodle in NZ that struggles for it. I asked for examples of healthcare information they might release, and he said it was more about telemedicine and gave the example of sending your doctor a digital camera picture of a melanoma. I explained that we in NZ don't have the ability to compare hospitals and GPs performance, compared to the amazing data released by the NHS in the UK. I got the feeling that open data in this government is seen as a means to a policy end and not a policy end in itself. This is normal-- whether it's Labour or National doing open data, they'll choose projects to work on based on the pet policies they want to push. The USA, UK, and Australia are the oddity. As I explained, politicians are recovering from the popularity trauma that was the Iraq War and they need to be seen to be on citizen's sides again---open government lets them do that. The only specific piece of data that I've heard the government talk about releasing are school performance comparisons. I heard a sentence in one meeting about "if we release information on state housing roofs, we'll get people seeing `oh, these roofs here need to be painted, I'll apply for that'", but I've not heard that fleshed out or repeated. Schools have come up several times. I explained that my concern was that they'd miss an opportunity to improve education and healthcare. The perception is (I explained) that National views education and healthcare as costs, not as investment. Therefore rather than seeking to maximising the return on that investment (by making schools and hospitals perform better) they will rather seek to minimise the costs. The data you gather and release will be different for each case. He took this on board, but offered no firm comment either way (neither "well, you won't like what we're going to do!" nor "don't worry, we're all about quality improvement!"). I'd love for those fears to be misplaced, because I think there are huge benefits to be had from transparency but that hamfisted punitive releases won't get those benefits. It's possible they haven't been with their portfolios long enough to see the opportunities. It's possible they do see the opportunities and will take them; that I'm being a nervous nellie. Given the narrow focus of effort, I didn't think it would be a constructive use of the time to lay out the requests for environmental data that some of you made. My apologies, but I felt it was better to use the time to ensure he knew what open data could be. He was surprised that I was working with DIA already (I'm on an advisory committee that works with the group doing web stuff). He was keen to learn whether I was paid for my time or not. I'm not sure why, in retrospect! At the end of the meeting, he took my mobile number. I think of this as a good sign: hopefully he thinks of me as a knowledgeable person in the area that he can call on when he needs a second (or first) opinion about something. The easier I can make it for them to see the positive possibilities of open data (increasing competition, better tendering, lower paperwork, public accountability, more visible connections between costs and benefits of policies and projects) and the wider possibilities of gov2.0, the better. Of course, I might have left him with the impression that I'm a Labourite zealot! Time will tell. In the meantime, I will attempt to meet with more of the technology and economy Ministers over the next few months to refine and present the same story. End goal: to see the positive benefits of open data in NZ. Cheers; Nat (usual caveat applies: I wasn't able to record this conversation, so my memory of what he said might be incorrect and I may even have come away with the wrong impressions. etc. etc.)

On 17/10/2009, at 9:36 AM, Jim McLeod wrote: > I can make some guesses such as live feeds vs batched monthly disks a > cadastre, or per capita consumption vs sector consumption of say > water or > some other environmental service. Something different. Retail vs wholesale is a way of thinking about how much work government has to do with open data. Retailing is presenting data to the user. Wholesaling is offering data downloads and APIs. Until now, government has only retailed data and because of that they've been the only ones retailing. My message was that more people want to present information to the public, and we can only do that if government explicitly gets into the wholesaling business. In some cases, government may not even have to retail the data because third parties will do it for them. Not all cases, obviously: some things they have an obligation to deliver directly. But now it's possible to let citizens serve citizens rather than every public good having to come from government.

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