Working Groups/Government/FAQ

= Introduction =

This wiki page will act as the basis of the FAQ for opengovernmentdata.org. There are two sections. One is about the site, one is about open government data more generally.

Many of the questions should include a referral to an authoritative source of information. Reliable, third-party sources will tend to increase the credibility of the site overall.

= Open Government =

Why should we do this?
These questions relate to the justification of open government data.

Involve humans
Make sure that lots of people are involved. As far as possible, try to make sure that there are are individuals from a number of agencies involved in the process. It’s not enough to have a CIO in a single agency announce to the world that the whole of her government’s data is now accessible.

Parties from outside of government are especially important. There will be groups and individuals with very diverse interests that will want to be involved in the process.

Bear in mind that open government data has reached an early adopter stage. This means that it’s likely that you will encounter some skepticism.

Design for improveability
Accept that the system you are designing will not be perfect.

Of the many innovations to come from the software development industry, changes to business methodologies have led to significant productivity gains. Agile methodologies focus on accommodating iterative steps. At each step, feedback is taken from users of the system. That way, changes are implemented which are of direct use to the customers of that software.

The public sector can take lessons from these approaches. There are three main messages.

Reduce costs
One of the biggest barriers to survival for public sector projects is needing to convince the next government to continue with funding. This means that you should attempt to build the minimal viable product. Rather than spending a huge amount on creating a lovely web-interface to your data, start with something functional that allows access to the raw data.

Which tool should I use to build the system?
Have a good understanding of your requirements. Your open data system could happily be an FTP server or an index of torrents with dumps of databases. Alternatively, it could be a system that provides interesting visualisations and real-time access.

A strong requirement is often analytics. Departments and politicians wish to understand the return of the investment.

Many governments conduct competitions to spur interest in their tools.

Given that one of the biggest incentives of open data is the generation of new business. Businesses require certainty. Therefore, it is prudent to develop a minimal system that can run fairly cheaply into outyears. Be especially wary of systems that provide a fully fledged front-end to the databases. Front-end web practices and norms change very rapidly. Sites look fairly quickly out of date. This means that they will continue to absorb financial resources with little benefit.

What are the costs involved?
This depends on the current state of the data.

If an agency

How do you decide when something is open?
The Open Knowledge Definition provides criteria that can be used to evaluate whether something is open. Openness is greyscale, rather than black and white. Every copyright holder has the right to determine how others access their material. We hope that governments will act in the interests of their mandates. Many have determined that there is a strong public interest for having widespread public access to information.

Who decides?
Ultimately, there is no arbiter in these matters. Community consensus and political pressure may be be best guides to.

What about paying for support?
We recommend that you allow external contributions to the data that you have created. This means that you should f

How do should I use the data
This section is involved with d

...as a policy adviser?
= Site specific =