5th COMMUNIA Workshop

= 5th Communia Workshop: Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data =

Programme for 5th COMMUNIA Workshop, London School of Economics, 26-27th March 2009.

Across the world there is a growing recognition of the social and commercial value of public sector content and data: be that the text of laws, the holdings of public museums, or the geospatial and environmental information collected by government agencies. Moreover, it is likely that better access to and use of such information is central to improving governance and increasing democratic participation.

The 5th COMMUNIA workshop will look at how we can unlock the huge potential of public sector material. It will also examine the current obstacles to doing this -- legal, technological and social -- as well as how they can be overcome. In particular, much of the value of public sector material can only be realized if it is reused and interlinked -- both activities that are currently difficult for a variety of legal and technological reasons. Hence the workshop will be focused around that claim that, wherever possible:


 * Public sector content and data should be made available, both legally and technically, for public re-use.

We are pleased to present a broad range of presentations from researchers, policy-makers, stakeholders and representatives from Europe, the United States and Australia. Details of the speakers are included within this programme, along with a list of policy recommendations that we hope will inform policy discussions throughout the workshop.


 * Jonathan Gray, The Open Knowledge Foundation
 * Prodromos Tsiavos, London School of Economics

Tom Watson MP

 * http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/

The government view: progress so far
Tom will be talking about government progress in the openness agenda; new developments; and his overall views on the subject.

Biography
Tom Watson Civil Service Minister Cabinet Office working with fellow ministers Ed Miliband and Phil Hope.

Since being elected to Parliament in June 2001 to represent the people of West Bromwich East Tom has served as a Government Whip and Defence Minister as well as Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury.

He’s steered the Armed Forces Act through parliament and sat on the committees that brought forward the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the Communications Bill, the Human Tissue Bill, the Civil Partnerships Bill and the Gambling Bill. He also introduced a Private Members Bill – Organ Donation (Presumed Consent with Safeguards) Bill. He also sat on the Home Affairs Select Committee under the Chairmanship of Chris Mullin.

He co-authored “Votes for All” which examined compulsory voting and “Taking Responsibility – dealing with the legacy of radioactive waste” both published by the Fabian Society.

Before entering the House of Commons, Tom worked as the Political Adviser to Sir Ken Jackson at the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. He has also worked for the Labour Party and Save the Children. He served on the Rover Taskforce, the Government appointed body that helped extend the life of the Longbridge car plant.

Tom’s other policy areas include manufacturing, energy and law and order but his specialist interest is the digital world and social media.

Tom established the Power of Information Task Force to advance the recommendations in the Power of Information Report by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg.

In a speech outlining his ideas for the future direction of government policy in this area, Tom stated his belief in the power of mass collaboration.

Jamie Love

 * Director, Knowledge Ecology International

Governments and databases
This talk will focus on (1) the transparency of international trade and knowledge governance negotiations, briefly, and more generally, the role of (2) government decisions about what data to collect, and (3) the need to focus on the possibilities and challenges of databases development and maintenance, that relies upon user generated data.

Biography
Mr. Love is the Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). Mr. Love is also the U.S. co-chair of the ﻿Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Working Group on Intellectual Property, chair of Essential Inventions, an advisor to the X-Prize Foundation on a prize for TB diagnostics, and a member of the UNITAID Expert Group on Patent Pools, the MSF Working Group on Intellectual Property, the Stop-TB Partnership working group on new drug development and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards. He advises a number of UN agencies, national governments, international and regional intergovernmental organizations and public health NGOs, and is the author of a number of articles and monographs on innovation and intellectual property rights. In 2006, Knowledge Ecology International received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Mr. Love was previously Senior Economist for the Frank Russell Company, a lecturer at Rutgers University, and a researcher on international finance at Princeton University. He holds a Masters of Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Policy Recommendations

 * Governments should routinely solicit public comments, asking if changes in the ways that data is collected, stored and disseminated would be useful, and why.
 * Governments should store and disseminate data in formats that follow open standards that can be implemented by multiple applications on multiple operating systems.
 * Governments should support the development of tools and platforms for databases that base based upon user generate data elements.
 * The development of databases that rely upon user generated data should include processes of consultation to allow discussion of possible uses and future extensions of the database, interoperability, and other issues of interest to the public and potential users of the database platform.
 * Government agencies need to develop better database tools to facilitate transparency of private sector contacts and communications with high level government officials.
 * Governments should maintain databases of private sector employment before and after agency employment, to inform the public about revolving door issues.
 * All new drug registrations should include disclosure of (a) all clinical trials, and the results of those trials, (b) the costs of conducting those trials including total costs and cost per patient.
 * Companies selling drugs should be required to report national and global sales for the product, in units and revenue.
 * The development of databases is expensive. Many databases have global audiences.  The WTO should undertake work on an agreement to address the supply of global public goods.  This agreement should include, among other things, commitments to collaborate in the development and funding of databases that are global public goods.

Rufus Pollock

 * Fellow, University of Cambridge
 * http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/
 * Director, Open Knowledge Foundation
 * http://www.okfn.org

Economics of Public Sector Information
Information is of ever increasing importance commercially and socially. The production and distribution of information within the knowledge economy are major issues. It is noteworthy that the Public Sector controls some of the key ‘Utilities’ of that economy as such government's role here is especially crucial. I will focus on two key questions related to digital (upstream) Public Sector Information (PSI): 1) Who should pay to create + maintain it? 2) What regulatory structure should be put in place to support this?

Biography
Rufus Pollock is a Founding Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation and Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. His research focuses on innovation and IP, with particular attention to open models of innovation. Other areas of particular interest include two-sided/platform industries (e.g. Operating Systems, Search Engines), and research on happiness and well-being.

He is author of The Value of the Public Domain published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), and co-author of Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds commissioned by HM Treasury and BERR. He is currently working on an European Commission funded project analysing the scope and nature of the public domain in Europe.

Policy Recommendations

 * Make digital upstream non-personal PSI available at marginal cost (i.e. zero)
 * Pay for production and maintenance either out of general government revenue, or more attractively, out of charges on "creators" or "updaters" of the data.
 * Create a proper regulatory authority responsible for oversight of PSI provision, maintenance and pricing.

Tom Steinberg

 * Director, mySociety
 * http://www.mysociety.org/

mySociety
Tom will talk about the value of public sector information to society - with specific reference to mySociety, a non-profit, open source organisation that runs many of the best-known democracy websites in the UK. These include the Parliamentary transparency website TheyWorkForYou and the somewhat self-explanatory FixMyStreet. mySociety’s missions are to build websites which give people simple, tangible benefits in the democratic and community aspects of their lives, and which teach the public and voluntary sector how they can use technology better to help citizens.

Biography
Tom Steinberg is the founder and director of mySociety. By trade he was a policy analyst and general wonk who mainly cut his teeth at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit from 2001 to 2003. His most recent publication is The Power of Information Review, co-authored with Ed Mayo and the Strategy Unit, launched in 2007. The Power of Information Review aimed to help the UK government understand the value it has locked in datasets, and the help that can be done for citizens by simply being willing to go into and answer questions in places like Netmums and MoneySavingExpert. Following the publicaton of economic analysis commisioned by the review, Tom is convinced of the urgent need for substantial reform in the provision of public sector information from organisations like the Ordnance Survey.

Policy Recommendations

 * Free your data, especially maps and other geographic information, plus the non-personal data that drives the police, health and social services, for starters. Introduce a ‘presumption of innovation’ – if someone has asked for something costly to free up, give them what they want: it’s probably a sign that they understand the value of your data when you don’t.
 * Give external parties the right to interface electronically with any government or mainly public system unless it can be shown to create substantial, irrevocable harm. Champion the right fiercely and punish unjustified refusals with fines. Your starting list of projects should include patient-owned health records, council fault reporting services and train ticket sales databases. All are currently unacceptably closed to innovation from the outside, and obscurity allows dubious practices of all kinds to thrive.

Michael Nicholson

 * Deputy Chair, PSI Alliance + Expert Member, APPSI
 * URL:

PSI: State control or Public freedom?
The internet has irreversibly changed the scope of demand for PSI and the opportunities for its constructive re-use. How PSI is managed and made available by governments now impacts on a country's growth prospects. As an example, the speaker will reference EURADIN, an EU project to create a framework to allow "addresses" to be shared across Europe and give a synopsis of some of the barriers encountered and their cost.

Biography
Michael Nicholson is Deputy Chair of the PSI Alliance, an association of private sector companies from across Europe that re-use Public Sector Information, Chair of the Locus Association, a similar body focused on the UK, expert member of the Ministerial advisory body, APPSI (Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information), and Managing Director of Intelligent Addressing Limited, a consultancy which enhances public sector performance through introducing better information management.

Policy Recommendations

 * The State should only be concerned with defining what information it requires for good government and procuring it.  It should not seek to provide it itself.
 * “What is PSI” should be decided by an independent committee having regard to Statutory obligations, whether the information was self-evidently central to the purpose of government and whether the private sector had shown itself unable or unwilling to provide the information, for example because it is uneconomic to do so.   The boundaries must be clear between what is PSI and what is not.
 * The State should continue to own PSI, particularly those which are Statutory in nature (such as land ownership, company or planning records) but this is not the same thing as developing and maintaining the PSI itself.
 * Whilst fee-based charging for a service and related material (eg a planning application) should continue, PSI should be available at the marginal cost of distribution. This has a number of immediate benign effects, probably the most important of which is that it encourages the State to ration PSI to what it really needs for good government and to fulfil its statutory duties – and at minimum cost.  The second most important effect is that the terms of PSI licensing will be such that re-use by the private sector and individuals is genuinely encouraged creating innovation and enterprise.  In addition, the current internal PSI licensing complexities that bedevil the public sector would largely be eradicated.
 * However, if government policy remains that the State should itself own, maintain and exploit its PSI then government will be obliged either to accept that re-use trading terms will be unfair or it must manage some complex consequences as follows:
 * It must completely separate all PSI providers exploiting data into upstream (basic provision/raw data) and downstream (commercial/added value) arms and ensure that the private sector can acquire upstream data on similar terms to the PSI provider’s commercial arm;
 * It must still decide what PSI it needs for good government and clearly state what the boundaries are;
 * It must put in place proper accounting practices so that products can be genuinely costed on an individual basis and without the cross-subsidisation which occurs at present;
 * It must separate the advice to government received from PSI providers from their commercial interests. Currently advice to government, for example in the UK and France, is conflicted;
 * It must create a substantial Regulatory regime that works.  Many of the difficulties that confront re-users of PSI relate to fair competition.  Competition Regulators have shown themselves reluctant to take action against their own Governments (except Sweden) and, whilst in the UK we are fortunate to have OPSI, OPSI has limited sanctions to take against offenders and those which it has are unwieldy.

Policy “5” above is therefore and expensive and potentially cumbersome solution. All of these policies would be new to the UK. All have been considered and some recommended by separate independent government-sponsored reports over the past seven years.

Mr. Luis Manuel Ferrão

 * European Commission
 * URL

The need for an European approach
Public sector information (PSI) is a major source of reusable information for added-value products and services in the knowledge economy. Information society tools, digitisation and the Internet have significantly expanded the exploitation potential of such as yet widely untaped source of wealth in the online environment. Services based on PSI are offered to European citizens every day, such as GPS navigation systems, weather forecasts, transport including road traffic information or financial and insurance services.

The value of the EU PSI market (without scientific and cultural information) is estimated at around €27 billion or 0.25% of GDP1. Although significant (the EU market for roaming services was estimated at €6.5 billion in 20072), this still leaves a wide market gap with respect to the US, where the whole information market (mainly based on PSI) was estimated at 9% of GDP3.

To unlock the full potential of PSI for the EU economy, a minimum level playing field is required to facilitate cross-border re-use of public data from a variety of sources at affordable cost. The PSI Directive removes important barriers that limit reuse at a pan-European level, such as discriminatory practices, excessive pricing, monopoly markets and lack of transparency.

Biography
Luis Ferrão, lawyer, 55, University studies on Economic and Social Sciences (ULB, Brussels), degree in Law (University of Lisbon), Masters degree in European Judicial Law (EIPA/Maastricht-Luxembourg, University of Nancy, University of Thessalonica), Member of the Boards of Appeal of the Community Trade Mark Office in Alicante (1996-1999), Principal Administrator in DG Information Society and Media of the European Commission, in charge of the re-use policy and of the digital libraries and related legal issues, including intellectual property.

Brian Fitzgerald

 * Professor - Law Faculty, QUT Brisbane Australia
 * Barrister of the High Court of Australia
 * http://www.law.qut.edu.au/staff/lsstaff/fitzgerald.jsp

Access to PSI: Policy, Law and Technology
This presentation will consider the development and implementation of policy to promote access to and reuse of PSI. It will also highlight (through examples) how legal tools like open content licences can be used to further these objectives. Finally the presentation will highlight the importance of aligning policy, law and technological approaches to best utilise the affordances of Web 2.0.

Biography
Brian Fitzgerald BA (Griff) LLB (Hons) (QUT) BCL (Oxon.) LLM (Harv.) PhD (Griff) is an internationally recognised scholar specialising in Intellectual Property and Cyberlaw. He holds postgraduate degrees in law from Oxford University and Harvard University and his recent publications include Cyberlaw: Cases and Materials on the Internet, Digital Intellectual Property and E Commerce (2002); Jurisdiction and the Internet (2004); Intellectual Property in Principle (2004) and Internet and Ecommerce Law (2007). Over the past ten years Brian has delivered seminars on Information Technology, Internet and Intellectual Property law in Australia, Canada, China, Brazil, New Zealand, USA, Nepal, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Norway, Croatia, France, Thailand, Slovakia and the Netherlands. Brian is a Chief Investigator and Program Leader for Law in the ARC Centre of Excellence on Creative Industries and Innovation and Project Leader for the Australian Government funded Open Access to Knowledge Law Project (OAK Law)  and Legal Framework for e-Research Project. He is also a Program Leader for the CRC Spatial Information. His current projects include work on intellectual property issues across the areas of Copyright, Digital Content and the Internet, Copyright and the Creative Industries in China, Open Content Licensing and the Creative Commons, Free and Open Source Software, Research Use of Patents, Patent Transparency, Science Commons, e-Research, Licensing of Digital Entertainment and Anti-Circumvention Law. From 1998-2002 Brian was Head of the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia and from January 2002 – January 2007 was Head of the School of Law at QUT in Brisbane. He is currently a specialist Research Professor in Intellectual Property and Innovation at QUT. He is also a Barrister of the High Court of Australia. See further information here http://www.law.qut.edu.au/staff/lsstaff/fitzgerald.jsp and here 

Policy Recommendations

 * Develop a best practice information policy – support through OECD, EU and WTO
 * As the OECD suggests, require open access to PSI suitable for public distribution - through open content licences and sensible pricing (limited to cost of dissemination? Internet – as close as possible to zero?)
 * Support with a legal and technical approach that promotes rather than inhibits innovation
 * Enable Real Time Access to PSI

Mireille van Eechoud

 * IViR

Getting the rights right at the EU level, Does the Public Sector Information Directive Deliver?
The EU Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information is a broad instrument that asks governments to actively encourage the use of public sector information by the private sector as a source for digital content products and services. It primarily seeks transparency, both in terms of knowing what data is available and the terms of use are. The public consultation that was recently held as part of the review process the PSI Directive is undergoing, shows a number of important concerns about the effectiveness of this instrument. These relate to access rights (or lack of them), intellectual property and pricing.

Biography
Mireille van Eechoud is associate professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, and member of the board of management of the Institute for Information Law. She teaches in the Master of Information Law programme. Her research focal areas are European and international intellectual property law (particularly copyright, neighbouring rights, database protection); freedom of information law (access to public sector information including regulation of commercial exploitation); private international law aspects of information law (jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition/enforcement). As part of the CC-Netherlands work programme, she has researched the suitability of Creative Commons licenses for public sector information (with Brenda van der Wal, Creative Commons for Public Sector Information, Opportunities and Pitfalls, Amsterdam 2007, available at www.ivir.nl).

Naomi Korn

 * JISC SCA Consultant
 * IP Officer, Collections Trust
 * http://www.naomikorn.com/

In from the cold
Orphan Works - works for which copyright holder is either unknown or untraced - present one of the most significant barriers in the provision of access to public sector content, to the detriment of the growth of the Knowledge Economy. Currently there is almost no systematic evidence of the scale of the Orphan Works problem. This lack of evidence is preventing public sector stakeholder communities from providing access to content with legal certainty, as well as preventing them from exploring potential solutions, whether legislatively or through collective approaches to licensing and indemnity.

The Collections Trust has initiated a project, in collaboration with the Strategic Content Alliance, "In from the Cold", with the aim of providing evidence of the impact of Orphan Works on the delivery of services to the public. The project involves the following three strands of activity:


 * A series of interviews with senior stakeholders in the public sector
 * An in-depth qualitative survey
 * Online quantitative survey

So far, the online quantitative survey, the first of its kind, has yielded 503 responses from across the UK's public sector, as well as 10% of responses from abroad. 89% of survey respondents indicated that orphan works affect their public service delivery (to a greater or less extent) and the quantity of orphan works is estimated to be in the region of 5 - 10% of all works in the public sector (the figure for archives is significantly higher).

This presentation will focus in more depth on these results, the types of works likely to be orphans, as well as the various types of "value" associated with these works to assess the true impact of these works on public service delivery.

Biography
Naomi Korn is a freelance IPR Consultant working across the public sector and with information professionals, academic staff, researchers and curators and other professionals. She also provides IPR support to JISC and other funding bodies as well as the Strategic Content Alliance - a collaboration of UK public sector bodies creating a framework for the sharing of econtent.

Naomi has been involved in several European Funded projects and international initiatives at These include: EDIT; MILE Project; MINERVA and the EMII-DCF project.

Her particular interests include the role of risk management, strategies to deal with orphan works, open content licensing and bridging the gap between the theory of copyright and best practice.

Naomi is currently the project manager of the JISC funded Web2Rights project www.web2rights.org.uk which is developing innovative IPR and legal toolkits to deal with Web2.0 engagement, as well a providing expertise to the “In from the Cold” project, which is assessing the scope and issues associated with orphan works across the UK’s public sector.

Policy Recommendations

 * Public sector bodies should be provided with legal certainty to allow them to use orphan works together with due diligent searches without incurring risks or legal penalties
 * Copyright exceptions should be fit for the digital age
 * Copyright exceptions need to be enshrined in law and not over-ridden by contracts

Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski

 * World Food Programme

Getting bureaucracies to open up - a pragmatic view
From cultural challenges to inadequate technology to unrealistic expectations, there are many obstacles getting in the way to publishing and sharing data. Can a large, international organization embrace the open web? Pierre will talk about his experience at the World Bank.

Biography
Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski is the United Nations World Food Programme web manager. Before joining the organisation, he spent 8 years at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC, working on web strategy, marketing and innovation, helping the institution position itself to benefit from this fascinating medium. Prior to this, he worked in the online advertising industry.

Policy Recommendations

 * Public sector organizations should embed existing information sharing standards in their publishing processes to better structure and distribute data with a focus on simplicity and incremental improvements. Faster is better than better

Carol Tullo

 * Director, Controller and Queen’s Printer, OPSI
 * http://www.opsi.gov.uk/

Unlocking information, engaging communities
Knowledge is intangible, non-rivalrous, cumulative and infinite. It is often unobservable, but becomes observable as information. There is no reliable model for understanding the conversion of inputs (from research, innovation, learning by doing) into outputs (improved services, costs saved). Perhaps the least interesting thing you can do with knowledge is manage it, but this is a first step to achieving any of the real benefits. Knowledge expansion is driving change; the Web and web technologies are the most powerful knowledge sharing tools. New standards, technologies and approaches, such as codifying, metadata and RDFa, are the key to unlocking the potential of the information and knowledge that government holds.

Governments produce and hold lots of useful information that people want to access – either to find and use or, more importantly, to re-use. Increasingly, the most useful services are those which combine data from different sources, mixing public, private and user created content – essentially, data mashing, which happens on the Web or using web technologies, standards and approaches. The PSI re-use agenda is about the public sector providing more and better information to allow the public, users and communities to create new services. Our aim is to release the information so that others can be creative in developing and tailoring new services to their audiences. The principle of serendipitous re-use means that the very best uses of government information will be all the things we cannot think of but that others will develop. This approach, of semantically enabling existing sources of public sector information on the Web, has tremendous promise.

Biography
Director of the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) which operates as the principal focal point for public sector information in the UK. OPSI merged with The National Archives in October 2006 to drive forward a coordinated information management strategy for the UK Government and the wider public sector. As a Director of The National Archives, Carol heads up the Information and Policy Directorate, which provides strong, coherent leadership in information policy areas across government and the wider public sector. It spans a strategic focus and operational roles across a broad portfolio of information standards, services, guidance and advice.

Carol retains under Letters Patent the titles of Controller for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) and Queen’s Printer of Acts of Parliament (1997); Government Printer for Northern Ireland (1997); Queen’s Printer for Scotland (1999). HMSO with its core activities of management of Crown copyright and database rights, publication of legislation and provision of official publishing guidance operates from within OPSI.

Following a law degree and call to the Bar by Inner Temple in July 1977, Carol practised in London. She joined Sweet & Maxwell Ltd., Law Publishers and as Publishing Director was responsible for publishing operations in England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland and setting up the Hong Kong subsidiary. She advised the wider international Thomson Information Group on contractual and intellectual property matters relating to digital media before joining HMSO and the Cabinet Office in 1997. Carol is a Visiting Professor in Information Science at City University, London and an Executive Committee member of the International Government Printing and Publishing Association. She represents official publishing interests across a range of professional bodies and lectures widely to the information management community.

Simon Field

 * Chief Technology Officer, Office for National Statistics

Making the most of statistical data
ONS disseminates hundreds of statistical datasets every year for public consumption. They underpin key National Statistics outputs, are are made freely available under the UK Government's "click-use" license. However, they are currently not easy to discover, are published in a variety of inconsistent formats, and as a consequence, many are under-utilised. ONS recognises this, and is developing a new repository, API (which has the potential to be made public), and web-based discovery and exploration tools for its own web site. This presentation will explore that architectural elements, and discuss the statistical data standards that would be needed to facilitate a distributed network of government repositories.

Biography
Simon Field joined the Office for National Statistics in summer 2004. He leads the IM Solutions division, responsible for Enterprise and Technical Architecture, IT Strategy, Information Assurance, Testing and Analysis. He represents ONS on the government-wide CTO Council, and chairs the Flex Framework Technology Impact Board.

Prior to joining ONS, Simon spent six years leading the e-business research team at IBM's European Research Laboratory in Zurich. He has authored numerous patents, journal articles and a book chapter on the topics of distributed matching and electronic negotiations. Simon is a Chartered Insurance Practitioner, retaining a long-standing interest in AI and machine learning, having contributed to the application of these technologies in the retail banking and insurance industries earlier in his career.

Simon is pursuing a Doctor of Business Administration on the topic of “Mass Collaboration and its impact on public services” at Glamorgan Business School, thanks to sponsorship by ONS and Public Sector Management Wales. He is also leading a project to publish an international database of historic keyboard instruments on behalf of the University of Edinburgh and the British Clavichord Society. He lives in Llandaff with his wife, Swiss pianist Nadia Lefert, and their son, Robert.

Policy Recommendations

 * Promote SDMX as a key international standard that can help harmonise public sector statistical data.

Brian Hoadley

 * Head of Product Design and Customer Insight, Directgov
 * http://digitaloptimist.wordpress.com/about/

Directgov | innovate
It began as a place to share prototypes of mashups in a collaborative digital environment with the open source development community. The addition of non-personal government data sources gives the community a chance to innovate next to our own efforts. With the release of the POIT recommendations is there a developing appetite for innovation from government?

Biography
Brian Hoadley has a career that spans 22 years from telecommunications network design to award-winning digital delivery.

With over 16 years of successful digital innovation and delivery he is an early adopter, customer evangelist and pioneer in the use of interactive communication technologies.

In the 90’s he worked in the Educational Technology division of the prestigious BBN Technologies – developers of the precursor of the Internet (ARPANET) and the people who put the “@” symbol in your email - on the use of Internet technologies and project-based learning in whole-school educational reform.

Since the early 90’s, Brian has managed several hundred digital projects across North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and Australia. He’s a successful entrepreneur and senior digital industry leader who has worked with numerous major brands and award-winning teams.

From running communication protocol trials with Bell Laboratories and several major telcos in North America in the 80’s to the launch of the award-winning 4oD player for Channel 4 Brian has a long track record of being at the vanguard of technical and digital innovation.

Brian is responsible for Directgov's innovate.direct.gov.uk effort.

Ton Zijlstra and James Burke

 * Open government data project commissioned by Ministry for Interior Affairs, Netherlands

Open government data in the Netherlands
We will present findings from a research project on the state of open government data in the Netherlands, commissioned by the Ministry for Interior Affairs. We will also explore some of the the areas where progress needs to be made to move forward with opening up government data. There are a number of isolated initiatives around open government data, and we will discuss the possibility of strengthening this network as a way to continue building momentum in this area after the project ends.

Biography
Ton Zijlstra is an independent consultant on supporting people in their knowledge intensive work, learning, and use of social media. He has a background in electronic engineering, philosophy of science and knowledge management. Currently he is a consultant to the Ministry for the Interior for an experimental project on opening up government data for citizens and organisations to reuse for their own needs and decision making. He blogs at zylstra.org/blog.

James Burke works as a freelance interaction designer under the moniker of Lifesized (www.lifesized.net). He's part of P2P Foundation as well as co-founder at NARB.

Policy Recommendations

 * Pay attention to which government datasets are in high demand and invite citizens and organisations to stipulate what kinds of information they are interested in re-using.
 * Build relationships between civil servants and existing community networks of people interested in re-using government data.

The potential for digital engagement within local communities
Simon will talk about the potential for digital engagement within local communities - with particular reference to the BeLocal project.

Biography
Simon Grice has 15 years experience in developing and delivering digital products and services. He has worked with a range of central and local government organisations developing strategic roadmaps to deliver enhanced engagement and empowerment through digital services. He is the co-founder of the OpenGov Event (annual conference) being held on the 22nd April in London - http://opengovevent.com/ and mashup* event which is the UK’s leading networking of mashup experts meeting monthly in London to discuss, debate and demo advances in the use of digital mashups. Simon was recently been appointed a Senior Associate with Digital Public and provided Directgov with strategic consultancy and roadmap development for the mapping and mashup project which is part of the transformational government agenda.

Jonathan Gray

 * Open Knowledge Foundation

Biography
Jonathan Gray is Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. He studied Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, Social Sciences at the Open University and is currently doing research in the German department at Royal Holloway, University of London.

He has a background in the library sector. As well as being invited to speak at numerous events, he recently sat on the programme committees of I-SEMANTICS '08, Graz, LDOW (Linked Data on the Web) 2008, Beijing, LDOW 2009, Madrid and is currently on the programme committee for the First Open Source GIS UK Conference, University of Nottingham. He recently published an article entitled "Wem gehört das Wissen - Informationspolitik in Deutschland" ("Public interest information policy") for the Berlin based think tank Das Progressive Zentrum.

More generally he has a strong interest in how new internet technologies are being integrated into the existing work patterns of researchers and practitioners in different fields. He has participated in the EU COST Action 32, "Open Scholarly Communities on the Web" which is dedicated to creating a research infrastructure for humanities scholarship on the Web and he is currently involved in the EU eContentplus Discovery project.

Richard Owens

 * WIPO

WIPO and Access to Content: The Development Agenda and the Public Domain
Mr Owens' presentation will describe the formulation of copyright policy at WIPO - stakeholders and issues; legal, technology and market concerns. It will address particularly the process that delivered the WIPO Development Agenda (DA), and conclude by assessing elements of the planned WIPO work program to implement the two DA Recommendations (16 and 20) that address the public domain, including access to publicly-funded information

Biography
Richard Owens is Director of the Copyright E-Commerce, Technology and Management Division at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. His work lies at the intersection of intellectual property, new technologies and the Internet, involving issues such as IPR implications of online business models, cooperation between copyright owners and Internet intermediaries, the rights of users and consumers of digital content, digital rights management (DRM), standards and interoperability issues, proprietary and open source software models, and copyright collective management.

Before rejoining WIPO in 2002, Mr. Owens was a principal at Rightscom, the London-based technology consultancy, and International IPR Adviser for British Music Rights (BMR), the lobbying and public affairs voice of UK composers, songwriters and music publishers. While in London he contributed to UK implementation of the EC Copyright and E-Commerce Directives, and participated in RightsWatch, which promoted self-regulatory notice-and-takedown procedures for the European Union.

At WIPO from 1991 to 2000, Mr. Owens took part in the preparatory work and negotiations that produced the 1996 “Internet treaties”, the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). He also conceived and spearheaded WIPO’s first work program on IPR aspects of traditional knowledge, folklore and biodiversity. His legal career began in an international IPR practice in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, followed by three years in the Common Carrier Bureau at the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, DC. Thereafter, and before joining WIPO, Mr. Owens was a copyright specialist and trade negotiator at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Washington.

A national of the United States of America, Mr. Owens received a Bachelor of Arts degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Juris Doctor degree from the George Washington University’s National Law Center, Washington DC. In addition to English, he is fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Ben White

 * British Library

Digitising European Culture: Legal Stasis?
Late twentieth century copyright policy formation has focussed on balancing the needs of industry and consumers – dealing with issues such as excessive free-loading in the form of music piracy, and the cost of enforcement. However copyright is also an important tool of public policy formation as it also frames education,research and access to knowledge. It is also of course one of the primary tools whereby we as a society shape our own cultural memory.[1]

In 2007 EU libraries spent €4.25 billion on content acquisition, and the UK alone spent circa £80 billion on its education sector. Given the large scale of public investment in education, and the central tool it plays in building the knowledge economy, a new 21st century public policy copyright paradigm is required whereby education and research are also recognised as one of the main goals of a modern, technologically enabled copyright regime.

To this end the Commission and the next Parliament should focus on the economic, cultural and educational value of exceptions highlighted by the rapid development of technologies. Areas that need to be addressed are:

1. The overriding of copyright law, and therefore limitations and exceptions, by contract law in the majority of member states. 2. The absence of mandatory exceptions in the Copyright Directive in regards to libraries and the educational sector. 3. The absence of legislation allowing for digitisation of Orphan Works by cultural organisations.

[1] The ability to preserve websites for example for future generations is provided through exceptions to the monopoly right of the rightsholder. We’re in Danger of Losing Our Memories, Lynne Brindley. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/internet-heritage

Biography
Benjamin White is the Intellectual Property Manager at the British Library. He has a background in publishing having worked for Pearson Education internationally, as well as for Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency of the United Kingdom. He is active in the Intellectual Property field within the UK sitting on a number of bodies including the BBC's Creative Archive Advisory Board, the UK Government's Creative Economy Programme (Competition and Intellectual Property), i2010 Digital Libraries Programme, as well as the Institute of Public Policy Research's Advisory Board on Intellectual Property and the Public Sphere.

Policy Recommendations

 * Building on the Green Paper "Copyright in the Knowledge Economy", in order to make the most of developments in technology, support the public interest as well as Europe's global competitiveness, the European Commission should focus on the economic, social and cultural importance of exceptions in the next European Parliament.
 * The Database Directive does not allow the over-riding of copyright law by private contract.However copyright law in most EU member states is over-ridden by contract law. The Commission should bring the Copyright Aquis in line with the Database Directive to ensure that the public interest is not undermined by private contract.
 * Legally guaranteed digital preservation, and digital access to this content for educational, scientific and research purposes, should be a pillar of the European Copyright Aquis.
 * Much of the historical material sitting in European libraries is currently not available commercially, compounded by varying levels of "Orphan Works" (copyright works whose rightsholders cannot be located). To prevent a digital "black hole of the 20th century" an exception in copyright law for Orphan Works is required to give cultural sector bodies legal certainty when digitising historical material. Incentives for rightsholders to digitise their works independently, or in collaboration with the cultural sector, is needed to give networked access to the European cultural inheritance.

Tom Moritz

 * Internet Archive

Full Return on Investment: the case for open access to scientific data and information
The case for free and open access to taxpayer-funded research seems clear and the case logically extends to effective use and repurposing of data. Within the practice of science, generally, there is also a clear case for free and open access to knowledge resources. (This raises serious questions about proprietary controls on science in the private sector and public condoning of such controls also raises serious questions.)

Restrictions on access to knowledge may impede or prevent awareness of null results -- or “failures” -- creating the possibility that research or public policy are misdirected or that public investments may be wastefully replicated.

There are, in addition, strong arguments from the perspective of human rights as well as utilitarian arguments based in notions of civic responsibility, information literacy and public education.

Polemically, there is a convincing ethical spectrum of public goods that runs from human health / pharmacology through environment and conservation, natural history, agriculture and science and education, more generally. The case for restricted access to knowledge is necessarily very limited and narrowly drawn.

Free and open access and use should be a default setting – restrictions on access should require special – and well-specified -- justification.

Biography
Tom Moritz is a knowledge equity advocate, currently serving in an interim role as Director of Public Programs at the Internet Archive, San Francisco. Working in both the public sector and the non-profit private sector as a librarian and information manager since 1975, he has worked at the university of Washington, the California Academy of Sciences and the American Museum of Natural History, he has been a leading participant in efforts to provide for open access and responsible use of knowledge resources in biodiversity conservation and in the biological sciences. In 2006, he moved to The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, where he shifted focus to the arts and humanities. He continues to closely consider access to integrated knowledge in the arts, humanities and sciences.

He has been a an active participant in global conservation efforts, helping to release the first World Database on Protected Areas and participating in major grants from private and public sector foundations. In the Fall of 2005, he served as Visiting Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Edward Betts

 * Open Library

One web page for every book
The Open Library is a web-based library catalogue which is designed to hold the details of every book ever published. Book data has been contributed by libraries worldwide and has been added to data from the internet to reach a total of 23+ million records. The number is constantly increasing as new data is contributed every week. The site is in the form of a wiki (like Wikipedia) which means records can also be added - and edited - by the public.

The Open Library is part of the Internet Archive; a non-profit digital archiving organisation based in San Francisco. The archive also runs a book scanning project to make the text of out-of-copyright books available on the web which is linked to the Open Library. Specially developed book scanners have been placed in libraries around the world and so far over one million books have been scanned and the text linked to corresponding records in the Open Library. This talk will look at different aspects of the Open Library, our progress so far and the challenges ahead.

Biography
Edward Betts is chief data munger for the Open Library, in charge of loading data from various sources into the Open Library database. Edward has worked with large data sets or 'big data' throughout his career, first in the travel industry and then for the television news company ITN. Edward is an advocate of free software and has developed components for the free operating system Debian - the basis for Ubuntu. He is also a member of the OpenStreetMap foundation and a Wikipedia administrator. Edward lives and works in London.

Frances Pinter

 * London School of Economics:
 * Bloomsbury Academic: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/

Open Publishing: Working with the Commercial and Public sectors
The Internet and Open Content licensing afford many exciting opportunities to make content available for dissemination and reuse. The attempts to do so raise fundamental questions about how, when in the lifecycle, and who pays for the creation and distribution of content. Bloomsbury Academic, a new publishing initiative, , uses Creative Commons licenses for research based scholarly publications. This presentation will look at the business model and how we hope to partner with public bodies.

Biography
Dr Frances Pinter is the Publisher at Bloomsbury Academic where she is using the Creative Commons non-commercial license in a commercial setting. She is also Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics, where she is researching into the role of civil society and the intellectual property rights reform agenda. She has been a consultant to Creative Commons and Publishing Director at the Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute) where she ran the Centre for Publishing Development and drew up the business model for eIFL (the international library consortium). She was also the founder of Pinter Publishers, where she also established Belhaven Press.

Key Concerns

 * In moving to open content licensing there are still transaction costs that keep the cost of publications high. We need to devise better, more efficient ways of publishing scholarly works. This requires more collaborative work by all stakeholders in the academic ecosystem.

Nadia Arbach

 * Digital Programmes Manager
 * Victoria And Albert Museum: http://www.vam.ac.uk/

Wikipedia Loves Art
The Wikipedia Loves Art project involved 15 museums in the US and the UK. Participants went on a 'treasure hunt' to take pictures of museum objects in hundreds of categories, and uploaded them on Flickr to participate in a contest to illustrate articles on Wikipedia. Museums are currently collaborating online to get their participants' entries finalized for the competition.

Biography
Nadia Arbach manages online learning projects and resources for the V&A as the Digital Programmes Manager. She also works with the V&A's Digital Team to plan digital events and activities for adults, young people, and families. She has previously worked as an e-learning specialist at the Bridgeman Art Library, the National Archives, and Tate. Her interests are in collaborative online learning and social media.

Paul Gerhardt

 * Archives for Creativity

Creative Engagement with Broadcast Archives
Creative engagement with broadcast archives: why should the creative use of TV and radio archives be limited to production professionals? Academics, artists and amateurs all need the right to access and re-version archive content.

Biography
Paul Gerhardt runs the UK based media consultancy, Archives for Creativity, which supports the use of film, television and sound archives in learning, communication and creativity. Clients include JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee for UK Higher Education), the BBC, Arts Council England, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (US), the Strategic Content Alliance and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He originated and led the BAFTA award winning Creative Archive project for the BBC, and continues to support the UK’s Creative Archive Licence Group.

Policy Recommendations

 * Recognise public ownership of licence fee funded archives
 * Develop new business models to compensate talent rights

Bundesarchiv and Wikimedia Commons
In December 2008, the German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) and Wikimedia Germany e.V. announced a cooperation that includes the release of some 100.000 images under a free license (Creative Commons cc-by-sa). The files' size is 800 pixel on its larger side, which is suitable for many web applications. Many of these images are now integrated in various language editions of Wikipedia. In return for these images, Wikimedia volunteers are conducting a matching process between the authority files of the Bundesarchiv, the German National Library and Wikipedia persondata-templates. This cooperation has resulted in the largest single upload of files to Wikimedia Commons so far and it serves as an example that can be repeated with other archives.

Biography
Mathias Schindler joined the Wikipedia project in 2003 and is one of the founders of the German local chapter, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.. He has since then served three terms its board of directors until 2008. In 2009, he became a full-time employee of Wikimedia Germany as a project manager for content cooperations with various institutions, including the Bundesarchiv.

Policy recommendations

 * Media files that are created with public funding should be released to the public under a free license
 * Preferred licenses are Creative Commons cc-by-sa which ensure that media files remain freely available to the public and cc-by to a slightly lesser extend
 * In order to facilitate the release of media collections, freely available and up-to-date authority files are needed. Libraries should release them under free licenses
 * The release of files with slightly reduced resolution can be an acceptable temporary solution to preserve traditional sources of income for archives

The Imperial War Museum and the Commons on Flickr Armistice Day Project
At 11 am on 11 November 2009, the Imperial War Museum posted its first selection to The Commons on Flickr as part of a collaborative posting by museums and archives around the world to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. The presentation will give a brief overview of the project and the public response which it evoked.

Biography
Hilary Roberts, Head of Collections Management at the Imperial War Museum Photograph Archive, has worked as a curator of photography since 1980. In her current role, she is responsible for managing the Imperial War Museum’s collection of 10 million images covering all aspects of modern conflict from 1850 to the present day. A specialist in the history of war photography and a qualified archivist, Hilary is a member of various national and international bodies concerned with the history of photography as well as others concerned with the care and management of photographic collections. She works closely with service and civilian photographers of the Ministry of Defence and is a contributor to international efforts to establish standards and techniques for the management and preservation of digital photography.