Status:
IGF Theme(s) for workshop: Security, Openness and Privacy
Main theme question address by workshop: Question 2 in Freedom, Openness and Security: Freedom of expression and free flow of information: how do legal framework
Concise description of the proposed workshop:
Local and national governments across the world are rapidly adopting Open Government Data (OGD) policies, developing open data portals, placing government data online under open licenses, developing standards for data sharing, and supporting the emergence of new social and commercial enterprises to use OGD. These policies and practices are built upon the Internet infrastructure, and contribute to the emergence of a ‘web of data’. Whilst many fora focus on the practical issues of developing OGD policies, it is important to take stock of the emerging governance issues, and to identify the connections between key issues in the development of OGD, and the Internet Governance issues that underly them, or to which they give rise.
In particular, through an open discussion drawing heavily on contributions from the floor and widely promoted remote participation, this workshop will address:
* Definitions of Open Government Data - exploring how the definition chosen affects citizens access to information, and addressing issues about the rights of citizens to also contribute to the creation of datasets that can support governance. Increasingly crowdsourced data like Open Street Map might be considered essential for governance, even though not produced by government.
* Ensuring open data impacts - OGD has been described as a powerful policy tool for economic growth and social development. Early experience shows that OGD on it’s own is often not enough to secure these outcomes, so it is essential to explore the other interventions and background conditions that allow a community to make the most of OGD to promote freedom, openness and development.
* Right to data - most OGD policies are presently administrative policies, and do not give citizens a right to access certain datasets, or create obligations on states to maintain an infrastructure for making open data available. The ‘right to data’ is being developed in a number of areas as a potential policy to address this.
* Privacy and data protection - many open government datasets are derived from citizens personal data, and as more datasets are published the risks of ‘jigsaw identification’ of private information increases (particularly as OGD interacts with social media content). OGD may limit the effectiveness of national data protection laws to regulate how firms use data, as OGD is accessible globally.
* National data infrastructure - many of the tools for gaining value from open data, either for citizens or companies, are cloud based, and may be based outside national borders. We will address potential issues linked to IGF themes on infrastructure and cloud computing.
* Standards and open data - in order to support the emergence of a ‘web of data’ and support comparability across countries, publishing OGD often involves the development and use of standards for content (e.g. definitions of the column headings for ‘public spending data’). These standards impact upon the information citizens will have access to, and their freedom to re-use that information in different ways. Questions of access to standard setting processes, and the impacts of OGD standards on different national and cultural contexts will be important to address.
The workshop will draw upon a prior workshop to be held at the Open Knowledge Foundation OKFest in Helsinki in September 2012, and a number of other workshop discussions which will feed into the background paper.
Further background:
**Open Data Kenya**
http://www.scribd.com/WorldBankPublications/d/75642393-Open-Data-Kenya-…
World Bank Open Development Technology Alliance: Jeff Kaplan et. al.
**Special Issue: Community Informatics and Open Government Data, April 2012**
http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/issue/view/41
Co-edited by Tim Davies and Zainab Bawa
**ICT For or Against Development, The Emerging Case of Web 3**
http://wiki.ikmemergent.net/files/1204-IKM-Working_Paper_16-WEB3-Mar_20…
Mike Powel, Tim Davies, Keisha Taylor
Background Paper:
Name of the organiser(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:
Tim Davies, University of Southampton Web Science Doctoral Training Centre, UK
Javier Ruiz, Open Rights Group, UK
Adam Peake, GLOCOM, Japan
Daniel Dietrich, Open Knowledge Foundation, Germany
Marco Fioretti, Italy
Have you, or any of your co-organisers, organised an IGF workshop before?: Yes
Please provide link(s) to workshop(s) or report(s):
GLOCOM, 2009 Workshop: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?chron… Davies, 2011
Workshop: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/components/com_chronocontact/uploads/WSP…
Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:
PS Bitange NDemo, Kenya Ministry of Information and Communications
Daniel Dietrich, Germany, Open Knowledge Foundation
Laurent Elder, Canada, International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
Vagner Diniz, Brazil, W3C
Keisuke Kamimura, Asia Pascific, GLOCOM
Marco Fioretti, Italy, Digital Standards Campaigner
We will also look to engage with a young panelist, either through remote participation on in-person once potential delegates are confirmed.
Name of Remote Moderator(s):
Adam Peake, GLOCOM, Japan