Page 1393 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
That seems to me entirely fair. It is broadly consistent with the copyright provisions of fair dealing, but it makes it explicit that you have got this. This is, I think, what we should be doing with our government information. In paragraph (d) we state:
… these aims can be facilitated by information technology known as Web 2.0 and this combination is referred to as Government 2.0 …
The internet is a wonderful thing. One of the most interesting things about it for historians is that the internet, in fact, was a creation of the US military. It was started because the US military said, “We need to work out some way of decentralising communications so that if parts of our infrastructure get wiped out, it is still going to happen.” Decentralisation has allowed a massive democratisation of communication which I think, in general, has been very positive for the world. When we look at places like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in particular, their regimes’ first step was to halt the uprisings by cutting off the internet and the rebels’ broadcasting channels. They also cut off the mobile phones and text messaging, the things which people used for organising.
As I mentioned earlier, we should not be using websites to confuse. We should be doing good, accessible sites. Our community is not entirely full of young, web-savvy people. It also includes older people, disabled people—people who need to have well-designed websites. In paragraph (e) the motion states:
… governance of the ACT will be improved through community collaboration made possible by Government 2.0 …
Participatory democracy, which Government 2.0 is all about, is a core Green value. I think that the government has made attempts in this direction and the government’s 2030 consultation process is part of that. But other governments have gone further than this. I refer particularly to eastern Berlin. The Berlin Lichtenberg borough has 251,000 residents, so it is about the same size as us. It has a participatory budget process under which about €31 million is allocated on the basis of projects that citizens vote for. They first vote online and then the government follows up with some non-online methods and a random survey of residents to get a more representative feel. The government could look at something like that.
One thing that the Greens have been talking about forever is ACTION data. Other jurisdictions have made their timetable data available. One way that they have made it available is to publish it in a format that can be used by people in transit. That is very cheap and easy. I note that the ACT government has been saying for at least a couple of years that it will do that. However, the ACT government is not making this information freely available. It has gone to the extent that my colleague Ms Bresnan has had to lodge a request under freedom of information to have the ACT government publicly release this data. “Appalling” is the only word for it.
I could go on at greater length on this but I note that I am going to run out of time. So I will get on to my second point. As I know from asking a question on notice, the
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