We believe that Open Government data is only as useful as it is used.
Transparency is important, but only in the context that people can find and use that information so behaviour of those in power, or those watching power, changes for the better of the public. This stream will look at transparency around data, the emerging ways of building on transparent data, and the related issues and uncertainties around privacy, sustainability and corporate data. There will also be a day focussed on the state and workings of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), with emphasis on the perspectives of civil society, and pushing the OGP to achieve its goals for the community, and overcoming what may prevent that.
This topic stream is among one of the widest in content in the Open Knowledge Festival. The topis ctream sessions are organized in two sub-topics: Open Government Data (OGD) & Open Government Partnership (OGP) debate and Content, Privacy and Use, beside those two subtopics there are individual sessions listed under Other Transparency and Accountability Sessions.
Topic: Open Government Data (OGD) & Open Government Partnership (OGP) debate
There will be a full day of debate on the Open Government Data (OGD) & Open Government Partnership (OGP) on Tuesday, 18th September (11:30 – 19:30) in the INSPIRE auditorium and one hackathon in the HACK space on Wednesday.
Session 1 State-of-play: The Open Government Data movements & related initiatives
Tuesday 18th September, 11:30 – 13:00 @ INSPIRE auditorium
The first session will open the debate on the Open Government Data movements, related initiatives & the Open Government Partnership (OGP). We will introduce some of the topics that will be discussed during the day and confront the audience with some food for thoughts and provoking questions.
Session 2 Reflections on Open Government Data Standards / principles / measures
Tuesday 18th September, 14:00-15:30 @ INSPIRE Auditorium
The 2nd session surrounds the questions Open Government Data standards, principles and measures. Do we need global open government data standards? Do they exist already? Are the existing sets of principles and recommendations, developed by the OGD comunity good enough? Whats missing? How do technical standards and policy guidelines relate to each other? The session will start with two short presentations followed by a plenary debate including key people of the OGD movement and conclude in an open debate with the audience.
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 3:20)
Session 3 Hacking the Open Government Partnership process
Tuesday 18th September, 16:00-18:30 @ INSPIRE Auditorium
The 3rd session is about the chances and challenges for countries joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the role of governments, civil society organisations and other stakeholders in the OGP process. The OGP now includes fifty-five countries and a healthy spectrum of civil society and transparency organisations. The OGP clearly has potential to accelerate the transformation of governments and societies to become more open, transparent and participatory. Looking at the “action plans” from many countries joined the OGP it appears that right now the OGP is a flagship without destination. There is little common ground on basic concepts and minimal standards of Open Government. It is also unclear how the OGP process is structured and how the implementation of the action plans can be evaluated. These are critical issues, hence they hold potential for the OGP to become a vehicle that waters down the principles developed by international communities of best practice. This session includes four short contributions by leading experts of the civil society and concludes in a plenary debat as a forum for governments and civil society to exchange.
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 7:00)
Session 4 What next? Future Open Government Bar
Tuesday 18th September, 18:00-19:30 @ INSPIRE Auditorium
The 4th session recaptures the debates of the day and concludes in a visionary debate about the bigger picture, the visions and nightmares about the future of our knowledge societies. The session is closed by an inspiring keynote from a special guest, as an opinion leader of the OGD movement.
Session 5 Lets do an Hackathon on the Open Government Partnership!
Wednesday 19th September, 14:00 – 15:30 @ HACK workshop 1
This short session will prepare the groundwork for a later event by looking at data generated in the OGP process through national plans and the needs of civil society. We will try to build contacts, collect ideas and explore possible times and places for collaboration (e.g. opendatahackday, OGP conferences, etc.). Ultimately we would like to see the OGP apply the best practice for visualisation, monitoring and engagement of public policies. Session will be lead by: Paul Maassen (Netherlands, Co-ordinator for OGP), Javier Ruiz (UK, Open Rights Group), Daniel Dietrich (Germany, Open Knowledge Foundation)
Topic: Content, Privacy and Use
For more detailed info on each session, please click on the titles.
Session 1 Personal Data
Tuesday 18th September, 18:00-19:30 @ HACK cinema 1
Panel Discussion on Open Personal Data and presentation on Sustainable Data Synthesis.
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 8:25)
Session 2 Openness and privacy, open data and data protection: what’s the deal?
Wednesday 19th September, 14:00 @ INSPIRE meeting room
This session will foster an open debate on the relationship between open government data and privacy. Is open data really a threat to privacy, or is privacy only an excuse for protecting other interests? What is the role of the legal framework for data protection? Can technical tools guarantee both open data and privacy protection?
Speakers: Katleen Janssen, Zsuzsanna Belenyessy, Javier Ruiz, Chris Taggart, TBA
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 5:30)
Session 3 The Money and the Many: Connecting government finance and citizens’ issues
Wednesday 19th September, 16:00-17:30 @ INSPIRE meeting room
We’re experiencing unprecedented numbers of datasets about government expenditure being released sometimes allowing us to track expenditure down to the nearest penny, sometimes nothing more than a best guess to the nearest hundred thousand dollars. But who cares? This data is often meaningless to the average citizen without teams who can interpret it for the public’d understanding. This panel brings together expertise from 3 continents in bringing numbers to the people and building literacy and engagement around how spend your money.
* Speakers: Oluseun Babayemi, Damir Mehmedbasic, Gisele da Silva Craveiro, Miguel Pulido, Friedrich Lindenberg.
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 1:20)
Other Transparency and Accountability Sessions
For more detailed info on each session, please click on the titles.
Session 1 Finnish Open Data + Greek example
Tuesday 18th September, 11:30 – 13:00 @ INSPIRE meeting room / Session host: Pekka Sarkola
Presentations and experiences on big Finnish data openings (i.e. Land Survey) and the national open data policy. Also one example from Greece.
Session 2 Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations: Developing a Global Action Plan
Wednesday 19th September, 11:30 – 13:00 @ INSPIRE foyer
In the aftermath of the release of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness by parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) around the world, PMO representatives will discuss plans to move forward with further collaborative projects on the global level. Session will be lead by: Andrew Mandelbaum (National Democratic Institute), María Baron (Argentina, Directorio Legislativo), Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou (France, Regards Citoyens) and Pedro Markun (Brasil, Transparency Hackers).
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 0:40)
Session 3 Corporate transparency, Corruption & Open Data
Wednesday 19th September, 11:30 – 13:00 @ MEET 8th floor auditorium
Money launderers, corrupt politicians, terrorists, arms traffickers, drug dealers, people traffickers, tax evaders – all these people need to be able to move money around the world, and rely on two things to be able to do so: banks willing to take their business, and companies that allow them to hide their identity. This presentation will detail how poor access to even the most basic company data — such as whether a company exists — is enabling corruption, money laundering and fraud to flourish, and how OpenCorporates is working with NGOs and others to fix the problem.
>> VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (start time 8:20)
Session 4 CKAN, Data Management and Open Data Portals
Wednesday 19th September, 14:00-19:30 @ HACK Workshop Space #1
CKAN is the world’s leading open source data portal platform developed and maintained by the Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN team. With numerous deployments around the world, the CKAN team will be here to demo CKAN version 2.0 (to be released) with our new user interface and theming. We’ll answering questions on features, available services & support, roadmap and how to get involved! Interested in open data policy? Come talk to us about our experiences with data.gov.uk, the European Commission portal, Drupal integrations and workflow recommendations.
Session 5 Open Government Data “Show and Tell” lightning talks
Friday 21st September, 11:30 – 13:00 @ INSPIRE foyer
This session is reserved for those of you who would like to share your latest cool open data projects with the world. Just drop by and don’t be boring 🙂
Participant Testimonials:
“Technology and Open Data are critical enablers of 21st century transparency, but they need to fit into a comprehensive model of open and participatory governance. This session will discuss how the open government data community could collaborate with civil society organisations and help bridge some of these discussions using the Open Government Partnership (OGP) process.” – Daniel Dietrich, OGP Guest Programme Planner and Chairman of OKFN Germany
“With ever more spending data being relased by countries, we’ll be looking at the last 2 years of experience to create tools for use long into the future.” – Lucy Chambers, OpenSpending Community Co-ordinator
“The OKFest will be a unique opportunity to meet and collaborate with some of the most forward thinking people in cultural heritage. And by bringing it together with other innovative areas such as open design there are lots of possibilities for interesting cross-pollination of ideas and projects.” – Javier Ruiz, Open Rights Group
“This stream looks to move forward interesting work which is vital and meaningful, but can be obscured by the colourful or newsworthy.” – Sam Smith, Transparency & Accountability Guest Programme Planner
