Aliya Sternstein, Value add? New questions arise about how accessible agencies should make government data, Federal Computer Week, February 7, 2005. Excerpt: 'Advocates of free access to government information recently claimed a modest victory — but did they celebrate too early? A new policy of providing weather information and other environmental data to the broadest possible audience in easily usable formats has reversed a long-standing practice of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Instead of offering weather information in proprietary formats to a limited number of companies for resale, NOAA officials will provide environmental data in nonproprietary formats that any person or organization can use and commercialize if they choose....Reactions among commercial publishers and open-access advocates to the new policy were predictable. Open-access advocates welcomed it; some well-known commercial publishers criticized it. Yet even with NOAA's new policy — or perhaps because of it — some critics of the Bush administration's policies say that the balance between open access and commercial interests will tilt toward privatization....Daniel Barkley, coordinator of government information and microforms at the University of New Mexico and a former chairman of the Depository Library Council, said he thinks the balance between government and commercial publishers of federal information could tilt toward privatization. "I think it's pretty clear that Bush administration [officials have] the mind-set that anything the public sector can do, the private sector can do better," Barkley said. "It wouldn't surprise me if there was a stronger push for the privatization of information." But in Barkley's opinion, that would be a disservice to the public. Commercial publishers, he said, would selectively publish information that generates the most profits....Whatever happens during the next few years, NOAA's new policy is a welcome reversal of recent trends in government publishing, a former federal policy official said. Bruce McConnell, former chief of information policy and technology at OMB and now president of the consulting firm McConnell International, said the possibility of greater access to government information is important. "Under the guise of homeland security, a lot of government information has been taken off the Web," he said. "Now, NOAA is doing something different. This is a bright spot in a picture that's otherwise more mixed."'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/07/2005 09:17:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
