...The Taskforce ran a competition for innovative ideas to co-create public services. ‘Show Us a Better Way’ was a success, receiving praise worldwide, and showed the potential for innovation that engages the general public....
Unlock innovation in leading public sector sites using a ‘backstage model‘, a standing open online innovation space allowing the general public and staff to co-create information-based public services. This capability should be a standard element of public information service design. The government should start by creating a live backstage service for DirectGov by end June 2009 or earlier....
The Ordnance Survey is fundamental to delivering the power of information for the economy and society. The Taskforce has contributed to the Government’s Trading Funds Assessment. This Assessment should be radical and fundamental. In particular:
· Basic geographic data such as electoral and administrative boundaries, the location of public buildings, etc should be available free of charge to all.
· There should be simple, free access to general mapping and address data for volumes of data up to moderately substantial levels.
· Voluntary and community organisations pursuing public policy objects should benefit from straightforward standard provisions for ensuring access to geospatial data without constraints.
· Licensing conditions should be simplified and standardised across the board and, for all but the heaviest levels of use, should be on standard terms and conditions and should not depend on the intended use or the intended business model of the user....
(a) Government should ensure that there is a uniform system of release and licensing applied across all public bodies; individual public bodies should not develop or vary the standard terms for their sector. (b) The system should be a creative commons style approach, using a highly permissive licensing scheme that is transparent, easy to understand and easy to use, modelled on the ‘Click Use’ licence, subject to the caveats below....
Public information should be available at marginal cost, which in practice means for free. Exceptions to this rule should pass stringent tests to ensure that the national benefit is actually served by charging for information and thus limiting its reuse by exploiting the monopoly rights conferred by intellectual property regimes....
The Government should ensure that public information data sets are easy to find and use. The government should create a place or places online where public information can be stored and maintained (a ‘repository‘) or its location and characteristics listed (an online catalogue). Prototypes should be running in 2009....
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.
