eGovernment, free licenses & FoI in Germany

eGovernment 2.0, free licenses and real Freedom of Information

Claas Hanken – ifib

�• Ideal vs. administrative reality in D �• »All rights reserved« �• Freedom of Information and reuse of

public sector information

Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

Scientific & Creative Commons

Image: ESA/NASA

Image: Bundesarchiv @ Wikimedia Commons unter cc by-sa/3.0/de/

Free – as in Freedom (Richard Stallman)

Image: Joi @ flickr cc Attribution 2.0 Generic

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. The simple cc-Attribution License allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work but only if they give credit the way you request.

Source: CreativeCommons.org http://creativecommons.org Creative Commons by/3.0


German government agencies and CC

Wikimedia Germany in cooperation with German Bundesarchiv: more than 100.000 images, mostly documenting German history . The images are issued as Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Germany.

Apart from this publication under cc only in individual cases, for instance »Die Lage der Biologischen Vielfalt« (Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5).

German government works are published under special copyright conditions. Even CC0 is not applicable. Creative Commons licenses could be applied on other works for which the Government holds copyright.


Image: Joi @ flickr cc Attribution 2.0 Generic

Lawrence Lessig on ©:

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.« L. Lessig: Free Culture (2004), p. 199


»Alle Rechte vorbehalten« vs. § 5 UrhG?

Standard copyright protection is not appliable on German government works (§ 5 Abs. 1 of the german Urheberrechtsgesetz – UrhG). In many cases government publication could be freely distributed, if only the source is identified in a recognizable way. None the less most government agencies are using »All rights reserved« (»Alle Rechte vorbehalten«) for their Websites.

Why?


Excuses for restrictive ©-Conditions »It always worked, why change it?«


»Someone elses intellectual property could be harmed.«

Uncertain fears and doubts

privacy

Worries over possible damage to public image

»We won’t give away our intellectual property .«

»There could be negative effects for some companies.«

Image: germanium @ flickr cc Attribution 2.0 Generic

Proprietary Software vs. OSS


• Usually contractors don’t have to provide results under Free and Open Source Licenses (FOSS like GNU, EUPL, »Bremer Lizenz«).

• Due to agreements from the 70’s (»Kieler Beschlüsse«) government agencies can adopt and use certain applications that were developed for other administrative bodies free of charge. Examples: Ginfis, EPOS, Favorit OfficeFlow, Government Site Builder

Excuses for restrictive licenses


»Anyone could mess around with the source code!«

»OSS is tinkered with by unknown people and faulty.«

»We paid for it – therefore we own it.«

Image: germanium @ flickr cc Attribution 2.0 Generic

»It always worked, why change it?«

privacy

Uncertain fears and doubts

»There could be negative effects for some companies.«

Freedom of Information (FoI)


• The german laws on FoI (by Bund and Länder) have the purpose to ensure that the government’s operations are apparent. They grant unconditional access to public information for everyone – with few exceptions (abandonment of the Amtsgeheimnis-paradigm).

• Risks for requesters: refusal of enquiries, high costs

FoI documents as Legal torrents?


In case of a successful FoI request, fees payed: Is one allowed to re-publish the document online (without commercial interest)? Common answer: No. • Example from the US: Download for Democracy

(documents made available over P2P-networks) • Expandable prototype by CCC e.V. and

FoeBuD e.V. (Germany): »Befreite Dokumente«

Laws on the reuse of PSI


The german »Informationsweiterverwendungsgesetz« is aimed to transpose directive 2003/98/EC on the reuse of public sector information into national law. The law deals with the sharing and reuse of public sector information by citizens and businesses. Government agencies can impose fees on the reuse of information. (Do they charge the taxpayer again for information that has been collected using tax money?)

„Remix“ of public data sources?

�• merge data sources �• remix and filtering �• RSS-feeds to manage information �• Example: Google News puts together

articles on a topic from various newspapers

�• Example: Yahoo! Pipes makes it easy to concatenate, combine and transform web content (»mashup«)


Beispiel: swim & fun Nordwest

Open APIs

�• An open API (Application Programming Interface) gives programmers the opportunity to reuse data and certain functionalities in new applications.

�• Examples for german government APIs: eCard-API-Framework, ELSTER COALA Java-APIs


Raw Data Now!

Web founder Berners-Lee (2009) TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/484 Vision: Governments provide free information as raw data in a machine-processable form.

Image: captsolo @ flickr cc Share Alike 2.0 Generic


Raw Data from government agencies

• Example data.gov (US): raw data, geodata, tools • What is this good for?

surveillance cameras / crime rate?

• financial aids / local economic growth?

[Put your idea here.]

Image: captsolo @ flickr cc Share Alike 2.0 Generic



Wrap-up

Government agencies (in Germany & elsewhere) should: �• make sure that hindrances for free publication are

removed �• favor offers that allow publication under free licenses �• provide free raw data �• use structured data formats �• move public data into the interconnected web �• provide open APIs

Am Fallturm 1, 28359 Bremen Telefon: ++49(0)421 218-2674 Telefax: ++49(0)421 218-4894 Internet: www.ifib.de E-Mail: [email protected]

Contact:

Claas Hanken – [email protected]

www.egovernment-akademie.de www.ifib.de

The presentation is published under Creative Commons Namensnennung 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Author: Claas Hanken

ifib & E-Government-Akademie are registered trademarks (DPMA.de) of ifib GmbH.

eGovernment, free licenses & FoI in Germany

Business

Transcript of eGovernment, free licenses & FoI in Germany