News and ideas on Open Government Data from around the web.
  • Nanaimo, BC and San Francisco join the list of cities with Open Data initiatives.  Nanaimo beat out Toronto and Vancouver to launch the first municipal open data site in Canada.   David Eaves traces the timeline of open municipal data initiatives in his blog post 'Rise of the Open City'.  Also of note from Nanaimo is an innovative council minutes site, created on the cheap by city employees.
  • With the excitement around the 'open city' movement, stories on open government have been breaking into Canadian mainstream media -- see recent stories in the Toronto Star and Edmonton Journal.
  • Elsewhere, the Sunlight Foundation announced the finalists in its 'Apps for America 2' contest.   Finalists include an app described as an Everyblock for state data.
  • The government of New Zealand has released a draft Open Access and Liscensing Framework to promote changes to state copyright licensing that allow the freedom to re-mix and re-use.
    From the paper:
    “Now more than ever is there a very present need to bring information the Government holds on behalf of its people into the public domain so that it may be used in ways that stimulate innovation, generate cultural creativity, social interaction and dialogue, while also kick starting economic growth.”
    (hat tip to Tracey at CivicAccess)
  • Australia's Government 2.0 Task Force has been pushing out some valuable content in the last month, see especially their of Government 2.0 Issues Paper.   The government task force has allocated $2.45 Million (AU) for web projects, creating a public consultation site to:
    1. approve or criticise the projects we’ve set out
    2. propose improvements to those ideas
    3. propose alternative ideas
    4. suggest people or firms/agencies that might do a good job of these projects
    Will we see a Canadian Government 2.0 Task Force, equipped with a similar budget?