Cc-au mailing list

[Jessica Coates <j2.coates AT qut.edu.au>]

Those interested in the licensing of government information and data will be interested in the release of the draft report from the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce for public comment - http://gov2.net.au/files/2009/12/Draft-Government-2-0-Report-release.pdf.

 

The Taskforce (http://gov2.net.au) was launched by our Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner MP. The Taskforce is "made up of policy and technical experts and entrepreneurs from government, business, academia, and cultural institutions" and have a reference to advise the government on "increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information" and "encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life."

 

The draft report includes a number of recommendations relating to Creative Commons – in fact, it’s mentioned 67 times. The report also quotes at length from Creative Commons’ CEO, Joi Ito. This isn’t that surprising, as a number of the members of the Taskforce have had a lengthy relationship with CC – Professor Brian Fitzgerald is the head of Creative Commons Australia, Mia Garlick was once Creative Commons International’s General Council, and Seb Chan regularly uses the licences in his own work. But we thank Brian, Mia and Seb, as well as the other members of the Taskforce, for their ongoing support.

 

The most significant CC reference is probably the Taskforce’s recommendation on  extending opportunities for the reuse of government information, which is summarised (at p.xii) as follows:

 

By default public sector information (PSI) should be made available on the following terms:

•   Consistent with the need for free and open re-use and adaptation, PSI released should be licensed under the Creative Commons BY standard;

•   Where ownership does not rest with the Commonwealth, or is shared with other parties, agencies should seek to ensure its release under Creative

Commons BY;    

•   From June 2011 all agencies that enter into new agreements with third parties should ensure publication under a Creative Commons BY licence;

•   Copyright policy should be amended such that if published or unpublished works are covered by Crown copyright, the works should automatically be re-licensed under a Creative Commons BY licence at the time at which Commonwealth records become available for public access under the Archives

Act 1983.

 

Comments on the draft report are due by 16 December (ie next Wednesday). As an interesting aside, they’ve set up an excellent consultation platform, with the ability for people to comment on each paragraph in an open platform - http://gov2.net.au/consultation/2009/12/07/draftreport/

 

 

Jessica Coates

Project Manager

Creative Commons Clinic

Queensland University of Technology

 

ph: 07 3138 8301

fax: 07 3138 9395

email: j2.coates AT qut.edu.au