The Someday List: 1. Licensing

Seems all the cool kids are doing a series of themed blog posts, so I’ll join the party: over the next few weeks I’m going to cover four topics from my ‘Someday/Maybe’ list of applying social media in government:

• Licensing
• Accessibility
• Guidance
• Evaluation

Let’s start with the one I’m most sketchy about: licensing.

Image credit: Marcin Wichary (licensed under Creative Commons)

A couple of weeks ago, Richard Allen from the Power of Information Taskforce posted a useful set of links for local authorities looking to unlock the power of their information, including some basic information about Click-Use licensing, which I’ve come across but never fully got my head around.

I like all the PoI data reuse stuff - it speaks to me. For a couple of years now, I’ve run a website which tries to get public sector jobs information out to a wider audience (and 20,000 visitors/month seem to want it). Like others (I suspect), I have a soft spot for Neighbourhood Statistics, from my mis-spent time trying in vain to find a way to make it usable. And I love services like UniStats when I come across them at work.

But I’ve got a day job which is mainly about other things. I said in a plaintive comment on the PoI blog:

“This isn’t a whine, but to be honest these issues are just too far down my list to really get the attention they need, and my team is too small for us to really get under the skin of it. I suspect there are many of us in government temperamentally predisposed to open up the information we help to manage, but never quite managing to get it done. Similarly when it comes to building APIs to data.

Could the Taskforce provide some kind of help - boiled down practical guidance, a helpdesk, some priorities, template business cases or model approaches - that we could use to help us move foreward in this area quickly and confidently?”

Contrary to Wired’s provocative nonsense, that comment led to a flurry of activity. Adrian Norman got in touch via this blog, and we met today to chat about markets and precedents in public sector information, marginal cost, FoI, and the problem of incentives for people in government to make their data readily re-usable. He has an ambitious solution of his own: use software to auto-generate Information Asset Registers for public sector organisations, linked to a Europe-wide marketplace where the costs and value of the data can be more transparently assessed and the information more easily traded. If nothing else, he reminded me of the market value of what we hold, and that it’s not necessarily about giving stuff away for free.

Another response to my query came from Carol Tullo, Director of Information Policy and Systems at OPSI who gently suggested I make contact and tap into their help, which I’m doing at a meeting next week.

Which brings me to my point: what would be useful to know, as busy, jobbing webbies - the gatekeepers and enthusiasts for low-cost web publishing - to help us kick start more data syndication, licensing and re-use in our organisations?

Here’s my starter for ten (eagle-eyed readers will spot that I don’t have the foggiest about any of this, and a seriously non-legal mind):

• We have increasing amounts of content (pictures, video, blog posts, methodology documents etc) which I’d like to share with the world, for others to comment on, adapt and reuse. What’s the best way to do that?
• Can we license stuff under GPL or Creative Commons?
• What if we use open source stuff and build upon it - can we ’share alike’ under the same terms?
• If it’s created by a Civil Servant, I understand it’s probably Crown Copyright, but I’m not sure what that means from a reuse perspective. I know it sometimes get waived anyway. So what’s the deal there?
• I’ve heard dark things about the legal terms imposed by some of the online services out there such as YouTube. What should we be watching out for, if anything?
• What really is ‘Click Use’ and is it the solution to my quest for a simple Creative Commons-style licence I can slap on stuff we create?
• What should I say when talking to data holders in my department about this, and convince them to (i) look for and (ii) store and publish in reusable ways the data they hold?

That’s my list so far: what would you like me to ask about? Or what has your experience been?

Innovating in small steps

There’s social media which constitutes a great leap forward, and then there’s social media which, while only arguably social, is still better than what went before.

It’s been quite a frantic week, partly driven by the launch of the new Work Skills command paper online which falls squarely into the second camp. When the team’s busy, and a document needs to be turned round quickly, it’s natural to take the easy route when it comes to publishing online - create a PDF and stick it on the website along with the press notice.

The brief for Work Skills was to create something more engaging, showing the progress being made on integrating the employment and skills systems across the country. A great team from DIUS, DWP, and LSC supported by design agency Bell and several video production firms managed to pull together an online document which - while by no means cutting edge - helps to tell some engaging stories through video case studies of people who have benefited from policy changes.

I dreamed about using CoverItLive, Twitter, Qik and more to cover the launch, but frankly didn’t have the manpower or rationale to justify them. We could have tried something with Google Maps and YouTube, but the simple Flash player which was built just seemed like the easier and more reliable option. I’m proud of the simple and good value site we’ve ended up with: something that focuses on the stories rather than technology, makes a real effort at accessibility, and toes the line of Transformational Government. Command Paper 1.5 maybe. A step forward for online communication of a policy document. I think it’s through this kind of everyday innovation - slightly different, slightly better that we’ll make real progress over time.

And of course, you can download the PDF if you want to