Tim Berners-Lee on open data

Tim Berners-Lee‘s TEDTalk on open data was Youtubed this week. 6 minutes worth watching. He’s the man known for inventing the dubilya-dubilya-dubilya.

I made a similar argument to the one made in the first three minutes of the clip at Ignite Dublin on Thursday. In my tirade waffle talk I encouraged people to submit FOI requests and publish them online no matter the perceived importance of the contents due to the potential contexts through which those official documents could be viewed at a future date. Of course my talk was poorly constructed and laden with tangents by comparison to the one below, but let’s not dwell on that…

Digest – March 14 2010

These be the links ‘ere, brah…

– HOME

This says a lot. Sigrún Davíðsdóttir, London Corr with the Icelandic state broadcaster, on corporate governance in banking…

Why is Lehman being scrutinised so thoroughly and not banks that governments in various countries have recapitalised? The UK Treasury had to intervene with Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, banks that would have followed Lehman into bankruptcy if the Treasury hadn’t saved them. But as far as is known, the accounts of these banks haven’t been picked over like Lehman’s.

Recently, there were fleeting news that the Treasury had contemplated the idea in connection with Lloyds but then given up on it. It was thought, at the time, that there was no time to do it – but as a major shareholder the Treasury has all the time in the world to go into the banks’ universe and start reading. The same goes for Ireland: AIB, Bank of Ireland and Anglo have been recapitalised, they are still reporting huge losses – and their management in the months up to autumn 2008 hasn’t been scrutinised.

P O’Neill, ‘that kid needs help’. The HSE angle on the Jihad Jane arrest.

Cian Murphy warns of the dangers of piecemeal constitutional reform.

IrelandAfterNama; are there any reasons we shouldn’t be cynical?

John McHale on IrishEconomy writes about the Innovation document thingy. Innovation Baybay! Woot! Here comes the recovery! …Wait, wait, wait, haven’t the powers-that-be been closing universities’ access to journal libraries, been generally anti-intellectual and, in broad terms, remained in position despite their monumental fuck-ups of late? Oh yeah. Anyway, this latest document undoubtedly changes all that. Or something. Definitely. Yeah.

Election observers, wanted up durr.

– WORLD

The Blogger’s fallacy

Charlie Beckett of journalism think-tank POLIS on networked journalism…

So what then happens when that editorial production process is disrupted, in Schumpeter’s phrase, by the destructively creative forces of new technologies?

If you accept the case I make in SuperMedia, that journalism is moving towards new forms of production then this begs the question of what we mean by ‘quality’ in that reconstructed media environment. I raise the issue in the book, but now that networked journalism is becoming the norm rather than the exception, I think it’s a good moment to attempt a further exploration of the implications for the idea of quality.

Matt Yglesias drew attention to this great graph earlier in the week.

Left Foot Forward argues the UK needs a compulsory register for lobbyists. Too right.

James Fallows; good news about flying, in four parts. Check out the personal jet pack.

– OTHER

Take some time to view this lovely short film-reel about Dublin broadcast in the ’60s in cinemas; ‘See you at the pillar‘. Won’t embed for me but worth clicking through to watch.

Lastly, below Jimmy Bullard celebrates Wash & Go’s 21st birthday. Craic. Gotta love that man. Nice marketing move from the Wash & Go peeps as well.

Terrence Wheelock

The death of Terrence Wheelock is, and was, upsetting. He was a young man from of similar age to me who, in some ways, would be a lot like lads I was in school with and grew up around. The recent findings of the Garda Ombudsman Commission investigation which have cleared the Gardaí of serious wrong-doing has brought the story back into the public eye.

Others have put it better than I ever could; you should read both posts on Human Rights in Ireland.

I only wish to draw attention to this quote from an Access Info report on police forces and public information published late last year;

This finding shows that the laws in most countries are consistent with the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents which makes no exemption for the police, and which states specifically in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Convention that the police fall under the scope of the right to access to official documents.

…[This report] shows that there is just one country in which the police force is entirely exempt from opening its files to the public: The Republic of Ireland.

Gavin also noted the publication of the report on the day.

All that is needed for An Garda Síochána to come under FOI is the signature of Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, and some regulations to be implemented. Then we can take our place among such nations as Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan as a country that allows citizens to request information from their police force.

The full report is available in PDF format at this link. Access-Info posted this on the day the report was released. I still hope the family get their inquiry.

Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism expenses database

Update: I have totaled the staff claims here.

Readers may recall a blog post I wrote back in December detailing my dealings with the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism (DAST). After gleaning information from the footers of Ken Foxe’s FOIs concerning John O’Donoghue, I established that the Department was using Oracle iExpense software to store expenses information.

I wrote an FOI request in October asking for a ‘datadump’, of the entire database since inception (in other words, a copy of the database). The Department refused both the original request and the appeal for internal review (conducted by a more senior official in the Department).

In January I appealed the decision to the Office of the Information Commissioner. The request, internal review and appeal have cost a combined €240 (kindly made available by you, the public).

The Appeal letter to the Information Commissioner

Today I am pleased to say that I have reached a settlement with the Department, brokered by the Office of the Information Commissioner. The Department have agreed to release almost the entire database, with some elements removed. This is not a formal decision of the Commissioner, but is instead a settling of the issue. This just means that a formal OIC Decision was not required as the two parties reached an agreement.

The settlement is this: the entire expenses database of the Department, to include the follow expenses data headings:

Description, Grade, Full Name, Claim, Date, Purpose, Status, Total Claimed, Distribution Line Number, Start Date, Expense Type, Euro Line Amount, Currency Code, Currency Rate, Amount Quantity Unit, Rate Net Total, (EUR) Payment Date, Withholding Amount Invoice, Amount, Amount Paid.

Cost Centre numbers, employee cost centre numbers, named approvers and justification fields have been removed. There are also some removals from other fields which is either considered personal information or information obtained in confidence. These removals do not mean the information is redacted per se, it just means that in order to get the data, I agreed to remove certain columns in order to expedite the process. It does not preclude me from seeking the justification field, for example, in the future.

The data contains €774,882.29 of expense claims by named civil servants over a five year period (2005 to 2009 inclusive). The amount involved might appear relatively small, but it is the quality of the data that is more significant.

I cannot overstate the importance of the release of this data, and there are a number of reasons why this is the case.

Firstly, it sets an important precedent in terms of what information can be obtained from public bodies. In their refusals to release this data, the Department cited three sections of the Act which they felt exempted them from releasing it. The OIC felt differently. While not a formal decision of the OIC, a settlement was justified in this case as the Department were amenable to releasing the majority of the data sought. Decisions can take far longer to get (up to two years), so I felt that on balance the offered information in the settlement was acceptable.

Second, are the broader implications.

Following this settlement with DAST, I have started the process of requesting similar expenses data from the Department of Agriculture and Food, the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, the Department of Community Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs, the Department of Defence, the Department of Education and Science, the Department of the Taoiseach, the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform, the Courts Service, the Industrial Development Authority, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Department of the Environment Heritage and Local Government, the Department of Finance, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Health and Children, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Department of Transport, the Health Service Executive, the Revenue Commissioners, FÁS and Enterprise Ireland.

I believe the combined expenses data for these (and other) bodies will run to tens, if not hundreds of millions of euro.

But perhaps most critical is this: I sought the data not as a journalist looking for a scoop, not as a member of the public with an axe to grind, but as a transparency advocate only interested in the public interest. By publishing this, and coming data, I believe the public is served by a more open and accountable State – where data related to how some public monies are spent is no longer hidden, but is in full view. Transparency keeps the system honest.

I should also make clear that publishing this data is not an attempt to embarrass any one person, nor does it form the basis of any claim that somehow there was something unjustified about any expense claimed by civil servants. It is simply an exercise in transparency, and no more.

And I will leave readers with one question.

If I am getting this data and intend publishing it in its entirety online for the public to see, what is stopping the Government from doing the same, proactively, without question, and as a matter of course?

In the end, sunlight benefits us all.

The dataset, presented as is (and containing some macros):

Department of Arts, Sport & Tourism expenses database

Insiders?

Bottom of page 18 of The Irish Times in the In Short box

Former banker, journalist and political adviser Michael Murray, who previously worked in the cabinet of Ireland’s former EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy, has been appointed a portfolio asset manager at the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).

Judge for yourself.