Thoughts on eGovernment 2.0, free licenses and real Freedom of Information.

1. eGovernment 2.0, free licenses and
real Freedom of Information
Claas Hanken – ifib

2. •• 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)

3. Scientific & Creative Commons
Image: Bundesarchiv @
Wikimedia Commons
unter cc by-sa/3.0/de/
Free – as in Freedom
(Richard Stallman)
Image:
ESA/NASA

4. 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
Image: Joi @ flickr
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0) cc Attribution 2.0 Generic

5. 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.
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

6. 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
Image: Joi @ flickr
cc Attribution 2.0 Generic
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

7. »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?
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

8. Excuses for restrictive ©-Conditions
»It always worked, why change it?«
Worries over
»Someone elses intellectual
property could be harmed.« possible damage
to public image
privacy »There could be
negative effects for
some companies.«
»We won’t
give away our
intellectual Uncertain fears and
property .« doubts
Image: germanium @ flickr
cc Attribution 2.0 Generic
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

9. 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
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

10. Excuses for restrictive licenses
»It always worked, why change it?«
»OSS is tinkered
»Anyone could mess around with by unknown
with the source code!« people and faulty.«
privacy »There could be
negative effects for
»We paid for it – some companies.«
therefore we own it.«
Uncertain fears and
doubts
Image: germanium @ flickr
cc Attribution 2.0 Generic
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

11. 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
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

12. 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«
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

13. 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?)
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

14. „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«)
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

16. Beispiel: swim & fun Nordwest

17. 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
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

18. 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
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

20. 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
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

22. 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
Claas Hanken 08/2009 (CC by/3.0)

23. Contact:
Claas Hanken – hanken@ifib.de Am Fallturm 1, 28359 Bremen
Telefon: ++49(0)421 218-2674
Telefax: ++49(0)421 218-4894
www.egovernment-akademie.de Internet: www.ifib.de
E-Mail: info@ifib.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.