Evidence of meeting #49 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was things.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I'll just add a little further to that, and maybe Mr. Sheridan can respond as well.
You mentioned the U.S. We had witnesses from the U.S. here last week by video conference. They emphasized open data, new technologies, and how they could add value. Entrepreneurs could collect that data and use it in an open and transparent way, and create some considerable economic value for some.
Either or both of you could comment on that.
3:50 p.m.
As an Individual
For me there are two things. The first is that in terms of the transparency work the coalition government is taking forward, there's been a very strong focus on how the government spends its money and who's making decisions.
Also, interestingly, elements of how government has worked, even under freedom of information, have been hitherto quite hidden. So in terms of, for example, commitments about publishing the detail of contracts, not just information technology contracts but contracts across the board, when people have generally asked for those sorts of things under freedom of information, they've potentially been told that they can't be released because it's commercially sensitive information.
There's been a proactive decision to push government suppliers into making available contract information, which goes alongside spending information, which goes alongside potentially how a contractor is performing. The relationship between, if you like, government and its suppliers is being put into the public domain, really for the first time. That's very much part of the drive to a more efficient government.
Second, which I think is an important message and one that I would endorse from the witnesses who you've had from the United States, is that making available data does open new possibilities, in that we have computing power very cheaply available. This means that things that were once the province only of large corporations or organizations with significant capital, in terms of the ability to process large quantities of data and build applications on top of it, are now in the hands of the ordinary citizen. This is a transformative development.
One of the things that's interesting is that as the U.K. government has published more and more transparency data, it hasn't necessarily equated with the kinds of data that many of the external developers or many of the businesses would have put at the top of their lists.
The government has been very driven in terms of its priorities about making available data, about how it's spending money, for example. The external developer community and the business community are often more interested in geo-spatial data or transport data, data that they can really get their teeth into in terms of being able to create new products.
While the policy objectives are aligned, there's a difference of emphasis, depending on what kinds of points people are looking to try to demonstrate with the data that's being released and being made available.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much.
We're now going to move to Madame Carole Freeman, a member of Parliament from the Bloc Québécois.
Perhaps I'll ask Mr. Worthy and Mr. Sheridan just to help us a little bit. When you're answering a question, could you identify yourself first? Usually we go by video conference rather than teleconference. This is a little different.
Madame Freeman, seven minutes.
3:50 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Good afternoon and welcome to our committee, Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Worthy.
I have questions about open data and the Access to Information Act. What were the biggest obstacles that the United Kingdom encountered when it implemented its open data policies?
This issue raises a number of other questions, such as the information that must be retained because of national security or copyright considerations. How do you handle this?
My question is directed to both of you. I'm not sure who would like to respond first.
3:55 p.m.
As an Individual
This is Mr. Sheridan. I'm afraid we didn't get a translation on the line.
3:55 p.m.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
No, I'm afraid I'm not either.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Could the interpreters please say something, so that we can verify if the sound is coming through.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
3:55 p.m.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
This is Mr. Worthy. I'm afraid I can't hear the translation again.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Does it appear we have the problem fixed?
Okay, I'm going to go back to you, Madame Freeman. I'm going to start your time anew, and I'm going to ask you to repeat the question you asked first.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
I'd like to start by welcoming our two witnesses, Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Worthy. Thank you for joining us today.
My questions pertain to open data. I want to know what major obstacles the United Kingdom encountered when it decided to opt for a more open government. On the issue of open data, I want to know how things turned out, what type of information the government started to disclose more and how information is handled when national security or copyright considerations come into play.
I ask myself the same question when it comes to the Privacy Act.
3:55 p.m.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
This is Mr. Worthy. I could perhaps just say a few things.
Is this okay? Can everybody hear me? Can you hear me?
3:55 p.m.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
With regard to that question, there are of course obstacles to freedom of information, and one of the obstacles is something that hits every regime, which is to what extent the bureaucracy and the political class endorse FOI or attempt to resist it. This again comes down to the issue of leadership.
There are also problems with the mechanisms of how it works. For example, every system experiences delay, frustration, and slowness of response times. In terms of the three issues mentioned, these are all problematic areas. Of course national security does contain a specific exemption under every freedom of information act I know of, but there are often battles around that area for issues that might be on the cusp of national security.
In terms of copyright, I think John is far better placed than I to speak about it. I will just say that it remains an issue in the U.K. at several levels, about to what extent copyright covers these.
Finally, the division between openness and privacy is a very controversial and difficult area, and I think about a third of all the requests that go to the information commissioner to be looked at are actually around this area between where freedom of information ends and privacy begins. It was even a rather big issue as regards MPs' expenses in the U.K., about whether expenses were private data related to MPs or whether it was possible to open them up to the public.
4 p.m.
As an Individual
On the issue specifically of copyright, there are a number of points to make. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, in the U.K., work that's produced by civil servants is deemed crown copyright.
This has been an enormous advantage for the U.K. compared to many other European countries. It has meant we've been able to have a single coherent framework for licensing crown copyright information across a large number of organizations that would potentially otherwise own their own intellectual property. If you compare that, for example, with the situation in Germany, which is much more federated, they have found it comparatively more difficult to introduce that kind of single framework at the federal level.
In European terms, the coherency of crown copyright has been an advantage. The U.K. government has evolved its policy around licensing, and we have a number of different purviews.
Some information is made available under a waiver of copyright in particular legislation. A lot of central government information is deemed core crown copyright material, and it is available for reuse, including commercial reuse, on a worldwide non-exclusive basis, free of charge. Over most of the last ten years, this has been under the click-use licence, which is a simple online licence you can apply for. Some information is deemed value-added, and that would have a separate licensing arrangement associated with it.
A small number of government organizations, particularly those that have some very rich and important data, have a legal status. They are trading funds, which means they do not receive any money from Parliament to fund their activities. They're not taxpayer-funded. Although they're part of the government, the information they create is crown copyright. They have to fund it themselves, through their own trading activities, including their own information-trading activities. Examples of these sorts of organizations would be our mapping agency; our meteorological office; our registrar of companies information; our cadastral registry, which is the land registry; and there are one or two others.
We have canvassed people at the National Archives about their perceptions about crown copyright, particularly looking at whether people understand what information is free and what they can reuse. One of the things we found is that people have quite strong perceptions around the word “copyright”. We introduced it to them. We did some research. We asked people to do some exercises using information from government websites and tracked what they were doing. We would then get them to try a longer task, maybe copying a piece of information, and we asked whether they thought about the copyright associated with that.
Copyright is a very strong word when you test it with people who are interacting with information on the web. One of the interesting things is that when we asked people how they felt about the word “copyright” and compared it with how they felt about “crown copyright”, people felt more positive about crown copyright. I find that quite amusing. It shows how strong and powerful the word “copyright” is. It's probably the only word in the English language that you can soften by adding “crown” in front of it.
In terms of developing our policy, in the last four months we have moved to a thing called the open government licence for crown copyright information, which replaces previous licensing systems. It's very simple, and it's been designed to convey the message that you can use and are encouraged to use crown copyright information. That was very much driven by our research about people's perceptions of copyright. That has been a big success, and most of the central government has moved to using that licence.
We worked hard to make sure that the licence was compatible with the creative commons licences. We looked carefully at the creative commons licences, in particular because we don't just have copyright in U.K., but under European law we also have the concept of database rights. The creative commons licences for the U.K. were not going to be comprehensive enough and were going to leave some issues undone that we needed to cover in our licensing, so we introduced the open government licence.
For many of our local authorities, we have invited them to use their open government licence for licensing their own information. They have been very willing, and the number of organizations beyond central government that have voluntarily adopted the open government licence has been doubling more or less every month. At the last count the total was 170 of 450 local authorities have now adopted the open government licence in the space of a few months. So that has been a very big success for us.
Meanwhile, the government has had a number of attempts to address the issue of the information-trading activities and we've had a number of policy changes. The big change was from April 1, 2010, when significant amounts of the information held by our mapping agency, Ordnance Survey Mapping, which had previously only been available under a commercial licence that you paid for, were moved to be open data and free to reuse. We're now in the process of understanding what the consequences of that have been, in terms of new applications that people have been able to develop, and building the evidence base. But that has been a very big shift in the licensing policy of the U.K. government.
There's now a policy to create a thing called the Public Data Corporation, and the government is actively engaging with the information industries, other industries, civic society, and in particular the open data community about what the Public Data Corporation might be, what it might do, and how it may help stimulate the further reuse and exploitation of government data.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much.
We're now going to move to Mr. Bill Siksay. Mr. Siksay is a representative of the New Democratic Party, and he will have seven minutes.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Mr. Worthy and Mr. Sheridan, for taking the time to be with us today. The information that you've already provided has been very, very helpful.
Mr. Sheridan, you just mentioned the Public Data Corporation at the end of your last response. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what that's going to look like or what's anticipated to happen there.
4:05 p.m.
As an Individual
This is difficult territory for me. The government has made it clear that the objective is to make sure that the economy is well served by public data and that this is potentially best done with an organization that is dedicated to that purpose.
The precise shape of that is something that is currently a matter of consultation, and the consultation events are happening. There are three events, the most recent of which was on Friday. So this is very much a policy that's under development. And beyond the broad objective, it is stated that it is expensive to create, has traditionally been traded, and is often key to elements of the economy. What role would a public data corporation have in making sure that the economy has access to the information that it needs, and what would the balance be in terms of charging and in terms of free use? The precise shape, as I say, of the Public Data Corporation is very much part of the policy development process: what information; what the scope is of what information is making available; precisely where that balance is drawn between commercial opportunities on one hand and free access to data on the other; what the shape of the demand curve is, if you like, for public data. At the moment, I'm part of the consultation that the government is doing.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you. That was helpful.
Mr. Worthy and Mr. Sheridan, I'm wondering if you have any experience of analysis of the economic impact of moving to a data-publishing regime or an open data regime either in the U.K. or other European countries, and if there has been any evidence or any study done of the employment impacts of moving to that kind of policy.
I think we're all aware now of the democratic impact of potential for improving our democracy and transparency and accountability, but I'm wondering if either of you has seen any studies or has any evidence of the economic or the employment impacts of moving to a data-publishing or open data system.
4:10 p.m.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
There isn't much evidence that I know of. There is some analysis by economists of the potential for what sorts of economic benefits open data can generate, and this is by Professor Pollock, who is also one of the leading supporters of open data policy.
All I know from the U.K. is rather anecdotal. I know that a short study of data.gov.uk revealed that the primary users of the data sets--and a rather narrow field of data sets on data.gov.uk--were businesses, rather than individuals. Similarly, the spinoff sites.... And of course the spinoffs are extremely important; it isn't just the sites themselves, but the sites other people develop. Similarly, one of the spinoff sites, called spotlightonspend.org.uk, also does some rather interesting things with data about spending and allows you to look at it in various ways.
I've also been told by the people behind that site that the primary users of a rather limited number of the data sets are again overwhelmingly businesses. And they put it, at a guess, that above 90% of those using their site were businesses.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Mr. Sheridan, is there any sense of the economic or employment impact of data publishing?