Reflections on open development from OKFest

[Summary: trying to capture some of the depth of discussion from a session on open (international) development at the Open Knowledge Festival]

“I don’t have a problem with the word open, I have a problem with the word development.”
Philip Thigo, in visions of open development panel at OKFest.

To international development practitioners, or communities receiving development aid, much of the ‘visions of open development’ discussion at the Open Knowledge Festival will have sounded familiar. Call for more participatory processes have a long history on the development field; and countless conferences have been spent focussing on the need for greater inclusion of local communities in setting priorities, and in holding institutions to account for what they deliver. Yet, for the Open Knowledge movement, where many are just now discovering and exploring the potential application of open technologies, data and knowledge to challenges of human development in the global South, engaging with well established critiques of development is important. Open data, open knowledge, open source and open hardware could all potentially be used in the pursuit of centralised, top-down models of development, rather than supporting emancipatory and participatory development practice; highlighting the need to ensure vision of open development import thinking and experience from development practice over recent decades if open development is to avoid leading to missed opportunities, or even leading to oppressive forms of development practice.

Yet, articulating open development involves more than importing established critical perspectives into the application of open data, open technologies and open knowledge to development problems. It involves working out both how the application of these ‘open’ technologies can impact on development practice, and identifying new cross-cutting values, rules and institutional arrangements that can guide their adoption. As our panel in Helsinki explored, this exploration will have to deal with a number of tensions.

Decentralising development?
Linda Raftree opened the panel with an input that talked of the ‘horizontality’ of networked communication. Linda suggested that, whilst open development is not about the technology, it has much to learn from the structures and organising principles we find in contemporary technologies. The Internet, with it’s networked and broadly peer-to-peer architecture, in which anyone with access can participate without prior permission offers a potential template for structuring development co-operation. Karina Banfi picked up the theme in arguing against ‘top-down’ development, and advocating consultation and active engagement of communities in setting development priorities and processes.

An illustration of the potential difference between centralised and decentralised development at the infrastructure level was offered by Urs Riggenbach of Solar Fire, who described the development of open source hardware for small-scale hydro-electric power generation. Urs argued that, rather than massive cost large-scale Dams projects, with their visible ecological impacts, potential to displace communities, and scope for corruption in their contracting arrangements, communities could make use of Intellectual Property free designs to construct their own small-scale solutions.

There might be a distinction here to draw between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ decentralisation. In the former, citizens are given access to information (perhaps via data) and channels through which to feedback to those who control budgets and power. Decision making and ultimate executive responsibility remains large scale, and final authority invested in representative institutions. In the later, decision making and executive responsibility are devolved down to the local level with open knowledge used to support communities to be more self-reliant. Underlying this (as underlying all choices about how we practice openness) is a political choice about the level at which communities should co-ordinate their activities, and the mechanisms through which that co-ordination should take place: from formal states, to voluntary associations, to distributed ‘market’ mechanisms.

Although Tariq Kochkhar suggested that open development achieved would mean that ‘all people have the freedom to make choices over their own development’, panelists and participants from the audience emphasised a number of times that it is important not to ignore power, and to recognise that open development shifts where power lies, but does not necessarily decentralise or remove it altogether. In fact, this is something the Internet potentially shows us too. Although theoretically a decentralised medium, in practice there are a small number of companies who wield significant power online, such as the search services that not only act as a gateway to available information, but also in their choices about what to index or not, create incentives for other actors on the Web to shape their content in particular ways.

Rules for openness
I’ve suggested that most notions of openness are articulated in opposition to some set of closed arrangements, but that does not mean that openness involves just the negation of those arrangements. Rather, openness may need it’s own rules to function. In our panel, Blane Harvey emphasised, openness is not the same as de-regulation, although, as Jyrki Pulkkinen reminded us, the term open may be in active use with such connotations, as in the case of discussing an ‘open and free markets’.

The need to scaffold openness with rules and institutions if it is to lead to positive development has gone relatively unexplored in past discussions. Yet is an important debate for the open development community to engage in. Rules may be needed to protect the privacy and security of certain development actors through non-disclosure of information (Pernilla Nastfor’s of the Swedish International Development Agency highlighted the potential risks the human rights activists they fund may face in repressive regimes if full details of these projects were transparent). Rules may also be needed to ensure citizens can benefit from open knowledge, and to manage the distribution of benefits from openness.

Linda Raftree raised the question of whether the open development discourse is too often one of ‘trickle down openness’, where the fact that new technologies are securing greater openness for some, is assumed to mean that more openness for all will eventually result via some trickle-down process. This echoes the critique from Michael Gurstein that open data risks simply empowering the empowered. Some of the rules needed, like Right to Information guarantees, rather than just openness as an optional extra granted by governments, are well known – but there may be other rules required to ensure the benefits of open information and technologies are more equally distributed. For example Jyrki Pulkkinen noted that ‘open innovation’ was a key engine to convert open knowledge into enterprise and activity that can work for development, and yet so often innovation is frustrated by restrictive intellectual property and patent laws that create a thicket innovators may struggle to get through, even when much of the knowledge they need to innovate has been made more accessible. In a similar vein, Jyrki noted that open information in the political domain should not just be about freedom to receive, but should also open outwards into freedoms of expression that need to be guaranteed.

Before moving on from a consideration of the rules, regulations and institutions that enable or constrain equitable outcomes from openness, it is worth remembering Lessig’s phrase ‘Code as law’. Many of the ‘rules’ which will affect how open development operates in practice may not be within formal legal or regulatory frameworks, but may exist built into the technical artifacts and networks which deliver open content, data, information and hardware designs.

Culture, structure, policy
The importance of culture change was another theme that came out during our panel. Tariq Khokhar suggested that the World Bank’s policies on open data had brought new actors into the bank, creating the potential for a positive feedback loop, slowly shifting the culture of the organisation. Though Tariq also highlighted that big organisational change may require ‘principles of open development’: organisational tools that can be used to determine when projects are ‘open development’ projects or not – to avoid the latest buzz-word being applied to any project. Asked about how far development has shifted in recent years, Philip Thigo focussed on a perceived increase in the accessibility of staff from large institutions, and how more doors were open for conversation. Perhaps underplayed in our discussions so far has been the influence of e-mail, social media, search and generally accessible online information in creating more ‘open communications’ between development donors and others.

An input from Anahi Ayala Iacucci also got us thinking about the processes of development aid decision making, and the tensions between a desire for locally owned and defined projects, and a requirement from donors to have clear project plans and deliverables. Creating a culture supportive of emergent project plans is a challenge (as the aptly named ‘IKM Emergent‘ programme discovered over it’s five year duration), and it is possible that a focus on transparency and accountability, without looking carefully at the balance of power and who is doing the calling to account, could lead to a greater focus on fixed project plans rather than a greater freedom and flexibility, and openness to local pressures and demands. As technological and open information interventions of open development unfold, tracking how they feed into culture change in positive and negative ways is likely to be instructive.

Next steps in the conversation
The last post I started on Open Development, I didn’t think I would reach any conclusions, but I ended with a rough minimal description of what I saw to be some essential elements of open development. This time, following an incredibly rich discussion at the Open Knowledge Festival, I find I’ve got a sense of many more jigsaw puzzle pieces of open development –  from the role of rules and policies; to the tensions of decentralisation – yet I’m less sure how these fit together, or how far there is a clear concept of open development to be articulated.

In debriefing from the Open Knowledge Festival, one of the general feelings amongst the open development track team was that bringing together these conversations in Helsinki was important to open up a space in the Open Knowledge movement to recognise how the themes being discussed had impacts beyond the US and Europe. It may be that open development is ultimately about providing a space to critically bridge between knowledge and perspectives from development, and ideas and perspectives from the diverse networks of open access, open hardware, open data, open culture and open knowledge currently developing across the world. In any case, as the conversation moves forward hopefully we can combine the practical and critical edge that discussions at OKFest displayed…

Reflections on an open panel

[Summary: learning notes from an experimental approach to running a panel at Open Knowledge Festival]

How do you hold an open discussion about ‘open development’ in a theatre-style auditorium? That’s what we tried to explore at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki with an experimental ‘open panel’. Our goal was to combine input from experts and key contributors to the field, with a format that recognised that expertise and relevant insights were not just held by those on the pre-selected panel, but was also to be found amongst the audience in the room. The panel design we came up with draw upon ideas from ‘Fishbowl’ conversations, and involved creating space for members of the audience to join the panel after the initial inputs from pre-selected panelists.

The Format

Here’s a quick overview of the format we used:

1) We had six pre-selected panelists, each speaking for a maximum of five minutes without slides to introduce their views on the topic

2) We then opened the floor to inputs from the audience. The audience were told they could either come forward an ask a question, or could join the panel, taking a seat on stage to put forward their view. There were 10 seats on the stage overall, creating space for four at least four audience panelists.

3) There was the option of anyone (initial panelists, or those joining from the audience) leaving the panel if they felt they had said enough and wanted to create space for anyone else.

4) We also invite questions via Twitter, and ran a number of online polls to gather views. (We originally considered using handset voting, but decided against this for simplicity)

You can find the short presentation that I used to introduce the format here.

Instead of, as planned, having three podium microphones for panelists to come forward to, we passed a roving microphone along the panel.

How did it work?

Overall I believe it was a very successful panel: keeping inputs from panelists short kept the panel moving and let us cover a lot of ground. Listening back to the panel (LINK) it seems we had a reasonably good balance of voices. A number of points and themes were developed over the course of the session, although interwoven into one another – rather than as explicit threads.

When we opened the floor for audience contributions, initially contributions were just in the form of questions to the panel, rather than people taking up the empty seats on stage. It took some encouragement for people to ‘join’ the panel, although those participants who did join gave noticeably different contributions: being sat down alongside other panelists seems to really change the tone of the contribution someone makes  – potentially bringing about much more relaxed and discursive contributions.  With only four people choosing to take up the extra seats on the panel by the end of the session we didn’t get to see what would happen when space ran out, and if anyone would choose to leave.

The online voting and Twitter input in this case got relatively little traffic.

Learning points and reflection

I would experiment with this format again, although I would consider removing the  option of just asking a question, and making the only ways for audience to input as either taking a seat on the panel, or asking questions via Twitter (getting people to take a seat and offer their input from being seated with the panel is I think the key; even if they focus on asking a question and leave immediately after it is answered).

We had aimed for a relatively diverse pre-selected panel of speakers. We need to think more about whether the format risks the overall inputs being less diverse, as the most confident may be more likely to choose to come and join the panel (with a bias greater than occurs with who choose to come forward and ask questions). The facilitator perhaps needs to have some control over the queues coming to contribute to ensure a balance of voices.

Having the roving microphone handed along the panel provided a good way of encouraging short contributions, and getting the panel to self-manage who was going to speak next. I stood outside the panel as facilitator, and at a number of points simply told the panelists how long they had to answer a question, and invited them to self-organise within that time to ensure everyone who wanted to go to speak. This appeared to be fairly effective, and to keep the conversation flowing.

Whilst we decided not to use keypad voting, I would consider doing this at a future session where keypads are available, if only as a good way to get people arriving early to come down and fill in rows at the front of the auditorium, rather than hanging around the back.

If you were involved in the panel, in the audience, or you’ve watched the recording – then I’d really welcome your feedback and reflections too… drop in a comment below…

Conclusions

There’s mileage in the open panel format, and it’s certainly something I’ll be looking to explore more in future.

Participation, enterprise, legitimacy and power: reflections from the Dyroy Seminar

[Summary: Links and reflections from a day live-blogging with Web Scientists in North Norway]

The Dyroy context
Web Science Students (with the socks we were given on arrival to keep us warm inside the Arctic Circle)I’ve spent the last few days with a group of Web Science students in the community of Dyroy, in Northern Norway, about two hours by boat from the regional capital Tromso, and located around 69 degrees North – inside the arctic circle. Dyroy, like many rural areas, is facing a tough challenges to maintain a vibrant community as opportunities for employment draw young people away towards the cities, and as old industries and trade decline. Yet, as we heard from the Norwegian Minister for the Regions at today’s Dyroy Seminar, the area is not one to simply shrug and let decline set in – but is an area where citizens have come together to find new ways to sustain and develop the community. Although electricity only reached much of Dyroy in the 1950s, the Old Trading Post where we were staying brought a phone line into the area in the mid 1800’s, and the modern development of Dyroy relies heavily on high-speed Internet connectivity (hence the Web Science connection…).

One of the ways the community comes together is through a bi-annual conference, exploring topics of interest to the local community. This year’s seminar focussed on youth – looking at issues of youth participation, as well as exploring questions of identity and sustainable entrepreneurship and employment. As Web Science students we were present to explore how the web could be used to amplify some of the discussions from the first day of the seminar, and to build new online connections between ideas from Dryoy and the wider world. The day before the seminar, we spent time with students at the local school, running a number of workshops, including one exploring how social media could be used to campaign on key issues.

You can find a wealth of live-blogging and social reporting from the seminar here, and on the Dyroy Seminar website you will find a number of Norwegian reports about our projects. However in this post I wanted to draw out just a few reflections about some of the key youth participation themes of the last two days, in a way that I hope will be helpful both for those who took part in Dryoy, and for the wider readership of this blog.

Participation, politics and power
The room with English translation - and our social reporting hubI was hopeful that in Norway, the first county to establish a Children’s Rights Ombudsman, that when I asked a group of 13 – 15 year old students if they were aware of their right to participate under Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that every hand would go up. However, translation issues aside, both in the school where we worked, and the seminar, ideas of participation did not appear to be explicitly rooted in the human rights of children and young people to have their views heard in matters that affect them. Building on a rights-based foundation is important to highlight (a) that children and young people’s participation needs to be about having an individual say, for example, in home life – as well as having a collective voice on community issues; (b) to recognise that all young people have participation rights, not just those who shout loudest or who get involved in formal structures.

Forms of participation that involve an individual expression of views can sit alongside participation in more formal politics: where debates are often concerned with the allocation of scarce resources. However, as a number of youth councillors, and young political party members debated during the seminar, it is important for young people engaged in political participation structures to be aware of the dangers of pursuing power for it’s own sake.

Structures, shared values and shared challenges
Much of the morning of the seminar involved discussion of how Norway is well on the way to having a Youth Council in every municipality, with the possibility of legislation to require Youth Council’s to be established. There was some debate over whether national requirements for youth representation would lead to an over-prescriptive set of structures, and whether instead flexibility was needed for each local area to develop it’s own youth participation approaches. The importance of handing over real power to youth fora was discussed, including mention of youth-led grant making (such as existed at scale in the UK with the, now sadly much rarer, Youth Opportunity Funds and Youth Capital Funds, and as still exists in other youth led grant making globally), or youth involvement in budgeting (or perhaps budget monitoring and advocacy, as a number of global youth participation projects are exploring).

In my experience of working on youth participation structures in the UK, when approaches are formalised it is important to recognise that there is no single structure that can support effective participation and representation, or that provides a suitable means of engagement for all young people. Rather, good participation involves a spread of interlinked approaches, from good complaint and feedback systems, through one-off-events and activities, to regular and structured representative structures. With the right design and active facilitation, online social media tools are potentially very effective to ‘bridge the gap’ between forms of one-off engagement, and more sustained engagement in local decision making.

Even with a good mix of approaches to youth participation, and many channels through which young people can get involve – without ‘shared values‘ being clearly articulated, and a wide shared understanding in the community that children and young people are equal citizens – participation of all forms risks becoming tokenism.

One of the peculiar properties of youth participation structures over other participation structures, is the relatively rapid turnover of membership. By definition, one can only be a member of a youth council for quite a short period of time compared perhaps to the main council. This leads to a need for both shared values, and participation structures, to be regularly revisited, revived and regenerated. It can also lead to a structural disadvantage for young people seeking to express their views – as they have to spend comparatively longer picking up the background knowledge needed to engage in particular debates, or may have less access to prior experience that could support them to secure the outcomes they want.

I’ve long been interested in the potential of the web to create a stronger institutional memory for youth campaigns: with social reporting and regular online reporting of youth activities generating an open record that future young participants can pick up – able to benefit from the experience of their predecessors. However, although it is often claimed that the Internet never forgets, in practice, keeping content updated and discoverable over many years turns out to be very challenging. For example, content from the Youth Council Website I developed and maintained over 10 years ago is now only available in the Internet Archive, where you would only find it if you knew where to look, and the archive of Oxford’s Social Responsible Investment campaign is scattered across a number of sites. Even if it was easy to deposit content from youth participation on the web as part of a long-term archive, we need better approaches to curate it so that future generations of youth representatives and campaigners can quickly find the intelligence they need to strengthen their hands.

Shared challenges
Having drawn on a rather oppositional idea of youth participation above: with the need to strengthen the voices of young people in contrast to those of adults, I want to step back and example whether that opposition is useful. There is a common platitude in youth participation events to talk about ‘young people as the future’. This is often met with the reply from young people that ‘we are part of the present too’, which is a very fair response. However, what concerns me more in this claim is that it often covers up an implied abdication of responsibility on the part of adults. By saying ‘we need the innovative ideas of young people to sort out future problems’, adults can be letting themselves off the hook for also being part of creating those innovative solutions. It can be a way of pushing the solving of the problem off into the future, perpetuating the generational injustice that has seen those currently in power create environmental problems, burden states with debt, and enable vastly unequal development (an accusation I target more at political leaders in the UK than Norway here).

In many cases the challenge is not to listen to the voice of youth, but to find ways for people to be involved in shared problem solving, regardless of age or background.

Entrepreneurship and legitimacy
Anders Waage Nilsen took us away from participation structures in his presentation to the seminar, highlighting how, particularly with the web, it is possible for people of all ages to self-organise, bringing an entrepreneurial spirit to problem solving. This approach, rooted in an impatience and desire to see change, suggests that young people should not wait around to have access to formal decision making power from which they can call for alternative models of economic and environmental development – but suggests that young people should use their networks to actively create the sorts of future they want.

The forms of ad-hoc social innovation enable by the web, by new practices and emerging norms of self-organising truly offer great opportunities to attack persistent social challenges, but when they become one of our primary modes of acting they also raise challenges of legitimacy. How far can, and should, communities (from local communities like Dyroy, to national communities like Norway) exercise collective self-determination over what happens amongst them? When the ability to take advantage of technologies to self-organise is not conditioned only by access to technology, but also by wider access to social and financial capital, how can a community avoid those with money and networks over-dominating the shape of local development by simply getting on with what they want to do outside of representative structures?

I’m not at all suggesting here that social innovation should be curtailed, and I would generally celebrate the forms of entrepreneurial social action Nilsen described. Yet, the most that ‘political action’ is conducted through ad-hoc actions, the more we need to find new ways to respond to it. To some extent our representative structures are about striking a balance of power, and as power shifts in the network society, we may need to develop new ways to regulate it’s legitimate exercise.

Web Science reflections: bridging with artifacts and agency
I’ve already mentioned a few ways the web might impact upon youth participation: from helping maintain an institutional memory for youth fora, to supporting new models of social action and problem solving.

In our workshop with students yesterday, we used the Social Media Game (with some extra cards made specially for this workshop), to explore how students might use the web to campaign on issues that affected them – from the poor quality of some roads, to a lack of activities, and issues relating to drugs and crime. A number of the strategies for using the web the young people put together involved strong use of online and offline channels – recognising that, for example, the support gathered on a Facebook page might need to be expressed through a letter to a politician to get their attention, or nothing that out-and-about exploration of problems with potholes could be taken online through videos and shared to raise awareness of the problem.

As we have also been exploring acting as social reporters today, bridging involves a mix of technical artifacts (tweets, blog posts, video clips and so-on), digital networks, and human connections. Understanding how these interact, and the different dynamics that affect each (from the design of content and messages, to the structure of digital networks, and the social psychology of sharing content) should be an important part of the contribution Web Science makes to thinking about participation.

Where next in a social reporting cycle?

For many of the Web Science DTC students, today was a first taste of live blogging and social reporting. Even for a single track conference, live blogging and social reporting generate a lot of content. Unlike events such as the Internet Governance Forum, where social reporting may be part of facilitating engagement in the live event, in the case of the Dyroy seminar, our social reporting has served more to amplify and create a record of the event. Working out sustainable ways to create a legacy out of this content is a challenge. For me, a first reflective blog post is a way to draw out some themes to reflect on more – that might emerge into future writing. However, with such a wealth of content generated through today – we do need to think more about how we might curate elements of it to further share ideas and debates from today’s event.

Youth Participation in Norway

[Summary: A quick link to live-blogging from Northern Norway]

I’m currently in Northern Norway with students and staff from the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre in Southampton (where my PhD is based), preparing to take part in the bi-annual Dyroy Seminar. Dyroy is a coastal community of around 1,200 people, formerly a fishing and farming community – but now facing challenges of population decline as many increasingly move to urban areas.

The bi-annual Dyroy Seminaret  provides an opportunity for the community to come together to explore key issues, and this year is focussing on youth participation. We’ll be tweeting all day on the dyroy hashtag, and hopefully the event will also be webcast (though possibly in Norwegian). So, if you’re interested in how remote and coastal communities are exploring key issues of youth participation, follow us on twitter or join the webcast, or view the latest on Cover It Live below.

Find links to more coverage over on the Web Science DTC blog.

 
[iframe src=”http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=98acd1bfb0/height=550/width=470″ scrolling=”no” height=”550px” width=”470px” frameBorder =”0″ allowTransparency=”true”]

What is Open Development?

In just over a week I’ll be at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki, where thanks to the work of an amazing team of volunteers, we will have a series of sessions taking place under the banner of ‘Open Development‘, looking at where Open Knowledge themes meet international development.

In one of those sessions we’ll be asking what we really mean by open development: inviting participants to share their own responses to the question ‘What does open development mean to you?’. I realised that, for all the time I’ve spent moderating the OKF open-development working group’s mailing list, and inputting to the OKFest Open Development stream, I’ve not had a clear answer to that question. I’m hoping that next weeks session will help address that, but in advance I thought it would be useful to jot down some reflections on how I might answer the question right now.

Of course, as luck would have it, I’m at just that stage in the PhD process of working out the questions, but not yet getting to the simplified crisp answers, so what follows is some thinking aloud, rather than a set answer…

The essence of open

I’ve written before about the way that the prefix ‘open’ does not necessarily pick out some common property across it’s wide usage for ‘open access’, ‘open source’, ‘open data’ and ‘open content’, ‘open government’, and ‘open development’ – but at best can be seen as offering these labels a broad ‘family resemblance‘. There is an important distinction to observe between openness focussed on artifacts such as data, source code, or academic articles, and openness of processes, such as democracy and development. Formal definitions of the former may tend to be concerned more with the legal or technical status of the artifact, whereas definitions of the latter may focus on questions of who is participating, how they are allowed to participate.

In so far as we can find a common family trait amongst ‘the opens’, then I would suggest ‘access and permission’ is a good candidate. Openness should remove barriers to access, and should grant relevant permissions that allow either use of an artifact, or participation in a process.

Note that whilst the artifact and process distinction might be possible to make at the level of formal definitions, many times when terms like ‘open source’, or ‘open government’ are deployed, they are used to refer to refer to both artifacts and processes. For example, we might use open source to refer to the processes of the open source community and movement, rather than just the properties of the source code itself; or we might use the term open government to refer to the papers and documents of government, as well as to participative processes that let citizens input into governance. Open artifacts may in some cases be necessary, but not sufficient, for an open process. In their work on Open ICT’s for Development, Smith et. al provide a definition that combines ‘artifact’ and ‘process’ elements in understanding how open ICTs may be a matter of access, participation and collaboration. In the case of development though I think it can be sustained that development is a process, and a process that is concerned primarily with increasing human quality of life.

Of course, development in practice involves many processes, and in assessing in any case whether we have open development or not we might have to ask about the relative openness of any number of processes, from priority setting, to planning, to spending, to monitoring and governance.

Open as oppositional

If openness is about ‘access and permission’, then generally it is articulated in opposition to some set of ‘closed’ arrangements. For example, open access is articulated in opposition to the tight intellectual property control and high prices of journal articles that restrict academics access to articles, and their permission to share them. Open movements are hard to isolate and specify separately from those arrangements they oppose (this tends to cloud the artifact/process distinction – as getting a process to open up might well involve some opening of its constituent artifacts).

So, in the case of international development, what is being opposed? It would be easy to generate a long list of things wrong with the way development is done, and to suggest that ‘open development’ is simply the negation of these – but that would overload the concept of open development, and lead to it being seen as a panacea for all that is wrong. Rather, where is there a lack of access, and a lack of permission, in development as it is currently practised? My own initial answer would focus on the fact that those whose human welfare is supposed to be increased by development often have very little stake in the decision making about where resources for development will be used, or in wider policy debates with an influence on their welfare. Access to decision making, and permission to participate, are limited right now – and open development should be about addressing the closed nature of information artifacts, and communication opportunities, that support exclusive processes of governance.

Others may want to focus on different ‘closed’ areas of the current development field, and in doing so, to articulate different visions, or different aspects of the same vision, for open development.

Open X for open development

Counter to the argument above, open development could be said to simply be the application of other open initiatives to the development field. That is – using open data for international development could be said to in itself be ‘open development’. However, I would argue that this is overly reductive, and indeed misses that open technologies or artifacts could potentially be used for non-open development.

‘Open ICT for development’, ‘open source for development’ and ‘open data for development’ are all potentially very good things – but we might also want to ask about whether they need an extra open in there – as in ‘open data for open development’ and so-on.

Open is not enough

As I outlined above, openness removes specific barriers to access, and provides permissions to participate. However, this does not mean effective access to decision making for all. That requires additional attention.

Again, we could load this into the concept of open development, to suggest that openness of process necessarily requires us to ensure all potential participants can overcome barriers outside the process that inhibit their participation. For example, we could say that a community meeting which is formally open to all, is not truly open unless we have been able to pay all the travel costs of everyone who might want to participate and to translate it into all local languages, because without this, there are still barriers to access. However, rather than build these ideas into ‘open development’ I would suggest that we are better to see ‘open’ as amongst a number of desirable prefixes and modifiers for development, such as ‘inclusive’ and ‘egalitarian’.

So what is open development?

When I started writing, I wasn’t sure if I would get down to one clear sentence, or nothing at all. As it is, I think I can offer the following as an interim answer to the question:

  • Open development is a process
  • Open development is about providing access to information, and permission to participate
  • Open development is about challenging closed and distant decision making on development issues
  • Open development is a companion to inclusive development and can provide the foundations for greater inclusion
  • Open development is more than just using open data for development, or taking open source to developing countries
  • Open development is still open to debate

Whether I’ll say the same after next weeks debate we’ll find out – and if you want to suggest your own definition of open development to feed into the discussions, you can do so before 19th September 2012 in this Etherpad.

Where co-operatives and open data meet…

[Summary: thoughts on ways in which co-operatives could engage with open data]

With the paper I worked on with Web Science Trust for Nominet Trust on ‘Open Data and Charities‘ just released (find the PDF for download here), and this post on ‘Open Data and Co-operatives’ it might feel like I’m just churning through a formula for working on ‘organisation structure’ + ‘open data’ for writing articles and blog posts. It is however, just a fortuitous co-incidence of timing, thanks to a great event organised today by Open Data Manchester and Co-operatives UK.

The event was a workshop on ‘Co-operative business models for open data‘ and involved an exploration of some of the different ways in which co-operatives might have a role to play in creating, sharing and managing open data resources. Below are my notes from some of the presentations and discussions, and some added reflections jotted down during this write-up.

What are co-operatives?

Many people in the UK are familiar with the high-street retail co-operative; but there are thousands more co-operatives in the UK active in all sectors of the economy; and the co-operative is a business form established right across the world.

The co-operative is a model of business ownership and governance. Unlike limited or public companies which are owned and essential run in the interests of their shareholders, co-operatives are owned by their members, and are run in the interest of those members. Co-ops legal expert Ged explained this still leaves a vast range of possible governance models for co-ops, depending on who the members are, and how they are structured. For example, the retail coop is a ‘Consumers’ co-operative, where shoppers who use its services can become members and have a say in the governance of the institution. By contrast, the John Lewis Partnership is an employee owned, or ‘producer’ co-operative, which is run for the collective benefit of its staff. Some co-operatives are jointly owned by producers and consumers, and others, like Co-ops UK are owned by their member organisations – existing to provide a service to other co-ops.

There’s been a lot of focus on co-ops in recent years. This year is UN Year of the Co-operative, and the current UK Government has talked a lot about mutualisation of public services.

What do co-operatives have to do with open data?

There are many different perspectives on what open data is, but at its most basic, open data involves making datasets accessible online, in standard formats, and under licenses that allow them to be re-used. In discussions we explored a range of ways in which co-operative structures might meet open data.

Share: Co-operatives sharing data

As businesses, co-operatives have a wide range of data they might consider making available as open data. Discussions in today’s workshop highlighted the wide variety of possible data: from locations of retail coop outlets, to energy usage data gathered by an energy co-operative, or turnstile data from a co-operative football club.

Co-operatives might also hold datasets that contain personal or commercially sensitive data, such as the records held by the co-operative bank, or the shopping data held by the retail co-operative, but that could be used to generate derived datasets that could be made openly available to support innovation, or to inform action on key social challenges.

There are a number of motivations for co-ops to release data as open data:

  • Firstly, releasing data may allow others to re-use it in a way that benefits the coop economy. For example, Co-operatives UK recently released a mobile app for locating a wide range of co-ops and retail outlets. If the data for this was also available, third parties could build information on coop services into their own apps, tools and services, potentially increasing awareness of co-operatives.
  • Secondly, sharing data might support the wider social aims of a co-operative. For example, an energy co-operative might have gathered lots of data on the sorts of renewable energy sources that work in different settings, and sharing this data openly would support other people working on sustainable energy to make better choices; or retail co-operatives might share information on the grants they give to community groups in a structured form in a way that would support them to better target resources on areas with the most impact.
  • Thirdly, transparency, accountability and trust might be important drivers for co-ops to release data – with open data supporting new models of co-operative governance. For example, co-ops might release detailed financial information as open data to allow their members to understand their performance, or to analyse staff remuneration. Or a coop might provide aggregate data on its supply chain to show how it is improving the percentage of supplies from other co-operatives or from Fairtrade suppliers. For public service co-operatives, like the Youth Mutual forming in Lambeth, it may be important to publish structured data on how public money is being spent, ensuring that the contracting out of services through co-operatives does not undermine the local authority spending transparency that has been established over recent years.

 

Collaborate: Co-operatives as data sharing clubs

Discussions also looked at how we can put data into co-operatives, rather than get data out. A lot of the open data agenda so far has focussed on open data from government (OGD), but often the data needed to answer key questions comes from a variety of stakeholders, including governments, community groups and individuals.

Co-operatives could provide a model to manage the ownership of shared data resources. Most open data licenses are still based upon data being owned somewhere (apart from CC-zero, and Public Domain Dedications which effectively waive ownership rights over a dataset). Co-operatives can provide a model for ownership of open data resources, giving different stakeholders a say in how shared data is managed. For example, if government releases a dataset of public transport provision, and invites citizens and organisations to take part in crowdsourced improvement of the data, people may be reluctant to contribute if the data is just going back into state ownership. However, if contributors to the improved dataset also gain a shared stake in ownership of that enhanced data, they may be more interested in giving their input. This was an issue that came up at the PMOD conference in Brussels last month.

We also discussed how co-operative structures could provide a vehicle for combining open and private data, or for the limited pooling of private data. For example, under the MiData programme, government is working to give citizens better access to their personal data from corporations, such as phone and energy companies. Pooling their personal data (in secure, non-open ways) could allow consumers to get better deals on products or to engage in collective purchasing. Undoubtedly private companies will emerge offering services based on pooled personal data, but where this sort of activity takes place through co-operative structures, consumers sharing their data can have a guarantee that the benefits of the pooled data are being shared amongst the contributors to it, not appropriated by some private party.

Create and curate: Co-operative governance of datasets and portals

Linked to the idea of co-operatives as data sharing clubs, Julian Tait highlighted the potential for co-operative governance of data portals – taking a mutual approach to managing the meta-data and services that they provide.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, open data portals need to go beyond just listing datasets, to also be a hub of engagement – building the capacity of diverse groups to make use of data.

Ideas of joint producer and consumer co-operatives might also provide a means to involve users of data in deciding how data is created and collected. Choices made about data schemas, frequency of update etc. can have a big impact on what can be done with data – yet users of data are rarely involved in these choices.

Mobilise: Collaborating to add value to data

The claim is often implicitly or explicitly made that publishing this data will lead to all sort of benefits, from greater transparency, accountability and trust, to innovation and economic growth.

However, looked at in detail, we find that there are many elements to the value chain between raw open data and social or economic value. Data may need cleaning, linking, contextualising, analysing and interpreting before it can be effectively used. In talking about the Swirl business model for open data, Ric Roberts explained that if you charge too early on in the value chain for data, it will be underused. However, efforts to add value to data in the open can suffer a public good problem – everyone benefits, but no-one wants to cover the full cost alone. If everyone duplicates the tasks involved in adding value to data, less will be done – so establishing co-operative structures around data in particular areas or sectors might provide a means to pool efforts on improving data, adding value, and generating shared tools and services with data that can benefit all the members of a coop.

This might be something we explore in thinking about a ‘commissioning fund’ around the International Aid Transparency Initiative to help different stakeholders in IATI to pool resources to develop useful tools and services based on the data.

Where next?

We ended today’s workshop by setting up a Google Document to develop a short paper on co-operatives and open data. You can find the draft here, and join in to help fill out a map of all the different ways co-ops could engage with open data, and to develop plans for some pilots and shared activities to explore the co-operative-opendata connection more.

Keep an eye on the Co-operative News ‘Open’ pages for more on the co-operative open data journey.

How data.gov.uk is laying foundations for open data engagement

Originally posted as a Guest Post on data.gov.uk

When the first data.gov.uk platform was launched, it was a great example of the ‘rewired state’ spirit: pioneering the rapid development of a new digital part of government using open source code, and developed through fluid collaboration between government staff, academics, open source developers, and open data activists from outside government. But essentially, the first data.gov.uk was bolted onto the existing machinery of government: a data outpost scraping together details of datasets from across departments, and acting as the broker providing the world with information on where to access that data. And it is fair to say data.gov.uk was designed by data-geeks, for data-geeks.

Tom Steinberg has argued that data portals need not appeal to the masses , and that most people will access government data through apps, but there are thousands of citizens who want direct access to data, and it is vital that data portals don’t exclude those unfamiliar with the design metaphors of source and software repositories. That’s why it is great to see a redesign of data.gov.uk that takes steps to simplify the user experience for anyone seeking out data, whether as a techie, or not.

The most interesting changes to data.gov.uk though are more subtle than the cleaner navigation and unexpected (but refreshing) green colour scheme. Behind the scenes Antonio Acuna and his team have been overhauling the admin system where data records are managed, with some important implications. Firstly, the site includes a clear hierarchy of publishing organisations (over 700 of them) and somewhere in each hierarchy there is a named contact to be found. That means that when you’re looking at any dataset it’s now easier to find out who you can contact to ask questions about it, or, if the data doesn’t tell you what you want, the new data.gov.uk lets you exercise your Right to Information (and hopefully soon Right to Data) and points you to how you can submit a Freedom of Information request.

Whilst at first most of these enquiries will go off to the lead person in each publishing organisation who updates their records ondata.gov.uk, the site allows contact details to be set at the dataset level, moving towards the idea of data catalogues not as a firewall sitting between government and citizens, but as the starting point of a conversation between data owners/data stewards and citizens with an interest in the data. Using data to generate conversation, and more citizen-state collaboration, is one of the key ideas in the 5 stars for open data engagement , drafted at this year’s UKGovCamp.

The addition of a Library section with space  for detailed documentation on datasets, including space to share the PDF handbooks that often accompany complex datasets and that share lots of the context that can’t be reduced down into neat meta-data, is a valuable addition too. I hope we’ll see a lot more of the ‘social life’ of the datasets that government holds becoming apparent on the new site over time – highlighting that not only can data be used to tell stories, but that there is a story behind each dataset too.

Open data portals have a hard balance to strike – between providing ‘raw’ datasets and disintermediating data, separating data from the analysis and presentation layers government often fixes on top – and becoming new intermediaries, giving citizens and developers the tools they need to effectively access data. Data portals take a range of approaches, and most are still a long way from striking the perfect balance. But the re-launched data.gov.uk lays some important foundations for a continued focus on user needs, and making sure citizens get the data they need, and, in the future, access to all the tools and resources that can help them make sense of it, whether those tools come from government or not.

Guest post: What does ‘open knowledge’ have to do with ‘open development’?

Or, why international development practitioners should make a date with OKFest.

After a bit of guest blogging around the web myself this week, I thought it was time to feature a guest post over here. This time from the fantastic Linda Raftree of Plan International, who writes about the upcoming Open Knowledge Festival and the open development track we’re co-organising…

Linda Raftree

The Open Knowledge Festival (OKFest) happens this September 17-22 in Helsinki, Finland with the theme Open Knowledge in Action. OKFest will explore the benefits of opening up knowledge and information, look at the ecosystems of organisations that can benefit from openness, and discuss the impact that more transparency can have in our societies. OKFest will run 13 key Topic Streams, one of which will focus on the topic of ‘Open Development’.

So what does ‘open knowledge’ have to do with ‘open development’? And why are people putting the word ‘open’ in front of everything these days?

Well, in addition to being a bit of a buzz word or trend, the idea behind ‘open’ is that making data and information more accessible and less restricted can enhance transparency, accountability, sharing, and collaboration. This in turn can benefit development processes. (See this post for ideas on how openness and information literacy links with participatory governance, for example.)

As Matthew Smith, a strong proponent of ‘open development,’ says, ‘openness’ is not a new concept, especially with respect to development theory. Democracy and participation represent an opening up of decision-making processes to more people. Transparency and accountability are about opening up organizations, people and processes to scrutiny and feedback.

The Internet and new ICTs such as mobile phones play a big part in the idea of ‘open’ since these platforms and tools can allow data and information to be shared more freely and widely. The concept of ‘open development’ according to Smith is enhanced by ICTs when it favors:

  • Universal over restricted access to communication tools and information. For example, access to the telecommunications infrastructure through a mobile phone or access to online [educational] content or government information.
  • Universal over restricted participation in informal and formal groups/institutions. For example, the use of SMS to mobilize political protests or new e-government implementations that provide increased transparency and new accountability arrangements.
  • Collaborative over centralized production of information, cultural content, and physical goods. For example, collaborative production of school textbooks, co-creation of government services, mesh networks.

Attitudes and behaviors also play a part in ‘openness.’ Smith notes that egalitarianism and sharing are two core concepts within ‘openness:’

  • Egalitarianism suggests an equal right to participate (access, use and collaborate).
  • Sharing is embedded in the idea of enhanced access to things that were otherwise normally restricted. This enhanced access is often motivated by the normative desire to share – whether through an obligation to contribute to the common good or to participate in a coordinated or collaborative activity.

Policies, practices and philosophies that allow data and information to be shared are also a part of ‘open’. Tim Davies explains ‘open data‘ as:

  • a set of policies and practices – open data should be accessible (online); standardized (in a common format) and reusable (open licenses)
  • a response to how tech and society is changing –  bandwidth is growing, there is more capacity to share and analyze data, people want to do things for themselves and analyze information for themselves rather than have someone do it for them.
  • a tendency towards new combinations of data – seen in ‘mash-up’ websites where people pull data from different sources, combine it with other sources, add crowd-sourced information and maps, etc.
  • a philosophy or movement – there is a push to open information and access to knowledge because information is power; there is a tendency toward greater collaboration, transparency and collaboration

The Open Development stream at OKFest will explore ways that openness can help address key development challenges, from reducing poverty to improving access to education and healthcare to mitigating climate change and managing natural resources to improving transparency, accountability and governance. One of the most important aspects of the Open Development stream will be the participation of development practitioners and thematic experts on development.

As guest program planners for the Open Development stream*, we are determined to support two-way learning about how open data and open knowledge can benefit development. We know that ICTs and new technologies cannot work in a vacuum and that open information on its own is not enough. We know that creating ICT tools and applications without basing them on real needs and local context is not helpful, useful or sustainable. We also know that traditionally excluded and marginalized populations are the ones that most often do not have access to information and new ICTs, and therefore open access to information and knowledge needs to be part of a broader and more holistic development approach that takes care to include those who are often marginalized and excluded.

Within the Open Development stream, we will offer space where those working with new technologies and those working on development issues can learn more about each other and work on joint solutions that are based on local realities and that take advantage of new opportunities that new ICTs and ‘open knowledge’ can offer.

The Open Development stream will bring together key thinkers and doers in the ‘open’ movement and the development sector via a panel discussion. We are also organizing 3 working sessions to explore:

Open development and aid flows.  Here we will look more internally at ways that greater openness in aid and development funding, activities and impact (such as the  International Aid Transparency Initiative – IATI) can help make aid more transparent, accountable, coordinated and effective. What are the new opportunities Open Data and Open Knowledge provide? How can aid and aid organizations be more open, transparent and accountable?

Open = accessible? In this session we will explore practical issues and the realities of access to and use of open information in low-resource settings. We will hear opinions and realities from development practitioners regarding a series of critical questions such as: Open for who? Open for what? Is open data enough? How can we design for accessibility in communities with lower resources and access and/or in ‘developing’ countries? Who are the new information intermediaries (aka ‘infomediaries‘)? How can we ensure that ‘open’ is not replicating existing exclusions, creating a new middle-class or benefiting already well-off sections of communities and societies?

Technologies for open development In this session we will focus on the role that ICTs and open technologies, from open source to open hardware, can play in development. We will hear ideas from development workers, technology evangelists and those who bridge the two fields.

In addition to these sessions, there will be an ‘Open Development Hack Day‘ where development practitioners can share development challenges with the OKFest community to create mobile and other ICT applications.

Events like OKFest can be overwhelming the first time you participate in them, butwe are committed to making sure everyone who attends OKFest can join the discussions, contribute ideas, and learn from the wealth of keynotes, sessions and workshops. The organizers of the Open Development Stream will be on hand to support participants working in development and those who are new to the Open Knowledge World to navigate the conference via daily birds-of-a-feather gatherings, catch-up sessions and more.

In order for our stream to be a success, we need the participation of development practitioners and development workers!  The core OKFest team has made a number of travel bursaries available to help potential participants with the costs of getting to Finland, and the open development stream team are also working hard to encourage development organisations to support staff and associates from projects in the ‘global south’ to take part. If you need help securing support from your organization or funders to take part, then get in touch with the team (okfest-dev@practicalparticipation.co.uk) and we will do what we can to help.

For more on OKFest, watch the slideshow below:

What does Internet Governance have to do with open data?

[Summary: What do Internet Governance and Open Data have to do with each other?]

As a proposal I worked on for a workshop at this years Internet Governance Forum on the Internet Governance issues of Open Government Data has been accepted, I’ve been starting to think through the different issues that the background paper for that session will need to cover. This week I took advantage of a chance to guest blog over on the Commonwealth IGF website to start setting them out. 

It started with high profile Open Government Data portals like Data.gov in the US, and Data.gov.uk in the UK giving citizens access to hundreds of government datasets. Now, open data has become a key area of focus for many countries across the world, forming a core element of the Open Government Partnership agenda, and sparking a plethora ofInternational conferences, events and online communities. Proponents of open data argue it has the potential to stimulate economic growth, promote transparency and accountability of governments, and to support improved delivery of public services. This year’s Internet Governance Forum in Baku will see a number of open data focussed workshops, following on from open data and PSI panels in previous years. But when it comes to Open Data and Internet Governance, what are the issues we might need to explore? This post is a first attempt to sketch out some of the possible areas of debate.

In 2009 David Eaves put forward ‘three laws of open government data‘ that describe what it takes for a dataset to be considered effectively open. They boil down to requirements that data should be accessible online, machine readable, and under licenses that permit re-use. Explore these three facets of open data offers one route into potential internet governance issues that need to be critically discussed if the potential benefits of open data are to be secured in equitable ways.

1) Open Data as data accessible online

Online accessibility does not equate to effective access, and we should be attentive to new data divides. We also need to address bandwidth for open data, the design of open data platforms, cross-border cloud hosting of open data, and to connect open data and internet freedom issues. Furthermore, the online accessibility of public data may create or compound privacy and security issues that need addressing.

Underlying the democratic arguments for open data is the idea that citizens should have access to any data that affects their lives, to be able to use and analyse it for themselves, to critique official interpretations, and to offer policy alternatives. Economic growth arguments for open data often note the importance of a reliable, timely supply of data on which innovative products and services can be built. But being able to use data for democratic engagement, to support economic activity, is not just a matter of having the data – it also requires the skills to use it. Michael Gurstein has highlighted the risk that open data might ‘empower the empowered’ creating a new ‘data divide’. Addressing grassroots skills to use data, ensuring countries have capacity to exploit their own national open data, and identifying the sorts of intermediary institutions and capacity building to ensure citizens can make effective use of open data is a key challenge.

There are also technical dimensions of the data divide. Many open data infrastructures have developed in environment of virtually unlimited bandwidth, and are based on the assumption that transferring large data files is not problematic: an assumption that cannot be made everywhere in the world. Digital interfaces for working with data often rely on full size computers, and large datasets can be difficult to work with on mobile platforms. As past IGF cloud computing discussions have highlighted, where data is hosted may also matter. Placing public data, albeit openly licensed so sidestepping some of the legal issues, into cloud hosting, could have impacts on the accessibility, and the costs of a access, to that data. How far this becomes an issue may depend on the scale of open data programmes, which as yet can only constitute a very small proportion of Internet traffic in any country. However, when data that matters to citizens is hosted in a range of different jurisdictions, Internet Freedom and filtering issues may have a bearing on who really has access to open data. As Walid Al-Saqaf’s power presentation at the Open Government Partnership highlighted, openness in public debate can be dramatically restricted when governments have arbitrary Internet filtering powers.

Last, but not least, in the data accessibility issues, whilst most advocates of open data explicitly state that they are concerned only with public data, and exclude personal datafrom the discussion, the boundaries between these two categories are often blurred (for example, court records are about individuals, but might also be a matter of public record), and with many independently published open datasets based on aggregated or anonymised personal data, plus with large-scale datasets harvested from social media and held by companies, ‘jigsaw identification’, in which machines can infer lots of potentially sensitive and personal facts about individuals becomes a concern. As Cole outlines, in the past we have dealt with some of these concerns by ad-hoc limitations and negotiated access to data. Unrestricted access to open data online removes these strategies, and highlights the importance of finding other solutions that protect keydimensions of individual privacy.

2) Open data as machine readable

Publishing datasets involves selecting formats and standards which impact on what the data can express and how it can be used. Often standard setting can have profound political consequences, yet it can be treated as a purely technical issue.

Standards are developing for everything from public transport timetables (GTFS), to data on aid projects (IATI). These standards specify the format data should be shared in, and what the data can express. If open data publishers want to take advantage of particular tools and services, they may be encouraged to chose particular data standards. In some areas, no standards exist, and competing open and non-open standards are developing. Sometimes, because of legacy systems, datasets are tied into non-open standards, creating a pressure to develop new open alternatives.

Some data formats offer more flexibility than others, but usually with connected increase in complexity. The common CSV format of flat data, accessing in spreadsheet software, does not make it easy to annotate or extend standardised data to cope with local contexts. eXtensible Markup Language makes extending data easier, and Linked Data offers the possibility of annotating data, but these formats often present barriers for users without specialist skills or training. As a whole web of new standards, code lists and identifiers are developed to represent growing quantities of open data, we need to askwho is involved in setting standards and how can we make sure that global standards for open data promote, rather than restrict, the freedom of local groups to explore and address the diverse issues that concern them.

3) Open data as licensed for re-use

Many uses case for open data rely on the ability to combine datasets, and this makesc ompatible licenses a vital issue. In developing license frameworks, we should engage with debates over who benefits from open data and how norms and licenses can support community claims to benefit from their data.

Open Source and Creative Commons licenses often include terms such as a requirement to ‘Share Alike’, or a Non-Commercial clause prohibiting profit making use of the content. These place restrictions on re-users of the content: for example, if you use Share Alike licensed content to in your work, you must share your work under the same license. However, open data advocates argue that terms like this quickly create challenges for combining different datasets, as differently licensed data may be incompatible, and many of the benefits of having access to the data will be lost when it can’t be mashed up and remixed using both commercial and non-commercial tools. The widely cited OpenDefinition.org states that at most, licenses can require attribution of the source, but cannot place any other restrictions on data re-use. Developing a common framework for licensing has been a significant concern in many past governance discussions of open data.

These discussions of common licenses have connections to past Access to Knowledge (A2K) debates where the rights of communities to govern access to traditional knowledges, or to gain a return from use of traditional knowledge have taken place. An open licensing framework creates the possibility that, without a level playing field of access to resources to use data (i.e. data divides), some powerful actors might exploit open data to their advantage, and to the loss of those who have stewarded that data in the past. Identifying community norms, and other responses to addresses these issues is an area for discussion.

Further issues?

I’ve tried to set out some of the areas where debates on open data might connect with existing or emerging internet governance debates. In the workshop I’m planning for this years IGF I am hoping we will be able to dig into these issues in more depth to identify how far they are issues for the IGF, or for other fora, and to develop ideas on different constructive approaches to support equitable outcomes from open data. I’m sure the issues above don’t cover all those we might address, so do drop in a comment below to share your suggestions for other areas we need to discuss…

Further reading:

(Other suggested references welcome too…)

Addition: over on the CIGF post Andrew has already suggested an extra reference to Tom Slee’s thought provoking blog post on ‘Seeing like a geek’ that emphasises the importance of putting licensing issues very much on the table in governance debates.

 

What should a UK Open Government Partnership Forum look like?

[Summary: Open spaces events across that whole UK that provide access for all ages are key to an effective UK OGP forum]

A key step in a countries participation in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) involves establishing ongoing public consultation between government, citizens, civil society organisations and the private sector on the development and implementation of OGP action plans. Given the UK is currently co-chair of OGP, and will be hosting the next OGP plenary meeting in London in March next year, establishing an effective, credible and dynamic forum for ongoing multi-stakeholder participation in OGP should be a top priority.

 

Members of the informal network of UK-based Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) engaging with the OGP process have been thinking about what such a forum could look like, and in this post I want to offer one possible take, based on my experience of taking part in a range of open space and unConference events over recent years.

Proposal: At the heart of the UK OGP forum should be a series of regular open space events, taking place across the UK, with a focus on getting out of London. Events should be open to anyone to take part – from active citizens and community groups, to social entrepreneurs, private sector firms, national and local government representatives and  local and international CSOs.
Simple principles of inclusion should  be established to ensure the events provide a welcoming environment for all, including for children and young people, and older people .

What is an open space or unConference?

Open space events are created by their participants. Rather than having a set agenda, the discussion agenda for an open space event is set on the day by participants announcing sessions and discussions they would like to take part in. Participants then self-select to take part in the sessions they have the most interest in. Simple principles encourage participants, wherever they come from, to take shared ownership of the discussions and the outcomes of the day. Open space events and unConferences can have a focussed theme to guide the focus of the specific sessions that take place.

I first encountered open space on a large scale in the UKGovCamp unconferences, which, as it turns out, are in many ways a paradigmatic example of key aspects of digital open government in action. At the annual UKGovCamp events (and their spin off LocalGovCamp events around the UK), civil servants, citizens, CSOs, social innovators, business people, and event a few politicians, spend a day in practical conversation about how to make government work better – sharing knowledge, developing plans and deepening shared commitment to shared problems.

See the Wikipedia article on Open-space technology for more on open space, and links to examples of open space events in action.

Why should open space events be part of the UK OGP forum?

Open Government is about more than a few action plan commitments to better ICT systems or increasing access to data. It involves active rethinking the relationship between citizen and state both as democracy continues to evolve, and as technologies, globalisation and other social forces reconfigure the capabilities of both citizens and governments. Open Government needs mass participation – and open space events are one way to develop action-focussed dialogues that support large-scale participation.

  • A UK OGP Forum needs to be not only about feeding demands up to government, but also about disseminating OGP ideas and commitments across the whole of the public sector. For many people, it is open local government which will have most impact on their lives, and taking the OGP conversation on the road to events that can include all tiers of government provides an opportunity to join up open government practice across government.
  • Open space events are also very cost-effective. You need a room, some refreshments, some flip-chart paper – and, well, that’s about it.
  • Open space events are powerful network building opportunities – helping develop both civil society open government networks, and build new connections between civil society and government (and even across different parts of government)
  • With social media and a few social reporters, open space events can also become largely self-documenting, and with good facilitation it is possible to include remote participation, using the Internet to make sure anyone with a contribution to make to a topic under discussion can input into the dialogue.
  • Most of all, open space events embody principles of openness, collaboration and innovation – and so are an ideal vehicle for developing a dynamic UK OGP forum.

How could it work in practice?

Well, there’s nothing to stop anyone organising their own Open Government unConference, inviting civil servants and a whole range of other stakeholders, recording the key outcomes of the discussions, and then sending that all to the Cabinet Office team working on the UK’s OGP participation. However, to make open space a core part of the UK OGP process a number of elements may be worth considering. Here’s one sketch of how that could work:

  • In partnership with the OGP team in government, planning a series of quarterly OGP open space events, which central civil servants commit to take part in. These would take place in each of the nations of the United Kingdom, and should have as their core theme the commitments of the UK Action Plan. Events should issue and open invite, and should be designed to ensure maximum diversity of participants from across all sectors.
  • In addition, government, CSOs and other stakeholders should agree to providing sponsorship for thematic OGP open space meetings. Anyone could organise a thematic meeting, providing they apply key principles of inclusiveness, open participation and transparency in the organisation of the events.
  • The OpenGovernment.org.uk site becomes a platform to collate notes from all the discussion sessions, drawing on social media content and notes captured by facilitators and rapporteurs at the events.
  • Each individual open space discussion within the events does not have to reach a consensus on its topic, but would have the option of producing a 1/2 page summary of discussions that can be shared online. Government commit to reading all these notes when reviewing the action plan.
  • Existing open space events (e.g. UKGovCamp) could choose to add an OGP track of discussions, feeding in as any thematic event would.

What about formal representation and accountability? How do decisions get made?

Some of the other ideas for a UK OGP Forum are far more focussed on formal structures and procedures. I don’t reject the value of formal structures where questions of accountability and representation are in play. However, unless actual authority to decide what does into country action plans is shared with an OGP forum, then as a consultative body, a more open model would seem more appropriate.

Established CSOs have existing channels through which they are talking with government. A forum should  help them co-ordinate their asks and offers on open government issues through existing channels, rather than add another narrow channel of communication.

Open processes are not immune from their problems: they can suffer from those who shout loudest being those who are heard most, or from those in power being able to pick and choose which voices they engage with. However, finding ways to deal with these issues in the open is an important challenge and learning journey for us to go on if we truly want to find inclusive models of open governance and open government that work…

A realistic proposal?

I’ve written this outline sketch up as a contribution to the debate on what an OGP forum should look like. Government tendencies to control processes, and manage engagement in neat boxes can be strong. But to an extent open government has to be about challenging that – and as a process that will involve a shared learning journey for both government, civil society and citizens, I hope this does make for a realistic proposal…