Overview of Metadata 2010 and OpenGov2.0 Initiative

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We’ve been asked to put together a brief overview of our recent Metadata conference and OpenGov “unconference” held at University House, ANU in the last week of May 2010.

From the outset we knew that this, being the third event (the first with the International Metadata Forum in Sydney in 2008 and then last year’s event at ABS), needed to be the event from which we could then develop our thinking in how we can best serve the metadata and information management communities, beginning in government, education and research, and eventually linking into the private and corporate sector.  Did we meet this objective?  From my perspective I think we did and I invite my colleagues to comment on that.

We had 106 registrations for the Conference itself from a range of government departments; 39 speakers from six different countries; we had an organising committee of 11 from a range of both private and public sector organisations, and we had 109 registrations to the “unconference” on the Friday.  Of those most turned up, and were actively involved in the activities.

Whilst there was a mix of technologies available for people to utilise (albeit restricted by the ANU bandwidth) people were mainly focused on having conversations and meeting each other.  However, there was quite a bit of activity on the “back channel” and there were over 380 tweets with 39 people contributing from around the world and people following the conversation.

We asked people whether they thought that “the meaning of Open Government is understood by governments and citizens alike to which a large majority said “no” but when we asked if they thought that the tools were available it was fairly even with people saying “yes” by a whisker.

So what does this mean?  For us it means that there is still much to do and, having now created an event that seems to be serving a need, we will now focus on what comes next.

We have booked University House for 25^th – 27^th May, 2011, and have already received a number of “expressions of interest” from people to both attend and present.  We would like to start some conversations with State governments about perhaps holding some events in other capitals, and we would like to explore the opportunity to undertake some research.

To wrap up we will leave the summary to a few of our delegates who have said the following:

“The diversity of guest speakers allowed metadata to be thought about across a range of forms and disciplines. However, I think that the most positive aspect was the air of openness and collaborative discussion that permeated and grew throughout the 3 days”

“One of the best outcomes for us was making contact with people who are happy to share their experiences in a similar situation”

“Add some structure around the really cool ideas that came out of this.  Need to understand the value.  Companies need to be more involved in these conversations, learning to work better with government.”

We would very much welcome your feedback and you can either join this conversation or email us at info@digitalbrand.org directly.

… 25th to 27th May, 2011 – University House, ANU

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We have booked University House at the ANU for next year … mark it in your diaries!

And the next one is …

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Well, our events – both Metadata 2010 and our “unconference” are now over and we were very pleased with the support and attendance that we had.

Not only did we have all of our speakers available and on time but, at almost the last minute, we had Jack Wilmer from the US Department of Defense fly in to join us, minus his baggage but it eventually arrived.

We had over 150 people attend the conference and over 80 attend the “unconference” and got some wonderful feedback but also some terrific suggestions for what to do next.  We will update this blog with some of the comments we have received, and the presentations are being loaded up on the website.  In addition we did some “vox pops” at the unconference which we will make available.  All good reasons for you to come back!

Finally, we are now working on an event together with our key partners in New Zealand – http://opengov2010.org.nz/ – so if anyone is interested in continuing the conversation please come and join us.

Our sincere thanks to everyone involved, from the Metadata volunteers, Microsoft, Intergen, Geomatic Technologies, and Digital Brand.  Everyone pulled together to create what we hope was a worthwhile day.

We’ll provide a more detailed report in the next day or two …

And … for those who came there is still time to give your feedback at http://www.opengov20initiative.com/

Count down

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Well, we are fast approaching the Metadata Conference and OpenGov2.0 Initiative “unconference”.

We have had a great deal of interest in both events and, as well as having a full agenda of presentations from a range of organisations and people, the “unconference” is shaping up nicely as well.

As with all “unconferences” we are leaving the agenda up to you, our audience.   Thank you for the many people who have submitted ideas and suggestions about the various themes of which we have a lot to play with.

Initially the ones that are emerging are:

• Engagement with media for contextual relevancy
• Policy development and citizens
• Education reform
• Drivers for Gov 2.0
• Crowd sourcing Crisis Data
• Gov 2.0 in rural areas
• Effective online service delivery as a cornerstone of Gov 2.0
• Growing direct citizen-public service engagement

We are approaching he “unconference” itself in a slightly different way to traditional “camps” – it will be a blend of the structured and unstructured, where all of you are both participants and observers, but where we hope to both demonstrate the power of metadata and emerging web and linked data technologies as well as apply them to real world problems.

Our event is different.  It is different precisely because we are seeking to bring together both policy and business people and technical folk, to create a space where the conversation can lead to some tangible and real outcomes.

During the course of the Metadata Conference we will be seeking more input and will also be asking attendees about the value of events such as these and the importance to the communities seeking to apply information technologies to the challenge of “open government”.

More to come …

The language of open government and data

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The Metadata Conference and OpenGov “Unconference” provide a unique opportunity to link the inputs and outputs of the emerging world of information.

The topics being presented at the Metadata conference are all around the “reality” of bringing together and linking datasets in order to enable policy makers and public sector employees to make better decisions.  In short, the objective is to be able to make sense of the myriad of data and information out there, to harness the collective intelligence, and, with the use of “intelligent systems” to bring this all together to ensure better governance.

What we are trying to do in both the Conference and the Unconference is to facilitate a dialogue between those who are working in the metadata / data space and those who need to work with the data to make policy.  All too often the gap in language and understanding between these two groups is so wide that there is little common understanding.  Take, for instance, words like ‘metadata’, ’semantic technologies’ and ‘ontologies’.  For the average person these are both confusing and often confrontational.

Hopefully our activities next week will go some way towards bringing this gap, and with demonstrations and conversations about the power of emerging web technologies combined with the will to transform government and governance to make it more open, we will slightly shift the conversation.

Please do come and join us.

Metadata in action with documents

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Hi All

My name is Stephen Bedford and I work for the NSW Department of Services Technology and Administration. Don’t get too excited though, because I’m from the “Administration” part, not the “Technology” part.

My talk revolves around a simple and practical solution about automatic metadata attribution to internally generated office documents – basically a MS Office template with embedded macro.

I intend to start the talk with a brief outline of how metadata attribution is very different for internally generated documents as opposed information published externally, through a serious of breathtakingly poor over-generalisations.

Back on firmer ground, I’ll outline the problem – shared drives full of poorly titled documents “bobs1.doc” and no metadata attribution (“properties, whassat?”).

I will then talk about and demonstrate the solution – a template which takes information directly from document content, and processes it to populate office properties and suggest a sensible file save as name. This solution is based on using document content only, ie stuff people were going to type anyway, and with no extra data entry or keystrokes (does a mouse click count)?

The bad news – the macro was developed through the support of the NSW Governments Innovation Fund, which means that I can not distribute it to conference participants (except those from NSW Government).

The good news – I will outline enough of how the template works to enable you at the very least to write a specification for developing your own template, or maybe even do it yourself if you have visual basic skills. I’m sure your’s would probably better than ours anyway!

Well, this is my intention. Please feel free to let me know if I’ve failed afterwards!

How can we show that metadata will save the world ?

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Has Government yet started to realise how powerful the semantic data ‘tool’ is ? I suspect not, because they would be using it much more comprehensively to allow us to achieve efficiencies and outcomes particularly when trying to operate across jurisdictions. I would be interested in how others think that we can easily demonstrate the power of using metadata and semantics in a government environment ‘without ’scaring the horses’

I realise that this issue is going to be covered in varying degrees at the conference, but I would welcome any comments on how we could simply demonstrate the power of it to semantic ‘newbies’

Part of the problem I think is that government is still a bit scared of what the use of metadata allows. The Arizona state Supreme Court last year ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself public, and cannot be withheld in response to a public records request (http://www.arizonalawreview.org/ALR2009/VOL512/Cockerham.pdf) While I don’t think that this has been tested here yet, I suspect that as this decision becomes known more widely government departments will be even more reluctant to use semantics/metadata to automatically share data, particularly any which may be able to identify a person. In the health, child protection welfare and security/policing areas specifically it is critical that data is able to be accumulated and shared but we need to demonstrate how we can do this ’safely’

Any examples of where this is working well or ideas of how to demonstrate its effectiveness simply would be appreciated?

Open Gov2.0 Initiative

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The general election held last week in the UK provided a timely reminder of how important and influential Web2.0 technologies – and events like the Open Gov2.0 Initiative – are becoming in societies like ours. With a federal election just around the corner in Australia, it’s going to be fascinating to see how Web2.0 impacts the campaign process and ultimately, the outcome. More broadly, Governments around the world are responding to a growing chorus of demands for more access and accountability, greater transparency, and the increasing participation which Web 2.0 technologies are facilitating.  The UK election was fought on precisely these platforms, as a way to achieve greater effectiveness in the delivery of public services and increased participation on policy and decision making.

As we all know, here in Australia, Federal, State and Local governments are moving towards “driving a pro-disclosure culture across government”.  As the pace of change accelerates, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with technology’s exponential advances as well as the vital issues of security, privacy, reliability, and regulatory compliance which are central to the challenges of open government.

In order to encourage broader engagement in this growing drive for open government, we’re hosting a practical, hands-on “un-conference” with the support of Microsoft, to share the vision and demonstrate the potential benefits of Open Government.

The Open Gov2.0 Initiative will be held at University House at the Australian National University in Canberra, on Friday 28th May, 2010.

Its purpose is, quite simply, to promote Transparency, Collaboration and Participation in an environment where everyone can contribute and, by the end of the day, walk away with a greater understanding of how best to apply Web 2.0 capabilities and social media technologies to the business of government.

The event is free, and as we get closer to the date attendees will be actively encouraged to identify and then vote on the topics that are of most interest them.

The event environment and related agenda will be created in a way which provides opportunities for exploration, experimentation and execution around the topics and problems nominated, as well as a demonstration of “open government” in action which leverages engagement, creativity and innovation.

Everybody is welcome and you can register and start contributing to the agenda here