Official Information and Open Data
In recent years it has become much easier to just go and get routine government data. It’s now easy to put data up online, and organisations do it. We might whinge about how often the URLs and layouts change, but you can get and reuse information in ways that used to be impossible. For examples in just one field, see the blog of the NZ geodata company Koordinates.
On the other hand, non-routine requests seem to be increasingly difficult. David Fisher, of the Herald, gave a talk in Wellington last week on the Official Information Act. The talk has been published at Public Address
When I started, if I wanted to know about something, I would ring and ask. For example, if I want to know about how Kauri stumps were exported, I would ring up the equivalent of the MPI and ask how Kauri stumps get exported. I would then spend half an hour on the phone to the guy who oversaw the exporting – often the guy who was physically down at the docks – and I would be informed.
It seems a novel idea now. I can barely convey to you now what a wonderful feeling that is, to be a man with a question the public wants answering connecting with the public servant who has the information.
Things have changed, he says.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »