[Osia-members] [Linux-aus] What Open Government can learn from us Open Source folks

[Cameron Shorter]

Mark, I've added these comments to your thoughts into the document. Feel 
free to comment in there.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jNdh4_A_cIpaHqLRFOgpvAY3JSo0Ueraam39UHFOGHs/edit#heading=h.j5fvbvgl6af1

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> Overall there seems to be a confusing discussion between open 
> government and open communities. The two are not synonymous. In order 
> to join the Open Government Partnership
>
> “countries must commit to uphold the principles of open and 
> transparent government by endorsing the Open Government Declaration”.
>
> Signing this declaration means the signatories are:
>
> “committed to the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of 
> Human Rights, the UN Convention against Corruption, and other 
> applicable international instruments related to human rights and good 
> governance:”^2 
> <imap://cameron%2Eshorter%40gmail%2Ecom@imap.gmail.com:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E46960#sdfootnote2sym>
>
> This is not the same as developing open source hardware/software. Nor 
> is it the same as an open community. It is alluding to the openness of 
> government itself. And yes having open communities is one mechanism 
> for deciding this. Technology is one mechanism for implementing this 
> and so is basic education.
>
Mark, your point is valid. I have only very lightly touched on the 
differences between open government, open source, open data, open ...
I'm attempting to be concise in order to focus on the key message of 
"Governments - please get better at COLLABORATION".

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> The emphasis in your proposal is to hand over the development of open 
> government to open communities without addressing some of the 
> fundamental issues with open communities.
>
> As you have mentioned wikipedia in your latest iteration, lets start 
> with wikipedia as an example. The main issue with wikipedia is the 
> continuous editing of controversial pages by opposing groups. This 
> continuous editing extends to the level where organisations edit their 
> pages to highlight their positives traits and to downplay their 
> negative traits. This is handle by wikipedia through locking pages and 
> banning access to repeat offenders.
>
> You have not highlighted let alone discussed the problems business 
> working with open communities and a possible solution to these 
> problems. (volunteers working at their own pace, feature definition, 
> corporate deadlines, licensing, dispute resolution etc).
>
Mark, true, there are plenty of challenges involved in working with Open 
Communities. You mention a couple here. I've mentioned a couple under 
the section "Loving a community to death".
Government does need guidelines to help with this, and I'm suggesting 
that such guidelines be developed, but I feel that  this document is not 
the place to go to that depth of analysis.

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> I also don't believe that an open community will help in the sense 
> that you define open communities. I believe that there should be a 
> hybrid of corporate and open source communities such that the better 
> parts of each of the communities is combined to produce a much better 
> working environment, if you insist in open communities working 
> directly with the government.
>
Mark, as you have picked up, I've deliberately not defined how 
Government should resource or interact with communities. There are many 
ways it could be implemented. What I'm focusing on is that Government 
should define their success criteria as "Am I collaborating?".

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> In your proposal you make the statement
>
> “By sharing our knowledge we share the profit from that knowledge; we 
> help reduce income disparity^3 
> <imap://cameron%2Eshorter%40gmail%2Ecom@imap.gmail.com:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E46960#sdfootnote3sym>;”
>
> This is a blanket statement with no references nor proof that shows 
> that this is indeed the case. How does an open community relying on 
> knowledge reduce income disparity. It is not until that knowledge is 
> implemented is there the possibility that income would be generated. 
> Unles you are talking about social income/social income disparity.
>
Mark, you make a good point here about there not being proof for such a 
big statement. This topic probably needs its own essay, and is not 
critical for the main point of "Governments should do better of 
Collaboration".
I think I'm going to need to remove this statement from this document.

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> While the tone of the open letter has been toned down since my last 
> review it still contains a number of statements which “tell” the 
> government what to do. Further these statements come with no proof nor 
> references justifying the statements made.
>
Still working on it ...

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> It does not discuss or even allude to the issues surrounding open 
> source communities or open source licensing.
>
This is a level of detail that I don't think we should go into in this 
high level statement.

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> I believe you miss the point of both Pia’s and United States Assistant 
> Secretary of Defense’s papers. Neither abrogate that the government 
> run open source projects. They discuss how to leverage from open 
> source projects.
>
The point I'm going for is that Governments should assess their success 
by whether they Collaborate well. Incidentally, open communities such as 
open source have practices which should be studied (in another document).

On 20/3/18 3:46 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
>
> This is why I believe open standards for government interaction and 
> data use combined with multiple external open source communities would 
> achieve a better outcome for Open Source development in Australia. 
> Just look at the number of desktops that exist on Linux. They all work 
> to the same standard, are supported by open source communities and 
> are, to the most part, application inter-operational.
>
Mark, you have a good point here. I realise that although I've mentioned 
interoperability, I hadn't mentioned standards. (I've just added "open 
standards" in a couple of places). I'm going to see if there is an 
appropriate place to add a recommendation about use of open standards.

> Defining an open standard and then allowing open communities to evolve 
> around these standards provides multiple solutions in which there may 
> be multiple “best” solutions. At this point Not only could the 
> government support specific open communities but could support 
> multiple open source communities essentially providing the same 
> functionality^4 
> <imap://cameron%2Eshorter%40gmail%2Ecom@imap.gmail.com:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E46960#sdfootnote4sym>.
>
> Overall the proposal still comes across as a idealogical diatribe on 
> “what you must do” and “you should do it this way” rather than a 
> method of how open government may collaborate with open communities.
>
Thanks for your feedback Mark,
You have made some good points, and while I'm not sure this is the right 
level of document to include all your points, I want to take a couple of 
them on board.

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier, Learnosity
Open Technologies Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254

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