Pardon My Finnish

New democracy is something you can do!

2012-05-22T12:13:00.000+01:00

Kalle Nieminen of Sitra's Synergise Finland development program blogs about new implementations of democracy.

The word 'synergy' implies energy, interaction, dynamics and the interest in new ideas. Synergy is created when people get active, creative, proactive and enthusiastic. Sitra's Synergise Finland development program looks for solutions to today's challenges from these perspectives. The first forum was held in spring 2011, focusing on the concept of new work. The topic of second forum, and the theme of this blogging, was new democracy.

We believe that, with cooperation across traditional social borders, it is possible to invite something new and answer to really hard main questions about today societies. New democracy forum brought together 30 people who looked issues about the theme from very different viewpoints. They worked together trying to find ideas and concrete solutions to renew democracy. What did they learn? What did we do? And what is the future of democracy? Here is a small summary about the results of new democracy forum.

Paradigm is changing. When we speak about New, we accept that we have something that is old. In this case old democracy is voting every four or six years. As one attendee of forum says: “Do you want to play football, in a game where you are able to touch the ball every six years?” Ways of influencing are century old. In these days people want to participate and have a conversation, not just to see what somebody else has decided inside big fancy building.

Democracy of the day is communal, open and visualized. New democracy is something you can do, not just something you watch from television.

There are lots of projects going on at grass roots level, which government should notice and take seriously (see this: http://ominvoimin.com/). This grass root movement is what we want to call democracy. Finnish Ravintolapäivä (restaurant day) is a really good example of these kind of projects. Bunch of people just think that everybody should have a right to run a restaurant. So they invented this day when anybody could pop up the restaurant. By doing so, they are testing and showing the limits of governance and starting a good conversation about the issues they saw being wrong in the society.

In New democracy forum we also want to do something concrete. Beside of think tanks we want to promote testing culture. Testing culture means that, when you have an idea you don’t start three years lasting outlining, drafting and planning. Instead of that, test it. Test or pilot could be as small as you want. It don’t have to cover the whole idea, just one corner is enough. Main point is that you test it! Test it as soon as possible. Testing is best way to learn something new and validate ideas.

In this case we made 12 pilots. Regarding the testing culture, we had these 12 ideas about, how to promote democracy. We put our hands to the plough and start doing. It was worth a go! Below I summarize couple of tests, more you can read here (In Finnish, sorry).

Social hub was one of the most successful pilots we made. Idea is that we need free of charge social hub in addition to commercial hubs. In our pilot we found free and empty old office that was waiting for renovation. We bought some coffee and wired up the Internet. After one week, there were over 15 players working with their own projects, but together. Pilot lasted for three weeks and was a great success! During these weeks city of Helsinki noticed that this kind of action could be okay. We also found the organization, that wants to continue work with Social hub.

Another test we made was participative budgeting. An idea behind this is that community can directly decide how to spend part of the public budget. First we visualized Sitra’s budget. After that we committed to spend 115 000 € in a way that participants of forum decided. After open conversation and decision-making event, the money will be used to speed-up three projects. What did we learn about this pilot? Obviously the challenge in this kind of budgeting is, how a big organization like Sitra could change it into a long-lasting culture.

Notes from the Education Seminars #4: Policy transfer, or an opportunity for reflection on ourselves?

2012-05-08T09:51:00.000+01:00

Senior Researcher at the RSA, Louise Thomas, blogs about gaining new perspectives on England's schooling system through comparing it with the Finnish one.

The education debate in the UK seems mired in sets of assumptions about accountability, teachers, curriculum, notions like ‘excellence’, ‘dumbing down’, ‘prizes for all’ and so on. Our opinions of our own education and that of our children, coupled with the peculiar English prejudice towards academic excellence, means that our thinking is often clouded by prejudice. I, for one, have found reflection on the Finnish system a tonic, allowing me to think outside of the particularity of the English system.

The question of whether education policy can be transferred successfully between nations with very different social and political structures is a particularly pertinent one to the UK at the current time. This seminar was therefore timely and asking all of the right questions; providing a critique of the construction of Nordic models of education used by UK politicians to justify reforms at home. Mary Hilson has critiqued this construction in some depth in her blog [link ‘her blog’ to http://blog.finnish-institute.org.uk/2012/04/notes-from-education-seminars-3-local.html].

However, doubtful as we may be over whether policies transferred from one society to another will have the same beneficial outcomes, reflecting on another system is an important tool to enable us to understand our own better, and to imagine possible alternatives.

I’d like to share some of the elements of Finnish education (drawn from the discussions on the day, as well as Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons (2011)) that might illuminate how we might think differently about our own system, and perhaps begin to develop our own ideas about what an improved English education system might look like…not because we need to imitate another system. But because the contrast between the direction of travel for the UK and the assumptions that underpin attempts to ‘raise standards’ are contradicted by much of what happens in Finland, indicating that some of the things that we take for granted as necessary, although perhaps not desirable, might be questioned anew.

Assumption: high stakes external testing of children is necessary to maintain standards

•    In Finland there is no high stakes testing of children before the final certificate, or league tables for schools, yet standards (as measured by PISA rankings) are higher than in the UK

Assumption: Diversity of types of schools and competition between them is the best way to drive up standards

•    In Finland there is fully comprehensive provision for the first 9 years of schooling with very little variation between school performance. Ideas of good and bad schools are not relevant.

Assumption: starting formal schooling early is the best way to give children a head start in their education

•    Formal schooling in Finland does not begin until age 7, and all children have access to high quality, free at the point of access early years provision

Assumption: teachers should primarily be expert in a specific subject area and learn their ‘classroom craft’ in schools

•    Finnish teachers are trained as expert pedagogues and educational researchers to Master’s level in universities. Teacher education takes 5 years.

Assumption: children have different capabilities, and will perform at very different levels at age 11, and these levels can be given a number. A small minority with special educational needs are always going to perform less well than others.

•    All Finnish children are expected to be able perform at the same high level, with additional help provided to any child who is not keeping up. More than half of Finnish children have received some form of special educational needs provision by the time they leave school.

Louise Thomas
Senior Researcher at the RSA

Open Data Monthly Review 04/2012

2012-05-02T11:18:00.000+01:00

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

Open data user group: giving everyone a say on public data
This week, we'd like to take you through the Cabinet Office's recent announcement that the private sector, including the open data community, are to have a greater influence over the release of public sector data – and, more importantly, how you can play a role in making this happen.

Open data in action: education
Anjanamma sits on the floor in her one-room tenement in Bangalore. She has three children – a girl and two boys – who study in nearby government schools and is a strong supporter of education. "It is necessary," she says. "Let children attain something. Let them study."

Open-data Cities Conference in Brighton, England: turning municipal governments into open data collaborators
Adam sez, "The first Open-data Cities Conference takes place in Brighton, England next week. It's aimed at local councils and government agencies who want to open up more of their datasets, and giving them ideas and practical help on how to do it. There's some good speakers, including Tom Steinberg from MySociety and Rufus Pollock from the Open Knowledge Foundation."

Open-data Cities Conference: discussing the data that can build a better society
The UKs first Open-data Cities Conference will take place at Brighton Dome Corn Exchange today. Greg Hadfield, a former journalist and internet entrepreneur, explains what to expect.

NAO: Gov open data policy disorganised and costly
The government’s open-data policy has no proven benefits and could actually be costing taxpayers more than it’s worth. That’s the message from a National Audit Office report that tells Whitehall it’s time for some proper cost analysis on the policy of unloading vast data sets on the public.

Open data 'must be driven by need'
The open data movement needs to be driven and managed more by what people want to find out, and less by public bodies' own agendas, the online democracy pioneer Tom Steinberg told last week's Open-data Cities Conference in Brighton. (http://www.ukauthority.com/Headlines/tabid/36/NewsArticle/tabid/64/Default.aspx?id=3628)

New World Bank Policy to Open Up Data to Public
The World Bank has announced an “open access policy” in which its data and publications will be licensed under Creative Commons copyrights and made free to the public. The policy, announced on April 10, will go into effect in stages starting on July 1.

#ODCC – Open data and the ‘new digital fields of exchange’
Today marked the first Open Data Cities Conference which kicked off in Brighton, set up by former head of digital development at the Telegraph Greg Hadfield.
The conference said it would “focus on how publicly-funded organisations can engage with citizens to build more creative, prosperous and accountable communities”.

Helping to make the most of open data
People across the country jumped at the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open data and put tools and techniques into practice at a series of free masterclasses we hosted recently.

Brighton and Hove: becoming an open data, collaborative city
Sadly, John Barradell, chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council isn't with us, as he's sick. He's got stand ins: Charlie Stewart, strategic director and John Shewell, head of communications at Brighton and Hove City Council. (http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2012/04/brighton_and_hove_becoming_an_open_data.html)

EDF2012 Hackathon – is your business ready for Linked Open Data?
Copenhagen Business School (CBS) will host an European Data Forum 2012 (EDF2012) on June 6-7,2012. This two day conference is a meeting place for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), researchers, policy makers and community initiatives to discuss challenges of Big Data, novel data-driven business models, technical innovations and other important aspects (does open government data rings any bells?).

Open data can benefit voluntary sector
The Nominet Trust team is spending a fair amount of time thinking, investigating and experimenting with open data. The trust's aim is to seek and support new uses of digital technology for social good. We recently co-hosted a conference on charities and open data with the Big Lottery Fund and NCVO, which indicated a growing interest from the voluntary sector. The opening of public sector data over the past few years is one obvious stimulus for this, particularly since many charities are data suppliers due to their work delivering a public service contracts.

US government deploys open data standards created in Ireland
The open data movement is in full swing and tools and standards created in Ireland are to prove pivotal to open data employed by the US government. It emerged today that agencies in the US Government have adopted a set of web tools and standards developed in Ireland by researchers at NUI Galway’s Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI).

IN THE BLOGS:

Open Data: UK sets Open Data Example, Leapfrogging US Efforts
In a written memorandum, Barack Obama promised that “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” Since then the federal government has set up www.data.gov and a variety of sites that publish data sets.

Can Open Data help conflict prevention?
We’re in the planning stages of a conflict prevention project called PAX and open data perspectives have fed into our thinking in its processes and structures.
PAX aims to provide early warnings of emerging violent conflict, through an online collaborative system of data sharing and analysis.

Notes from the Education Seminars #3: Local, National, Transnational

2012-04-30T16:45:00.001+01:00

Dr. Mary Hilson, Senior Lecturer in the department of Scandinavian Studies at UCL, blogs about Lessons from the North seminar held at the Finnish Institute in London at the end of March.

The second seminar in the Finnish Institute’s recent mini-series on education, “Lessons from the North”, was a collaboration with the UCL Nordic-Baltic Research Group, as the final seminar in their ESRC-funded seminar series “The Nordic and Baltic Countries in the European Political Imagination”. Throughout the series we have explored different areas of policy exchange and transfer between the UK and the Nordic-Baltic region, including economic policy, health and welfare, tolerance and diversity, environment and energy. (link to www.ucl.ac.uk/nordic-baltic)

Our series, and indeed this particular seminar on education, raises the immediate question of how we construct these regions. Finland has been in the limelight recently as far as education policy is concerned (though the Coalition government also refers to the Swedish free schools), but the small countries of northern Europe seem to have had quite a privileged position in UK political discourse over much of the twentieth century. The idea of the Nordic or Scandinavian “middle way” stems from the 1930s but even before then, Danish provisions for adult education – the famous folk high schools – were attracting international attention from the UK and elsewhere. Historic constructions of the Nordic model thus provide an important context for current interest in a Finnish model. Often, though, important national differences are blurred in constructions of the region, and it became clear in the seminar that this is also the case in the UK, when the important point was made that we cannot, in fact, talk about a British education system. Most participants were speaking about English schools, which differ in important ways from their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Indeed, interest in Finnish education is not confined to England: as is well known, there is currently a strong interest in all things Nordic in Scotland, and I see that Pasi Sahlberg will be speaking on Finnish education to the Nordic Horizons group in Edinburgh in May. (link to http://www.nordichorizons.org/).

The day’s discussions were shaped around three excellent panels. In the first, on “Education in diverse societies”, Olga Cara presented her research on language and bilingualism in Latvian schools, where Russian-speakers form a large minority but the language has no official status. Yvonne Mørck discussed results from fieldwork undertaken on “class travels” among the pupils of Danish upper secondary schools. Arto Kallioniemi described challenges and adaptation in the Finnish education system to ethnic diversity as a result of recent immigration. Uvanney Maylor reported on a comparative research project examining different experiences of multi-cultural education in the UK, France, Greece, Poland and Iceland.

The second panel was on “Nordic and British School Models”, and two papers dealt with the Swedish free school model that has attracted the interest of the UK Education Secretary. Stephen Ball discussed the implications of the Swedish free schools for governance and accountability, given that most are provided by private, multi-national companies. Håkan Forsberg considered the implications of the 1992 free school reform in Sweden for patterns of social segregation in schools in the greater Stockholm area. Sirkku Nikamaa shared some thoughts about assessment and educational access based on her own experiences as an educator (see her post on this blog http://blog.finnish-institute.org.uk/2012/04/notes-from-education-seminars-2-times.html). Kristiina Kumpulainen presented the Finnish model of a decentralised school system based on municipal autonomy, shaped by the principle of educational equality.

The third panel was titled “Teachers – Academics or Practitioners?” and dealt in particular with the question of teacher training and support. Riikka Koistinen spoke about her experiences working as a teacher in Finland and England. Auli Toom described teacher training in Finland, suggesting that teachers are not academics or practitioners – they are both. Bernadette Youens spoke about teacher training in England, which is extremely diverse but shares many of the principles of the Finnish system.

I attended this seminar as an outsider, with no claim to specialist expertise in education. But based on the presentations and the subsequent discussions, there seemed to be three main issues:

1. Can we speak of national models, when all education systems are diverse?

Diversity was one of the major themes of the day, and not just in the first panel. There were many references to the enormous diversity in the English education system, not just in the types of schools but also in the provisions for teacher education and training. On the other hand, it is also important not to overlook the diversity in other systems, including Finland. In particular, we heard that there are major differences between the Helsinki metropolitan region and other parts of the country, which partly reflect more general differences between the urban areas and the sparsely populated rural districts. Emphasis was placed on the importance of municipal autonomy within the Finnish system, which might be expected to give rise to some local variations. Although the issue of bilingualism within the Finnish education system was not discussed in detail, one would also expect this to vary by region, since the Swedish-speaking population is concentrated in the south and west of the country. Moreover, given the growing role of multi-national business in the provision of educational infrastructure (not just schools but also textbooks, electronic learning resources etc.), which Stephen Ball discussed in his paper, it may also be worth considering how relevant national models of education policy are relevant, and will continue to be so. Sharing ideas across national boundaries may be more a question of contacts and exchange at sub-national levels.

2. How do policy transfers happen?

Scholars from various disciplines have paid a lot of attention recently to the transfer and exchange of ideas across national boundaries, pointing out that this rarely happens in a smooth linear fashion. Instead, ideas and policies are adapted and re-interpreted to suit different national contexts; and politicians may sometimes use another national example rhetorically to construct a rather fanciful utopia or dystopia that bears little resemblance to reality. Moreover, policy transfer is never an a-to-b transfer, but always the product of a meeting and exchange between the exporter and the importer. This seems to happen at two levels: on the one hand, a whole system can serve as a utopia, cited for rhetorical purposes; on the other, practitioners can learn from each other by sharing very practical, detailed, everyday experiences and ideas. It might be unrealistic to suggest that England could import the “Finnish model” wholesale (even if that does indeed exist), but clearly both sides can profit from the transnational exchange and sharing of ideas that might be sparked by this broader interest.

The idea for this particular seminar initially emerged in the very specific context of English interest in the Finnish system. But the different papers illustrated a much broader context than this: Latvian interest in Canadian bilingualism for example; examples of schools responding to ethnic diversity in France, Greece and Poland.

3. The challenges for education are transnational

Some of the problems discussed during the seminar were nationally specific: e.g. the challenges of integrating Russian- and Latvian-speaking groups in the Latvian case; the recent instability in the English system as a result of the change of government. Several speakers emphasised how path dependencies matter, for example as the English system has to adapt to the legacy of the attempt to find a compromise on the religious issue in the 1870 and 1902 Education Acts. The extent to which Finland and the other Nordic countries have ever been socially homogeneous societies can be debated, in my view, but at least perceptions of homogeneity and national consensus have been rather powerful.

On the other hand, it is perhaps not surprising to find that the challenges faced by education are similar everywhere. To summarise some that were discussed during the seminar, these include:

- How education systems can help to reinforce or undermine deeply entrenched patterns of social inequality and segregation, including differences of class, ethnicity, gender etc.

- How schools make the most of difference and avoid imposing conformity on their pupils, while at the same time also promoting equality.

- How the autonomy of teachers is best promoted, while making sure at the same time they are accountable and also properly supported by their peers.

- How schools adapt to the opportunities offered by new technologies.

Nobody much likes league tables. Schemes for assessment and testing in English schools were criticised for stigmatising pupils, reinforcing segregation and inequality, and undermining more creative approaches to learning. Moreover, it was suggested that most parents pay little attention to league tables when choosing schools, instead relying on knowledge gained through informal networks (and inevitably this tends to favour middle-class families who have better access to these types of network). But I must comment on a little paradox here: the Finnish education system often seems to be lauded for its eschewal of testing and the ranking of pupils and schools, while at the same time, the current interest in Finland stems largely from the country’s success in just such a league table, namely the international PISA rankings.

It may be an obvious conclusion, but no system is perfect and we all clearly have much to learn from each other.

Many thanks to the Finnish Institute for hosting this event, and to all the speakers and participants for their contributions to a very interesting and stimulating discussion.

Dr. Mary Hilson
Senior lecturer at the department of Scandinavian Studies, UCL

Notes from the Education Seminars #2: The Times They Are a-Changin’, but what is the course education is taking?

2012-04-20T14:02:00.000+01:00

Finnish Educator and Consultant, Sirkku Nikamaa-Berg, one of the panelists in the 'Lessons from the North' seminar, blogs about the future of education.

The pace of societal and technological change places increasing demands on individuals and communities yet schools seem to dawdle when they could and they should be fully engaged in the development. The task of basic education is to raise adults of the future, help prepare them for jobs that may not exist yet and to give them tools and capabilities for a good life. The goal of education cannot merely be the delivery of the curriculum, but the internalization of the underlying concepts, and the ability to think critically and act socially.

The slow pace of change in education is all the more astonishing and unacceptable given the fact that our understanding about what really works in learning is better than ever before. There is also an increasing amount of experience on how to implement new methods and how to overcome practical obstacles.

The goals for innovation and development strategies in education are similar everywhere. It is safe to say that every government is interested in developing 21^st century skills, they want to engage and motivate students and prevent them from dropping out of education. They want to promote life-long learning, foster creative- and life skills and enhance wellbeing.

To achieve all this education authorities, researchers and schools are busy developing new pedagogies, boosting creative use of technologies in the classroom, encouraging collaboration, forming new partnerships and building bridges between formal and informal learning.

Development and upgrading of education and training are also seen as prime sources of national competitiveness. Rising creative industries, among others, have signaled that education is not meeting their needs. More opportunities for cross-curricular learning, for example STEM and arts is called for. Students also need knowledge and skill related abilities, ability and desire to learn, creative passion, enriching interaction and good self-confidence.

Courses of action

There are countless development initiatives and visionary projects to improve and change learning. Some of these projects generate new knowledge and put the latest research results to good use. As an example I could mention the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” in Singapore, iZone in New York City, Innovation Unit’s Learning Futures and the RSA’s Opening Minds in the UK. Universities world over produce excellent cross-disciplinary research and NGO’s create networks and projects to improve education. In Finland numerous development projects are funded and coordinated by the Board of Education, Cicero-learning Network at the Helsinki University and other universities. It is not uncommon for municipalities and schools to undertake their own development projects.

Interestingly, many development projects in Finland and in the UK focus on similar issues. Invariably they deal, in one way or the other, with engaging and empowering the student and promoting responsibility for own learning. The most commonly used practices are learning by doing, project based- and enquiry based learning, self-directed learning, creating local public private partnerships, innovative use of technology and BYOD (Bring your own device). Methods often include spaced learning and flipped classroom.

An obstacle course

The Finnish municipalities are rather autonomous and the system is based on trust in schools and teachers. The central government leans towards "steering by information" rather than uniform norms. Governing through legislation and resource allocation still play a role, but in Finland municipalities have room to apply the guidelines according to their particular contexts. Project-based development work, together with dissemination of research outcomes and other information, are the key "instruments" of information steering. However, controlling and making the most of this myriad of national and local development projects is challenging. Dissemination of the research results and implementation of the best practices is halting and many good initiatives benefit a limited number of schools and students.

In the UK the education system is more fragmented with independent schools, public schools, state schools, grammar schools, comprehensive schools, foundation schools, Church of England Schools, academies and free schools… just to name a few. The English education model is based on high stakes testing, inspections and ranking of schools. These measures are considered by some people to be important for ensuring the quality of education. They can also seen as instruments for improving education outcomes.

Competition between schools and constant measuring is likely to make schools more risk averse and introduction of new, more radical ideas on education is not easy. The need to stick to relatively fixed learning objectives, to teach to national tests and the fear of inspections make implementation of new ideas and methods seem more risky.

Changing the course

The goals of education and the trends in innovation and development are broadly speaking the same in Finland and in the UK. Excellent work and good practice in individual schools and by individual teachers does not unfortunately amount to large scale change by itself.

Innovative and good practices develop in an atmosphere of trust and a degree of autonomy is necessary. However, dependence and interdependence are essential for system improvement. Increased and improved networking locally and internationally will benefit everyone. In the area of education Finland has a lot to learn from the UK and vice versa. I call for new ways to disseminate research results and to share experiences.

The growth of the community-led Transition Town movement is a good example of networked change, how local action sparked a global movement. The Transition initiative is about local responses to global challenges. Put together, small-scale responses create a big impact that will show the way to people, businesses even governments. Their concept is the same, but different (local) where ever it takes root.

One of the most difficult things for beginner sailors to learn is to look ahead, not inside the boat, not back or to the sides – but ahead – for where you look, that’s where you will end up. Educators and decision makers have to keep their sight on the student and his / her future needs and co-operate internationally to reach the best results.

Notes from the Education Seminars #1: What Was Said

2012-04-12T13:40:00.003+01:00

Ilari Lovio blogs about the key perspectives discussed in recent education seminars, organised by the Finnish Institute with its various partners. These topics will be discussed further in the forthcoming series of blog posts on education.

During the last week of March, the Finnish Institute’s event series that tackles education from various perspectives started. Two seminars were held on the 29th and 30th of March, organised in cooperation with the Institute of Education, UCL Nordic-Baltic Research Group, University of Helsinki, and the Embassy of Finland in London.

The first seminar, held at the Institute of Education, titled In Teachers We Trust: Explaining the Finnish Miracle concentrated in elaborating on the Finnish education system and comparing it to the British model and recent reforms. The motive of this setup stemmed from the vast interest that Finnish education has drawn due to the top ranking PISA results.

The second seminar, held at the Finnish Institute in London, titled Lessons from the North? Education, Teaching and Schools, widened the scope of the comparison to include examples also from other Nordic, and Baltic countries. Differences, challenges and recent developments were addressed through panel discussions.

Considering the number of attendees, both events were hits! More people were eager to attend than was possible to accommodate. Having this in mind, we have decided to publish a series of blogposts that will elaborate on, as well as document, the key perspectives that were presented and discussed. This is why the title, 'Notes from the Education Seminars'.

Education, teaching, and schools were discussed from various points of view during these seminars. However, I will point out here the key perspectives that rose to the center of discussions. These themes will also be elaborated in the following blogposts.

Equality and Excellence

One of the main underlying principles of the Finnish comprehensive school system is equality. The emphasis has been on narrowing down differences between schools to enable equal opportunity to every child. This can also be seen in the PISA results where Finland has a very low variation between pupils.

In the UK, at the same time, schools are much more diverse. There are, brilliant, high achieving schools, a well as poor schools. There are private schools, run by for-profit companies, state funded public schools, as well as so called faith-based schools.

The big question raised in the seminars is: Why are there such gaps in achievements of different schools in the UK? Is it determined by history, due to the heterogenic population of the UK, or outcome of conscious policies? That is the question.

Regarding Finland, on the other hand, question that was raised is that does the emphasis on equality collide with the pursuit of excellence? Are equality and excellence mutually exclusive in the world of comprehensive education, or not at all?

Teacher Education and Trust in Teachers

Finnish educationalists often emphasise the meaning of academic, research oriented, teacher education of Finnish teachers. To be a teacher in Finland requires a Master’s Degree in education. In the UK, at the same time, there are many ways to become a teacher and different providers offer teacher training, which makes the field much more diverse.

A word that repeatedly surfaced in the discussions around teachers and teaching is trust. While the Finnish educationalists emphasise autonomy and trust in teachers, many argued that in the UK there is distrust in teachers and teacher training from the government’s side, which manifests itself in the continuous testing and ranking of schools and pupils, and supervising the teachers’ performance as well.

At the same time, a question that was thrown to the Finnish was, how does one recognize and deal with poor teachers or ensure the transparency, if teachers’ autonomy is very high.

Changes and Challenges

What became clear during the seminars is that for the Finnish society, the late, but relatively rapid increase in ethnic diversity is a change that has to be considered also in education. A timely question is that, what kind of policies has to be developed to maintain the principles, goals, and features of Finnish education in a changing demographic situation.

Another societal change that was discussed, that both societies, Finland and the UK are facing is the increasing use of information and communication technology. What needs to be researched now is that how learning happens in the 21st century classroom and how does the use of ICT shape it.

Risks and Promises of Policy Transfer

As the purpose of these seminars was the exchange of knowledge, ideas and experiences, naturally the possibilities and conditions of policy transfer were on the agenda as well. Even though the importance of exchanging ideas was probably shared by the whole audience, at the same time, some crucially important notions were raised by the speakers about the risks of policy transfers that are based on superficial understandings of the societies and education systems in question.

To read more about education and the themes that were discussed in the seminars, keep following this blog and the forthcoming posts!

Open Data Monthly Review 03/2012

2012-04-02T16:50:00.002+01:00

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

Open Government vs. Open Data
A new research paper by Harlan Yu and David Robinson does an excellent job of tracing the history of the open government and open data movements and the way the two have been conflated, especially since the beginning of the Obama administration.

New York City to Mandate Open Data
The Big Apple is stepping up its open data program. The New York City Council unanimously approved a measure on Wednesday, Feb. 29, that requires city agencies to publish public data sets on an online portal. The legislation, Intro 29A, is expected to be signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Ordnance Survey holds free open data masterclasses
People across Great Britain are being given the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open data, and the tools and techniques to use open datasets, through a series of free masterclasses hosted by Ordnance Survey.

In ‘Open Government Data,’ What’s Really Open?
In parsing the meaning of “open government,” citizens weigh the availability of information against the transparency of creating it. It’s a rare grammar debate that affects the course of democracy.

Open data is the raw material of 'new industrial revolution'
The UK leads the world in making ever more data freely available, according to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude. There are more than 40,000 unique public sector datasets on www.data.gov.uk – the largest resource of its kind in the world – from real-time transport data to information on routine hospital activity.

Open data must not be neglected by local government: Nigel Shadbolt
The public sector's open data revolution will not fully succeed unless more is done with local data, according to professor Nigel Shadbolt, founder of Data.gov.uk.
The open data agenda is not as far as advanced within local government as it is within central government, perhaps due to the fact the open data push originated from within Whitehall, Shadbolt said.

Maude praises UK progress on open data but private sector sees work to do
An "open data" revolution kicked off by a Guardian campaign is gathering pace in the UK. The Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, is trumpeting the UK's success in making government data freely available - and pointing to examples of companies that have sprung up to create commercial businesses around free data from public bodies.

Open data community to tell government what to publish
The private sector and the broader open data community are to have a greater influence over the release of public sector data, ministers have said at the launch of an independently chaired Data Strategy Board (DSB).

Open data: Jimmy Wales and the Man from Sweden
Last week we learned that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is to act as an unpaid adviser to the UK Government on opening up data to the public. His history is involving people in creating public content; so the appointment is to be welcomed. The more data we all can see, the more open our government, and the better-served is democracy.

Open data to get public-sector gatekeepers
A Data Strategy Board is being created to advise departments on what data they should release, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has announced. The Data Strategy Board (DSB) will be led jointly by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and universities and science minister David Willetts.

Brits Reexamine Open Data Policies
The UK government has commissioned an independent Data Strategy Board to guide and accelerate future government data releases. The board is tasked with not only determining what data should be released, but will work with government organizations to determine what data releases will lead to economic growth.

TV hackers thrill MIPCube conference, but call for more open data
How do hackers hack when they have very little to hack with? That was the challenge facing a group of developers at the MIPCube conference this weekend. The idea: they would spend 36 hours coding innovative apps and websites based on TV content, then present the results to a room full of producers and broadcasters. Oh, and the hacking took place on a yacht moored in the Cannes harbour.

How a student used open data to beat national rail enquiries at its own game
How useful is open government data really? How much can you use to build things that make a difference to people's lives? It turns out that some of the most useful is the least dramatic. Recently, the Association of Train Operating Companies opened up its own data vaults to the world.

IN THE BLOGS:

A single European open data licence?
I’ve seen the online calls for a single European licence for open data. I think they deserve a response: here it is. You’ll know that open data is a cause close to my heart, and I welcome your initiative. You’ll be aware that back in December I put forward an ambitious legal proposal to unlock the goldmine and open up Europe’s public sector, through a system that would be cheaper, easier to use and wider in scope than current rules. In legal terms, these take the form of amendments to the Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive: that means they are proposed by the Commission, but then must be agreed by both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers before becoming law – and indeed those bodies have already held initial discussions on this topic.

Focussing on open data where it matters: accountability and action
A lot of talk of open data proceeds as if all data is equal, and a government dataset is a government dataset. Some open data advocates fall into the trap of seeing databases as collections of ‘neutral facts’, without recognising the many political and practical judgements that go into the collection and modelling of data. But, increasingly, an awareness is growing that datasets are not a-political, and that not all datasets are equal when it comes to their role in constituting a more open government.

Open Plaques: Community Powered Heritage
Historical plaques by their very nature are objects in the public domain, so creating a platform to collect them with the public – and for the collected data to be available for the broadest possible public use – seemed an obvious starting point. That’s why Open Plaques data has been open data from birth.

Announcing DM2E: Exploring the possibilities of Linked Open Data in cultural heritage
The Open Knowledge Foundation is delighted to announce that it will be leading the community work for a three-year EU funded project entitled Digitised Manuscripts to Europena (DM2E). The project consortium, which includes academic institutions, NGOs and commercial partners, will be led by Professor Stefan Gradmann at the Humboldt University.

Open data and archiving datasets
Considering the word ‘digital’ makes up one third of my job title, you might consider it an oversight to have not used it once in my last blog entry. That may be an indication of variety in work – or perhaps forgetfulness – but I will make up for that today when I consider the union and mutually-beneficial relationship between open data and the archiving of datasets.

The Missing Open Data Policy
Open data policies aren't doing nearly as much good as they can, because they usually fail to require new information to be disclosed. To fix this, governments should make their information policy decisions as publicly as possible, indexing their major information holdings, and publicly determining whether or not to release information.

Open data must be about far more than just transparency
Last year, the Government set out its determination “to have the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world” and pledged to deliver a “quantum leap in transparency” in Whitehall. Since then, great strides have been made in the pursuit of transparent, open government, including crime maps, school performance and council spending data. Yet transparency must not be an end in itself.

Talk at LIFT 2012: Open Data – How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going
I’m pleased to announce that the video of my talk, Open Data: How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going, that I gave a few weeks ago at the LIFT 2012 conference has now been published.

Chair sought for Open Data board
The government is recruiting an independent chair for a new Data Strategy Board to advise ministers on what information should be released as part of its ‘Open Data’ agenda. Better use of NHS data is a key part of the agenda. The government has already said this will include giving patients access to their online health records and creating a service linking data from primary and acute care so healthcare impacts can be tracked across the entire health service.

Our new research on open data argues for better user engagement and more research on the societal impacts

2012-03-29T08:41:00.003+01:00

Fellow at the Finnish Institute in London, Antti Halonen, blogs about his newly published report: Being Open About Data

The Finnish Institute in London has recently completed a five-month research project on the British open data policies. Report looks on how the open data ecosystem has emerged in the UK and what lessons can be drawn upon the British experiences. The year 2012 will be a big year for open data in Finland, and this report also partly aims at further facilitating the development of open knowledge in Finland.

The key findings can be listed as follows:

Key to benefits is the quality of user engagement
Open data and its objectives should be addressed as a part of the freedom-of-information continuum
The decision to emphasise the release of expenditure data was not ideal: governments do not know best what kind of data people want to have and should aim at releasing it all
Leadership, trust and IT knowledge are crucial, not only political leadership but within organisations too
The social and democratic impacts of open data are still unclear and in future there is a need for sector-specific research

Research was conducted from September 2011 to January 2012, mostly by semi-structured interviews of key experts and qualitative analysis of the government policies. Starting point for the research was to primarily address the applicability of open data: how data is being used and what kind of benefits is it possible to identify from the data use. During the research process it became evident, however, that open data as a concept is so diverse that a mere analysis of data use would be insufficient in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon.

Open data is applied in various ways with lots of small-scale success stories available, mostly in the form of mobile-phone or web applications. These apps and websites – as innovative and useful as they are – are yet not the key issue when addressing the overall value of open data. These services make everyday life of citizens a tiny bit easier, and when accumulated they may result in significant economic benefits. However, the open-data community has also been vocal about the potential positive impacts on democracy. These impacts are significantly harder to identify and need much more research in order to produce comprehensive and reliable results. In addition, we must realise the difference between transparency and democracy-oriented goals that are usually associated with the freedom-of-information movement and the technology and innovation-oriented goals of the open-data movement. The overall value of transparency is, however, not something that should be measured primarily in financial profits.

Key to further benefits, whether economic or democratic, is more education and improved user engagement – of both citizens and public officials. The level of knowledge and understanding of open data is currently rather low, and most data producers don’t yet see the potential benefits that lie in open data. Equally, individual citizens are not necessarily capable of using datasets as the threshold for accessing and using raw datasets effectively is, at times, quite high. The best examples, in fact, are those where the data-portal interfaces are made as simple and easy to use as possible by providing relevant context to data and equally where data users are already engaged in public participation, be it within the public sector itself or some organised civic-society movement. Consequently, it is only the data user herself who knows what kind of data would be most useful. A certain service-design approach would be desirable already in the planning phase of the data release.

There are already examples available where companies have benefited commercially from data and where public-sector organisations have gained efficiency benefits. In the future, it is more important to focus on the normative side of open data and on its potential impacts on democracy. There is a risk of creating a hollow mantra of open data improving the level of democracy without any evidence provided. However, the potential for great improvement in democratic accountability is there.

All these benefits, economic and democratic, require the threshold for accessing, understanding and using the data to be as low as possible. In order to achieve this, the data producers must possess a certain level of ICT knowledge to implement the system so that it is both simple enough to use and sophisticated enough to be able to manage information flow comprehensively. In many cases, the ICT and data-management infrastructure is not sufficient, and organisations lack the human resources to renew it so that it matches the requirements of openness. This should not be an excuse for not to release data, however, but a wake-up call for both data providers and open-data community alike.

Finally, it should be made clear that open data is not apolitical initiative. There is a strong political side to it, which dates all the way back to the long development process of governmental transparency in the UK. The initial focus on the release of expenditure data is claimed to be driven by political motives, and in terms of development of sustainable and productive use of data it was not necessarily the right decision to make. The discussion of open data was sidetracked when the focus was on the rift between local and central government and not on how public-sector organisations and civic communities could benefit from data. For many local-government data producers, the whole open-data initiative is equivalent to the £500 expenditure-data agenda and hence they don’t necessarily see the wider context and potential benefits that might lie in open data. Bearing this in mind, the open-data community should be wary of arguing too eagerly in favour of open data improving the general access to information. Open data at its current form is mostly a target-driven policy without the reactive pull-factor that is essential for a political right that is freedom of information.

The Finnish Institute continues its work with open knowledge in all its forms and is happy to be a partner organisation in the upcoming Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki. Final report “Being Open About Data – analysis of the UK open data policies and applicability of data” can be read and downloaded here.

Antti Halonen
Fellow at the Finnish Institute, author of "Being Open About Data"

London is Entering a Golden Age of Social Investment

2012-03-22T10:03:00.000Z

The Director of SharedImpact, Paul Cheng, blogs about Social Investments.

For over 300 years, London has been one of the world’s great centres of financial innovation. Ideas, for example, about how to manage financial risk through structures such as companies limited by shares and the concept of insurance were developed and refined by pioneering financiers in the London coffee houses of 18th century England.

In 2012, London finds itself at the forefront of social investment – leading the world in pioneering developments such as Big Society Capital (the world’s first social central bank), social impact bonds, charitable bonds, a variety of impact funds and new market platforms such as SharedImpact, the Social Stock Exchange and Ethex for selling, marketing and refinancing social investment products.

There is a sense that we are about to enter a golden age of social investment in the UK. Yet there is a real danger that this market could go horribly wrong – and that the hype may triumph of the reality.

So while it is heartening to see more mainstream pools of capital seeking to engage in impact investing, there are also good reasons to be worried about how much of this capital will actually produce positive social change. Will investors choose speed of growth, rather than depth of impact? Will early failures be used as reasons to maintain the status quo? Will poor thinking and clumsy execution make our sector one of ‘feel good’ rather than ‘do good’?

Moreover, what do we mean by “social investment”? Properly defined, social investment is the deployment of capital for social purpose – and which seeks a financial return (but not a profit-maximising one). This last point is often misunderstood. For businesses, profit is an end in itself. For charities, profit (or “surplus”) should merely be a means to an end – or to the fulfilment of a social mission.

We should remind ourselves that the fundamental problem which social investment is trying to address is lack of access to capital.

Charities and social enterprises are chronically undercapitalised. For the most part, they find themselves limited to just one financial instrument – the charitable donation – and most of what they do is financed on a pay-as-you-go basis. The charity sector lives hand-to-mouth – and the sector looks more like a subsistence economy than a vibrant market.

This is in direct contrast to the way virtually everything else of value gets created. No one buys or builds a house without financing it. Almost every business, large and small, at least attempts to make prudent use of debt and equity. But charities are risk-averse, and frequently unaware of the broader range of financial tools that may be available.

As a result, because charities are undercapitalised, they struggle to achieve their social objectives, which in turn makes it less likely they will receive the resources they need. And so the cycle continues.

Social investment aims to put an end to this vicious circle.

Paul Cheng,

Director of SharedImpact (www.sharedimpact.org)

The Future of Openness or the Age of Uncertainty?

2012-03-12T09:42:00.000Z

Mikael Järvelin from the Finnish Institute in London blogs about censorship in modern society.

On the 29th of February 2012 London School of Economics organized a panel discussion on the topic ‘Censorship in an Age of Freedom’. Charlie Beckett, the director of Polis and the author of a book ‘Wikileaks: News in the Networked Era’, Heather Brooke, investigative journalist and the author of ‘The Revolution Will Be Digitized’ and Nick Cohen, journalist and author of ‘You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship In an Age of Freedom’ held a discussion on censorship in today’s society based on their newly published books. This blog post contemplates the ideas of that discussion. At the same time as people cheer for opening of government data, governments are taking drastic measures to conceal unwanted information offered by Wikileaks and the likeminded websites.

There are three things in the world that are being censored more than anything else: God, state and money. Everyone is familiar with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the consequences that writing a book about religion can cause. Religion remains one of the main targets of censorships in the world. In totalitarian states with strong dictatorship, the questioning of the political leaders and actions of the state are punishable by law. Possibly the most common type of censorship in today’s society lies however in the world of business. People in banking industry for example are unable to question or criticise their companies. This could lead to being fired and never being able to return to work in the field of banking. Many human rights violations are being silenced in the face of huge amounts of money as well. With the development of Internet and new information channels, censorship has found new manifestations.

The new technology enables more people to be involved in gathering and sharing of information. The future of journalism could very well be in Wikileaks type of organisations that are harder to censor than traditional newspapers or television programmes. Information is globally more accessible and more detailed. However, this quantity of information brings uncertainty along. Information that is being published on the web is less controlled, thus making the information less reliable. Who is to say whether all the measures have been taken to ensure that the information in blogs or wiki-pages is from a reliable source? Fact checking is possibly the most important feature of serious journalism. How can we be sure, that we receive true information in the age where basically anyone can be a journalist?

Censoring of web pages may be harder than censoring of newspapers, but we can’t blame governments for not trying. More and more blacklists are being introduced in the world and we are not talking about dictator-run totalitarian states, but our very familiar western democracies as well. Blacklists were first introduced by human rights organisations as a way to block illegal web sites such as those that display child pornography. The problem is that the blacklists are not in the hands of human rights organisations any more but in the hands of the police and governments. Even though some restrictions are probably necessary, who is to say if only the really harmful web pages are being filtered? Censorship can easily lead to a society, where all the information is controlled and the opposition of the state is silenced. The very enabling of censorship casts a threat for the freedom of speech.

Today, the Internet is not run by any state or global organisation such as the UN. The Internet is more and more ruled by various corporations. To fully utilise the Internet, we need to use services provided by multinational corporations. People leave their digital footprints by using social media and sharing information about themselves on-line. The large corporations like Google or Facebook have huge amount of information about people, and they can easily take advantage for that information. How can we be sure that search engines take us to the source of all the necessary information and not only to the pages that are considered appropriate?

Newspaper sales are decreasing and people are turning to the Internet to find news. Blogs are there to offer information of all sorts, but as already noted, the content may be unreliable. It is up to us all, as educated citizens to evaluate the information that we find and call for reliable and accurate news. We must share our knowledge with others without asking for something in return. We need to check the facts behind the things we write or say publicly. We now have all the tools for sharing huge amount of information globally, but we need to make sure that the future of information leads us to a new age of openness and not to the age of uncertainty.

Mikael Järvelin
The Finnish Institute In London

Service Design – An approach to Better Public Services?

2012-03-05T10:45:00.000Z

Director of Administration and Finance in the City of Jyväskylä, Heli Leinonkoski, gives a Civil Servants view on Service Design.

That was the question on my mind when I first time heard about the discipline called Service Design - only a year and a few months ago. As a civil servant I wondered if this was the way to connect citizens more closely to the service development work we do at the local government level. I became immediately interested. So much that in two months, February 2011, I was already in London chasing up what Service Design is really about. Thanks for that arrangement go for Mr Jussi Nissilä, Programme Director at the Finnish Institute in London and the City of Jyväskylä, my employer in Finland.

Did I get the answer to my question during my stay in London? I think so. Because of my background I had a very practical approach to Service Design and I really wanted to know how it works in practice. Does it help me and my fellow civil servants in public sector challenges? After talking to several design linked people I was pleased to realise that it was not about a rocket science and it did not taste theoretical. The Service Design helps people to piece together a problem, provides tools to find the solution and makes this all using communication, visualisation and co-creation. The tools are logical and understandable or what else you can say for example about the Desktop Walkthrough -tool where Lego figures act out common scenarious of a service process.

From the civil servant’s point of view the most fascinating feature in Service Design is that the tools and methods are also applicable in tackling complex social issues, such as youth marginalisation or the welfare of senior citizens. Furthermore the methods can be used in finding ways to change people’s behaviour in order to generate positive, sustainable social impacts, e.g. reducing water consumption.

In UK there are brilliant examples of public sector cases in which Service Design tools have been used successfully. One of the best-known is SILK, Social Innovation Lab for Kent. The team of three, innovative women in Kent County Council has definitely shown how the gap between a council and citizens can be reduced. Read about the projects at SILK’s website: http://socialinnovation.typepad.com/silk/.

As a civil servant I believe that there is potential for using design methods to increase mutual confidence also between civil servants and political decision-makers. In financially hard times, like these days, there are difficult issues to be resolved in councils: radical cut-backs and savings, re-allocation of resources even redundancies. A new, refreshing approach would be more than welcome. I find design methods useful also in cases where in-house processes, like HR or internal invoicing, spanning different departments have to be rationalised. Using service design tools to visualise processes can help to understand how things flow within the organisation, and whether there is anything that can be simplified.

In Finland the town-planning process is strictly regulated by the Land Use and Building Act. The hearing is too often carried out solely because the rules say so. Critical opinions are considered as a burden that slows the process. To make the whole process easier, both for citizens and for planning architects, there should be true co-planning and more communicative methods in the early stages. Finnish cities like Helsinki and Jyväskylä have used new interactive methods in some town-planning cases and the experiences have been really positive. Hope this trend is going to continue.

On the whole the Service Design is worth of taking serious at the public sector. We civil servants too often think that we know what people need and unfortunately that is mainly based on box-ticking surveys. We need to look at services through the eyes of the people whom those services are intended, and we need a deeper understanding of how the services we deliver affect people’s everyday lives. As Katherine Kerswell, Chief Executive of Northamptonshire County Council, said: “We are very privileged in local government that we not only deliver services but what we deliver can change lives and communities”. The question is: do we recognise the responsibility which is included in this privilege and genuinely co-design services around people? Should we put a little bit more effort to understanding people’s lives and what really matters? Service Design offers tools – it is up to us whether we use them or not.

Heli Leinonkoski

Director of Administration and Finance

The City of Jyväskylä, Urban Design and Infrastructure

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"Service Design - An Approach to Better Public Services? A Civil Servant's View" by Heli Leinonkoski was published on the 5th of March 2012 in the Working Papers Series of The Finnish Institute in London and may be downloaded here.

Open Data Monthly Review 02/2012

2012-03-02T10:16:00.000Z

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

Open data consultation exposes IT cost and capability worries
The Cabinet Office has revealed concern over whether the public sector's IT is up to the job of supporting more transparency, from responses to last year's open data consultation.

Is open data under threat?
Many advocates of open data were dismayed by developments in 2011
On the face of it, 2011 was a very good year for the open data movement, which argues that certain information, such as non-personal government data, is more valuable when it is shared freely. In the chancellor’s Autumn Statement in November, amid public sector pay caps and downgraded growth forecasts, George Osborne announced that the government is to create an Open Data Institute, chaired by open data advocates Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt.

OKF Software Chosen to Power Open Data Portal
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN software has been chosen to power the European Commission’s new open data portal. The article reports, “The European Commission (EC) has awarded a contract to create an open data portal website, where data produced by European Commission services will be freely available.

Open data tsar calls for change in government mentality
The government needs to move to a "presume to publish" mentality to keep its much touted open data strategy alive, according to one of its key information advisors, Nigel Shadbolt.

Viability of Open Data plans questioned
Responses to the Cabinet Office’s Open Data plans have questioned whether government IT systems and staff can deliver an enhanced “right to data.”
The Making Open Data Real consultation, published last August, is part of the government’s drive to publish more data across the public sector and to stimulate a market for its use.

Media entrepreneur leads open data city audit
An audit of open data activity by local authorities in England's largest 40 cities is being carried out by the organiser of the UK's first open data cities conference, with initial findings to be revealed in April.

Wandsworth open council: better data for armchair auditors
Paul Martin, chief executive of Wandsworth council, says raw data is meaningless. The Open Council initiative aims to make it comprehensible. There is now a huge quantity of information about public services and spending in the public domain – but it is impossible to make sense of it.

Europeana opens up Europe’s cultural data for innovators
Europeana, an online resource whereby people can explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections, has published data pertaining to 2.4m objects for the first time under an open metadata licence.

The problem with Open Data
Recent initiatives have dramatically increased the range of previously “closed” data being made “open” by the government, including data sets on travel, weather and healthcare. This data can then be used by anyone to create great new products, business opportunities and community services.

From open data to a closed Internet
Within the tech community, there is much angst about whether the web is about to be “closed”. Will it be controlled by companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google, or will it remain “open” to all? Will individuals be able to reach any content they choose? Will developers be able to serve users on any platform?

Open data: now it's business's turn, says Cameron
Prime Minister David Cameron has hailed his government's pioneering of open data as a money-spinner for private companies. In a speech billed as a fierce defence of business, the prime minister pointed to a "new industry springing up", to interpret the blizzard of information flowing from Whitehall. Since coming to power, Cameron's government has made it possible for the outside world to view more than 35,000 files, through the website www.data.gov.uk.

Open Knowledge Releases Open Data Handbook 1.0
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) announced the 1.0 release of the Open Data Handbook today. The 1.0 release is the culmination of a project that started in October 2010 at a book sprint in Berlin as the Open Data Manual. The Open Data Handbook provides the introduction to what open data is, why organizations (particularly government) would be interested in providing open data, and how to go about it.

New Contest: Making the Most of Open Data in Finland
The Open Knowledge Foundation has announced a new Finnish data journalism app contest. THe contest is being organized by Finland’s leading national newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, in order to find better data visualizations. The post states, “For many journalists today, it’s not a lack of open data that’s the problem, but a lack of the skills and off-the-shelf visualizations needed to make that open data useful to them. A year ago, the Finnish government decided that in principle all data generated with taxpayer money should be free.”

Open data – forward strategy
A few people from central government have asked to talk to me recently about open data as they look at their strategy beyond legislation. I thought I would write down repeated themes to save on more meetings. The conversation is normally about how data can be used for the public good as opposed to, say commercial re-use and generally geeing people up to reuse open data that one bit of government sweated blood to get another bit of government to publish.

EIF Dinner Debate: Open Data
The EIF (European Internet Foundation) hosted a dinner debate on Open Data, also known as the Public Sector Information (PSI), at the European Parliament, Brussels on Tuesday 24th January 2012. Attendees came from a broad range of commerce (including Microsoft, Facebook and Google), education, NGOs, national and regional government departments, and the European Commission and European Parliament.

IN THE BLOGS:

How can visualization help citizens use open data?
Open data refers to the free access and reuse of government data — excluding private information such as personal medical data. The concept of establishing a portal for open data is fairly new. (http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-can-visualization-help-citizens-use.html)

Announcing the School of Data
Today, we’re announcing plans for a School of Data. The School will be a joint venture between the Open Knowledge Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). We also welcome other organizations who would like to participate.

How to get your city to pass an open government policy
Today, the Raleigh City Council passed an Open Source Government Resolution, unanimously, promoting the use of open source software and open data. The resolution includes language that puts open source software on the same playing field as proprietary software in the procurement process. It also establishes an open data catalog to house data available from the city.

From Freedom of Information to Open data … for open accountability
How is the open Web been changing accountability and transparency? Filipe is going to share two ideas: 1. The Web is making the Freedom of Information Act (FOIOA) obsolete. 2. An open data policy is necessary to keep freedom of information up to date, and to move toward open accountability.

Open data is going global
More than 50 countries have now signed up to making data more open.
In our last post we talked about the release of data from the Department for Education and how important it was for many people in the UK. However, the purpose of this blog is to spread our net wider as we look to how we can improve transparency across the world. Some might ask why the UK should be interested in other countries and their work on transparency. Can we really gain anything from working with them? Well, quite simply yes. We have much to learn and much to share.

Comparing Finnish and British Education: Does Diversity Matter?

2012-02-27T15:19:00.000Z

Ilari Lovio from the Finnish Institute blogs about education and diversity, raising some questions that will also be tackled in forthcoming seminars.

Finnish education has recently gained substantial attention and interest among politics, policy makers, and the general public in countries such as the United Kingdom and USA. This interest is largely due to Finland’s success in the OECD’s PISA studies, where Finnish students have achieved top ranking results. Consequently, the questions frequently repeated during the last couple of years have been: How is it possible that this small northern nation came to be an educational superpower in just a few decades? And further: Is it possible for other countries to copy the magic recipe?

The educationalists have responded to the first question by pointing out few characteristics about Finnish education. First of all, the quality of teacher education gets always mentioned, as well as responsibility and prestige being the words associated with being a teacher in Finland. Secondly, the equality of the Finnish school system is usually brought up, as Finland offers free schools with free lunches to all pupils, and has concentrated on narrowing down differences between schools in order to make education as equal as possible. Private schools that charge tuition fees or are funded by private sector simply do not exist. Thirdly, the experts often point out, that in Finland students are evaluated much less and the emphasis is directed to cooperation, instead of competition.

The answer to the second question, instead, remains more contested. Despite the enthusiastic interest in Finnish education among policy makers around the world, many also remain skeptical whether the model could be copied and implemented in other societies, such as the UK. Some commentators have suggested that the distinctive characteristics of Nordic countries, especially the relative homogeneity of populations, might make the transfer of principles, policies and practices impossible. Are the countries, their populations and cultures just too different?

When it comes to cultural and ethnic diversity, it is undeniable that Finland and the UK differ. In Finland, foreign-born population makes up around 5% of the demography, whereas in the UK the corresponding number is around 11,5%. Finland was a country of emigration – not immigration – until the 1980’s, and even though, the same partly applies to the UK, due to tight connections to its former colonies, the UK has received immigrants for centuries, affecting the ethnic composition of its population tremendously. Consequently, whereas the UK has had significant ethnic minorities for several generations, in Finland researchers and policy makers are only now starting to systematically investigate the needs and prospects of the second-generation youth.

Therefore, as the Finnish educationalists travel abroad to talk about Finnish schools, they should of course simultaneously keep their ears open for learning something from others. In the UK, it could very much be the experiences and best practices related to education and ethnic or religious minorities.

The vast differences in the diversity of populations in Finland and UK, is a fact. However, it can be – and has been – questioned whether this has much to do with the success of education systems, or with the possibilities to transfer policy ideas from one country to another. In Finland, the number of foreign-born residents doubled during the last decade, but the country still performs well in education, at least in the light of latest PISA studies. Drawing from this and other results, experts have stated that it is the underlying principles of educational policy that rule more than the size or the ethnic makeup of a population.

In fact, last autumn, the Guardian went as far as praising Finland’s education system for setting now the example in educating immigrant children as well. Guardian pointed out how much resources Finnish schools direct to teaching immigrant children the Finnish language, as well as having state funding for Somali pupils to also develop their native language. At the same, the Guardian stated, in the UK, needs of non-English-speaking young immigrants are no longer adequately recognized on the level of policy and funding.

Also the first studies on second generation youth in the Finnish education system give reason for some cautious optimism. Elina Kilpi-Jakonen’s study shows that the equality of the Finnish educational system, and the late selection between upper secondary school and vocational school is advantageous for immigrant children. However, a concern is, that the difficulties adult immigrants encounter in the Finnish labour market – a problem Finland needs to address urgently – threaten to influence immigrant families to the extent that it might hamper the school success of the youngsters.

Either way, despite all the positive attention Finnish education has drawn, the Finnish cannot afford to be lulled into self-satisfaction. Having a longer history in ethnic diversity in the UK, it is for sure that Finnish educationalists should look into the experiences of the British. And in the end, it is enhancing dialogue what is important – and definitely more important than defining who should learn from whom.

Ilari Lovio

The Finnish Institute in London

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The differences and similarities of Finnish and British education systems, and issues related to teacher education and transferring policies will be tackled in a series of events during the spring 2012. The events are organized by the Finnish Institute in London, the Embassy of Finland in London, and their various partners. For more information, see: http://finnish-institute.org.uk/en/society/articles/37/365

Defining Open Design as an Open Knowledge Domain

2012-02-20T09:45:00.016Z

Massimo Menichinelli of Aalto Media Factory writes about open design and the second Open Data meet-up in Helsinki.

As Kat Braybrooke wrote one month ago, the discussion about Open Knowledge has already started in Finland with a great involvement of people. During the first meet-up of the Open Knowledge Foundation held in Helsinki we had so many interesting ideas and discussions that we decided to organize at least another meet-up in January. Furthermore, we decided to focus this second meet-up on one specific topic of the Open Knowledge universe, Open Design.

The reason for this choice is that the Open Design idea has been around for a bit more than a decade, but only in the past 3 years it has finally bloomed into an ecosystem of initiatives, becoming thus a real phenomenon and not just a hypothesis. However, there is still a lot of work to be done for the development of Open Design: it is not yet clear how to deal with the intellectual property aspects; there is a need for new business models; the interactions between professional designers, companies and amateur designers are still to be understood. Furthermore, there is still not a clear and shared definition and vision of what Open Design is, beside the sharing of design blueprints and the use of more accessible fabrication technologies. Open Design could potentially be a useful strategy for developing more sustainable and user-centered products and services and for enabling more active citizens and bottom-up entrepreneurship in society, but we need to discuss it a bit more before it can have a full impact on society.

We then hosted this second meet-up on January 28th 2012 at Aalto Media Factory in Helsinki, the platform for collaboration and development in media-related research and education within the Aalto University, where we are building the first Finnish FabLab, the Aalto FabLab. It's really a pleasure for me that we were able to host this event and start facilitating a discussion about Open Design in the Aalto University and in the city of Helsinki!

Pictures:

As you can see from the presentation below and the pictures above, during that event we started discussing the current situation in Open Design and then we moved towards possible projects to be developed in the following months, in order to further develop Open Design and the local Finnish Open Design community. The goal of the meet-up was to start a discussion and not necessarily to already start projects, however the participants are already thinking about further developing of the first ideas that were presented at the event. Furthermore, we focused especially on the situation regarding an eventual Open Design definition (which is still missing), since the Open Knowledge Foundation has been doing a great job in defining the different forms of Open Knowledge.

Presentation:

Open Knowledge Finland meetup: Open Design (28/01/12, Aalto Media Factory)

View more presentations from Massimo Menichinelli

Why is this event so important? On one side, this event marks another small milestone in the development of local chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Finland with a growing involvement in the local scene. Another reason is that with this event we started a collective and collaborative discussion about an Open Design definition: you will soon hear more information from the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Aalto Media Factory! Furthermore, this event is another step in the preparation of a big event that will take place in Helsinki next September: the Open Knowledge Festival. This year’s Open Government Data Camp and Open Knowledge Conference are joining to form a week-long celebration during 17th-22nd of September 2012. The event will include lectures, seminars, workshops, hackathons, coding jams and it will also highlight the different Finnish Open Knowledge communities. We hope that the collaborative discussion about the Open Design definition will grow and have a place also during this event.

So far Open Design has been developed by a set of individuals and institutions that started individually but then gradually formed an ecosystem. This nature of distributed and collaborative network is actually what has been making Open Design so interesting and successful, and it is the proof that it could be a real promising perspective for society and not just some amateurs' dream. With the Open Knowledge Festival we hope that the discussion about Open Design will be improved and that the international and local community of open designers will gather in Helsinki and collaborate in shaping Open Design's future.

Massimo Menichinelli

Producer of Aalto Media Factory - Aalto FabLab

Broadband access is a human right. Then what?

2012-02-13T12:16:00.000Z

Burcu Baykurt and Minna Aslama Horowitz blog about the importance of a broadband access as a part of knowledge society.

German historian Gerhard Oestreich (1968) says one could see in every basic right the aims of the political and social ordering. As the global discourse on civil and human rights moves toward a more democratic direction, one can easily trace the evolution in communication rights starting with the emphasis on the freedom of expression in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) to the more inclusive forms of communication such as the right to have access to information or the right to communicate. With the normalization of the Internet in daily life, the rights-based approach to ICTs becomes more critical on a global as well as national level. Not only the recent protests in Tahrir or Wall Street that use multiple and advanced tools of technology to challenge the established power, but also growing public interest and concerns about our rights in the so-called cyberspace (privacy, copyright, freedom of expression to name a few) confirm Oestreich’s view about the relationship between rights and the political/social order.

We live in a world filled with abundance of information and messages and not only our rights are more mediated by technology, but also our online experience either complicates existing issues or raise new questions in relation to rights and citizenship. Therefore it should not come as a surprise that there is an ongoing discussion about whether the Internet is a human/civil right or not. According to a BBC Poll in 2010, almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the Internet is a fundamental right. Finland is reportedly the first country in the world to legalize broadband access as a human right in 2009. The government’s decision to guarantee every Finn a 1 Mb connection in July 2010 made news all around the world in online activist circles as well as mainstream media. Since then, the United Nations has joined the bandwagon in November 2011. Although the UK has not legalized the Internet access within a rights-framework yet, it highly advocates universal service principle in its broadband policy initiatives through the Digital Economy Act and projects like the Broadband Delivery UK as well as the eAccessibility.

On the one hand, putting the Internet access within a law/regulation context aims to emphasize the critical needs associated with this technology and puts greater pressure on governments and corporations to build the necessary infrastructure. On the other hand, there are some opposing views, sometimes from the least-expected sources – e.g., by one of the founding fathers of the Internet, Vinton G. Cerf, who argues against the focus on technology, i.e. means, rather than the end itself –civil rights in a democratic society. The essence of his argument not only points out the pitfalls of over-prioritizing technology, but also shows how complicated Internet access policies are. Getting connected to the Internet, or stepping into the cyberspace, neither solves the existing inequality issues in society – in defiance of both Finnish and British broadband policies that describe universal broadband access as a panacea for most economic and social problems- nor comes without its own intricacies.

Take Google’s blog services and Twitter – two online global mega platforms that have decided to engage in country-specific content censorship. As the CEO of Twitter notes -- and many concerned media-activists debate -- this is a complex issue. On one hand, this smells like restricting the freedom of expression in one of the most filter-less communication platforms there is. On the other hand, the country-by-country policy allows dissident voices to be tweeted beyond the borders of a country, even if their tweet would be censored in that country.

Another example: While writing this blog and simultaneously reading a techie activist list-serve, we encountered a case that could be discussed in connection to the UDHR Article 12 (“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence…”). A digital journalism student was searching for experts to interview on social network scraping. The topic was inspired by an incident that sounds like an urban legend (which it might be): The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had allegedly denied two young Brits entrance to the country at the LAX airport. The reason: DHS had discovered that these social-media-addicted tourists had tweeted they would “destroy America” (party in America, in the U.K. slang).

Yet, some might argue, was that an act of privacy interference, as Twitter is a public platform? Why should the DHS not engage in monitoring social media? More broadly, as the diplomatic and military leaks by the whistler-blower online collective and site Wikileaks has made us ponder, what is the right balance between national/global security and secrecy? What are our rights as citizens, on one hand, to privacy and, on the other hand, to information?

The last weeks have also witnessed global activism that created unholy alliances of Silicon Valley and grassroots actors. As documented in this blog, the Internet mega stars Google and Wikipedia went on strike, as did individual bloggers. The controversy populated Facebook statuses, YouTube videos, and tweets. People around the globe learned about SOPA and PIPA, legislation to counter online piracy and copyright infringements that were to be decided upon in the United Stated House and Senate. Similarly, in January 2012 the international Anti Counterfeit Trade Agreement evoked protests in Europe just as the EU officially joined Australia, Canada, Morocco, and the U.S. (among others) in combat against intellectual property rights violations.

This is surprisingly close to another old idea -- the Right to Communicate -- that was brought about by the Global South in the 1970s and 80s to counter Western cultural imperialism. The UN Universal Declaration (Article 24) does respond to the right of cultural identities -- and in the same article, it addresses intellectual ownership: the right to moral and material protection of scientific and artistic authorship. SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA aim at protection of intellectual property. But the opponents of those regulatory initiatives argue that such laws and agreements hinder the openness, collaborations and innovation in the networked, borderless, global environments.

As those examples demonstrate, broadband and Internet policymaking is quite complicated. Different layers of networks (physical, content, service) are controlled by various stakeholders, there are always contested values at play, and it is a very decentralized system that cannot be solely governed by policies or regulation. It is every stakeholder’s, including users, responsibility to reshape how access is defined, measured, and put into action. Network(s), or networking, is not only a technical term but also a process of collaboration that is much needed to achieve effective Internet access for everyone. However, before embarking on this project, it is highly crucial to make sure we speak the same language of access that corresponds to the same complicated, yet more fruitful, picture for each of us.

Physical infrastructure and high-speed connectivity are a must, however making these two available only will neither provide equal access for everyone, nor deliver the promises envisioned in the policies. If the goal is to empower citizens and communities in society, access should be rethought along the lines of its multidimensionality, which is derived from using networks, knowledge, and modes of communication in various areas of life for different purposes in line with the diversity of needs and uses of various groups and individuals. Ensuring effective Internet access available for everyone is not only a difficult, but also a daunting task. However it is what policies of the 21st century to strive for to handle the complexity of networks and utilize the potential of the Internet.

Burcu Baykurt
New York University’s Media, Culture and Communication Department. Prior to NYU, she studied Political Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London where she conducted research on broadband policies of Finland and the UK.

Minna Aslama Horowitz  
Assistant Professor at St. John’s University, New York. Affiliated with the McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University, New York, and the University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research/Media and Communication Studies.

Open Data Monthly Review 01/2012

2012-02-06T09:53:00.000Z

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

25 big ideas for 2012: The open-data economy

For years, proponents of "government 2.0" have been calling for the liberation of public data. Gigabytes of information about crime, health, money and the weather are gathering dust somewhere, so why not release them so we can build civic and life-improving apps?

Neelie Kroes: Information is the new oil!

The most interesting thing for the European Commission is that so much can be done with so little when it comes to data. Opening up data that is already collected, that taxpayers have already paid for, is right for transparency, and is the cheapest way we know to unlock innovation potential. It’s the best way we know to help Europeans create the jobs and economic growth that we so desperately need.

The federal Data.gov repository experienced major gains in 2011 in the number of data sets added and downloaded and in the number of new applications and “mashups” created with data obtained from the site, according to a new report from the General Services Administration.

Another Data Play: The Next Big Sound Raises $6.5 MillionFrom IA Ventures And Foundry

We are only one working day into 2012, and already two data startups announced funding rounds. Klout confirmed its Series C, and now social music data gatherer, Next Big Sound, is set to announce a $6.5 million Series A. The TechStars startup (Class of 2009) just got backing from IA Ventures and Foundry Group. It will also be opening an office in New York City (it is headquartered in Boulder, CO).

More open data means better opportunities

The cabinet office data team looks at how public managers can make better choices with more information. No doubt many people will have made New Year's resolutions for 2012 - and a number of people will already have succumbed to the temptation to temper their original goals or maybe even have decided they don't really need to learn the bassoon.

Open Government Data: Not Just Good Policy, ButEconomically Sound

One of the easiest targets for budget cutters in a recession is governmental initiatives to make data both accessible to the public and easy to work with. For example, the budget for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's Electronic Government Initiatives was cut from $34 million in FY2010 to $8 million in FY2011. Recently Congress asked NOAA to consider charging other federal agencies for data that has historically been provided free of charge.

Open public data can drive growth in all sectors

Making data easy to access will allow citizens to be creative with public data, which can help deliver economic benefits. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude recently argued that access to data can curb public spending; but it should also be an integral part of a more ambitious growth agenda for the UK.

Editor's blog: open data approach divides publicmanagers

The government has an impressive land and property portfolio, but is releasing figures an effective strategy? Public managers have been divided about the benefits of the government's release of huge swaths of data. Can statistics alone effect change? The government hopes so. On 12 January, the Cabinet Office released data about the property owned by central government.

China to open pollution data to public

The Chinese government has stepped up efforts to make data on the country's air quality more transparent, including allowing the public to tour the country's pollution monitoring centre.

Cabinet Office appoints new open data director

The Cabinet Office has appointed Tim Kelsey as its new executive director for transparency and open data within the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG).

Open data initiative goes back to school

The Cabinet Office open data team celebrates the release of more information than ever before about secondary school education.

Privacy worries dog open data consultation

Concerns about personal privacy appeared in a "significant" number of responses to the government's consultation on transparency and open data, the Cabinet Office revealed today.

Visualization And Open Data In Helsinki

In the fall of 2011, a team of six IBM experts spent three weeks in Helsinki as part of IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge program. The program brings together an interdisciplinary team to focus on a challenge faced by a city. In the case of Helsinki, the City wanted to make the most of two opportunities. One was that Helsinki had just begun to implement an open data strategy to make city data available to its citizens. The second was Helsinki’s selection as the 2012 World Design Capital, a biennial event that promotes cities that are using design to improve their social, cultural and economic life.

Words of Appreciation for Open Knowledge Foundation

Over the past years we have experienced an increased understanding for the importance of open data. We’ve seen governments, non-governmental organizations and even private and public companies open up their data repositories. Beside the open data champions inside these entities that pushed the idea through ignorance, bureaucracy and firewalls, there has also been a lot of work done to provide guidance, standards and tools. One important contributor of such things is the Open Knowledge Foundation. The globally-located and community-focused team that nurtures communities and builds tools to promote open knowledge, data and content. I think it’s time to show my appreciation by highlighting some of their initiatives.

From Open Data To Linked Data

We live in a connected society, where devices and data are being pulled together to profoundly change business, our personal lives, society and even nations. In this introduction to this PublicTechnology.net Agenda, I want to try to outline, in non-technical terms, some of the benefits to the sector (and ultimately the taxpayer) of extracting and linking data.

IN THE BLOGS:

[DMANET] Textbook: Open Data Structures

I am pleased to announce the following open content textbooks

Open Data Structures (in Java) Edition 0.1
Open Data Structures (in C++) Edition 0.1Beta

These books, and accompanying source code, are freely available at http://opendatastructures.org/

Solving the Common Standards problem in the Open Data Space

Last year during my Open Government Data Camp keynote speech on The State of Open Data 2011 I mentioned how I thought the central challenge for open data was shifting from getting data open (still a big issue, but a battle that is starting to be won) to getting all that open data in some common standards and schemas so that use (be it apps, analysis and other uses) can be scaled across jurisdictions.

Hack the City: Dublin Takes Open Data Apps Contest to aWhole New Level

By now, just about any city with a progressive outlook has conducted an open data apps contest–inviting hackers to create applications that make life better there. But Dublin, Ireland, is putting other places to shame. Next year, its HACK THE CITY exhibition and festival will present a slew of events, workshops, installations, and mass-participation experiments aimed at exploring ways to make cities work better. “We want to leave an imprint that inspires people to think differently about how we could an should live in cities,” says Teresa Dillon, curator for the festival at Science Gallery, an initiative of Trinity College Dublin.

WOD 2012 : First International Workshop on Open Data

While being most commonly known from the recent Linked Open Data movement, the concept of publishing data explicitly as Open Data has meanwhile developed many variants and facets that go beyond publishing large and highly structured RDF/S repositories. Open Data comprises text and semi-structured data, but also open multi-modal contents, including music, images, and videos. With the increasing amount of data that is published by governments (see, e.g., data.gov, data.gov.uk or data.gouv.fr), by international organizations (data.worldbank.org or data.undp.org) and by scientific communities (tdar.org, cds.u-strasbg.fr, GenBank, IRIS or KNB) explicitly under an Open Data policy, new challenges arise not only due to the scale at which this data becomes available.

Open Government Data *wince* it’ll take a while… OpenEducation – next September? No probs

The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, today delivered a complete coup de grâce for ICT education by accepting wholeheartedly that ICT education, and indeed the cross-curricular syllabus, was fundamentally broken. He accepted that traditional methods for mending a broken bureaucratic, micro-managed education system would not address the immediacy of the problem, and so he threw it open to the floor.

Where open government data falls down: buying a trainticket

Remind me again: what's the purpose of opening up all this public data?

Ah yes, that's it. To create value. And you can't get a much stronger example of real value in the real world than showing people how to save money when buying train tickets.

What do you think of our blog?

2012-01-31T12:02:00.003Z

We would like to know how you find our Pardon My Finnish blog. We would appreciate your opinion to make our blog even better. Please fill out this small questionnaire by the end of February. The questionnaire will not take more than five minutes of your time.

We have now picked the winner of the Amazon gift card, but your opinion is still valuable for us and the questionnaire is open.

Thank you!

Amplifying Social Wellbeing by Design

2012-01-30T13:23:00.007Z

Alastair Fuad-Luke and Kirsi Haikio from Aalto University blog about changes in design

The School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University organised first workshop in London together with The Finnish Institute, as part of the 365 Wellbeing project for the Helsinki World Design Capital 2012, in order to share learning about designing for wellbeing. It was the first of the series of international seminars discussing 365 Wellbeing project as it evolves.

The objective of the seminar ‘Amplifying Social Wellbeing’ was to learn and share experiences on exploratory – critical – real life design cases and discuss the potential of proactive and socially responsible design to leverage change. The programme included talks, discussions and engaging activities. Here are some reflective comments and key things we learnt from the day.

Existing projects and design approaches

Speakers talked about academic approaches to design, design in public sector projects in hospitals with elderly people or in developing new services for municipalities.

Academia brings a tradition of critical thinking, thinking differently and projective thinking. This generates a way of seeing things as something else, a means of dissent for disrupting or questioning, a means of consent to co-build, and a means to construct new dreams (or nightmares!). Design interventions, such as Bill Gaver’s Prayer Companion or Photostroller, are a means to experiment with technology and specific people-orientated contexts and reveal one approach – what to design for them.

Ilpo Koskinen’s notion of designers being as interpretationalist “Surrealists” suggests that design can inculcate debate, transferring new ideas and possibilities, and debate spreads (new) wisdom. Design can also be grounded on a deep understanding of human dreams and needs, a capability which Aalto University has its research groups with expertise in, for example, cultural probes, empathic design, user-centred design, and co-design.

So key questions for the academics and researchers then are; ‘What is the motivation and intention of your design approach?’ and ‘Is your design approach interventionalist, provocative, aimed at causing disruption or dissent, or is it collective, collaborative and consensual?’

How do designers work with diverse actors and stakeholders?

“Underneath is a notion of…What kind of society we want to live, design has lots to say.”

What emerged through the seminar is a gradual revealing of the new roles that designers are taking on, or being asked to explore, in public sector or for socially orientated projects. Design is shifting towards (new) social clients.

365 Wellbeing offers a diversity of opportunities, contexts, actors and stakeholders to test the best design approaches, the relationship between designers, actors, stakeholders and beneficiaries.

The first 365wellbeing project, dealing with psychiatric care indicated several key roles occupied by the designers. From UK Design Council perspective Head of Design Strategy Marianne Guldbrandsen offered in her presentation a clear list of roles for designers in public healthcare projects. Also Heli Leinonkoski from City of Jyväskylä, Finland noted how design can help with changing attitudes.

These roles can be tentatively classified as follows

People-orientated - Building bridges between institutions and breaking down organisational exclusivity; preparing clients, partners and users; helping people feel connected through a facilitated neutral design space; testing prototypes with users; diminishing the stigma associated with people with psychiatric conditions; reduce the risk of trying something new or unknown.

Problem-space orientated - Questioning and critical activity; help define or re-define the problem(s) with a systematic view; help define the right brief.

Process-orientated - Bring adaptable processes; help explore how people understand their lives and how they define well-being..

Solution-orientated - Provide a ‘nurturing service’ for ideas and practicalities; provide proof by testing and evidencing prototypes.

Perhaps we could also add another category…Persuasion-orientated, or the key role that designers can play as story harvesters, collators, synthesisers and re-designers of existing stories into new stories by bringing them to life.

Developing design sensitivities, awareness and the right language

“We are designing for potential.”

The language used by the audience to describe ‘social wellbeing’ emphasised the importance of design’s impact on human relationships (sharing, values, the everyday Arki), attitudes (creative, equanimity), and feelings (joy, dignity and equanimity).

Design should encourage people to relate to each other in the everyday (environment) to maximise socialisation and participation. Design for social wellbeing must create valued outcomes, that have the potential to be dynamic so they are never stuck but can find new directions and adapt. Design can play a key role in questioning and testing the potential development of society.

Context is everything!

The importance of understanding and framing the design context was emphasised by a number of speakers and during audience discussion. Designers should feel comfortable with dealing with ‘core’ contexts (the daily ones dealt with by governments, public and third sectors) and ‘breakaway or unexpected’ contexts driven by a new need or demand. Social engagement within the context is affected by (institutional and social) structures and issues.

The relationships between context, the audience(s) and choosing the right processes are interwoven and interdependent.

Processes and solutions

“Sharing – it’s a great way to move forward.”

Processes are dynamic because different actors and designers enter and leave a continuous circle of participants, process tools and critical dialogue flowing through co-design, co-creation and co-production cycles. Designers need to think about the entry, exit and re-entry/re-exit points in the short and long cycles for a project.

Outcomes and impacts

“Everybody can have some design agency, we can take any profession; nurses, firemen, politicians…

Outcomes as solutions embed new directionality for the actors and stakeholders (and maybe the designers too) and create positive ideas for moving forward. Some consequences of the designing can be seen, other ‘unintended consequences’ or random impacts emerge. Impacts can be on systems and/or on people or both. In the context of specific communities wellbeing projects can change them from inwards looking to outwards looking, from invisible to visible and from closed to open communities. Impacts vary as there is always a fuzzy boundary between ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ self interest.

Design itself is changing

“Design has a key role, but not in a traditional sense.”

Designing for social wellbeing is actually changing how design operates and finds expression, but designers need to focus on communicating how the design has added value, how it has impacted and how it is often designing for potential by creating dynamic outcomes or systems. Designing for wellbeing implies sharing design’s processes, methods and outcomes in order that it can encourage new things to happen. This requires a certain bravery from the designers, actors and stakeholders in order to ensure that everybody can offer their own design agency to solve complex challenging problems.

While a number of approaches, techniques and case studies were examined there was insufficient time to discuss how these were transferable between cultures or indicate how they can be adapted or modified to embrace new social clients. Perhaps this can be the theme for a second seminar when more 365 Wellbeing projects have been executed.

Alastair Fuad-Luke

Professor of Practice, Emerging Design Practices, Aalto University

Kirsi Hakio

PhD student, Aalto University

The Proposed ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ Could Be a Threat to the Freedom of Speech

2012-01-23T13:44:00.011Z

Mikael Järvelin from the Finnish Institute blogs about the latest news on The United States' war against online piracy.

Last Wednesday, the January 18th, the English Wikipedia and many other significant websites blacked out for 24 hours. The blackout was a protest against The United States house bill, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and senate bill, PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), which have been put forward to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. The Proposals would ban advertising on the allegedly infringing websites, bar search engines from linking to these sites and order Internet service providers to prohibit access to these sites. The proposal would also criminalize streaming of forbidden content with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Possibly the biggest problem with these proposals is that if carried out in their current form, they would also harm perfectly legal websites. Websites that are designed to able shearing of files or videos would for example be in danger, because they enable sharing of copyrighted material. These websites would be responsible for the files that the users post on their website. The government and some major corporations, such as record companies and movie studios, would have a chance to shut down websites that hold copyrighted material. These shutdowns wouldn’t even require a hearing or a trial.

One of the biggest concerns with these new proposed laws is that they would enable censoring of websites in a large scale. The United States would enable censorship of foreign websites. This would cause a serious threat to the freedom of speech as the United States government and some major corporations could censor foreign web pages. This has even been compared to the Chinese censorship on the Internet. United States would hardly be pleased about this sort of reputation.

What is comforting is that the protests by Wikipedia and the like-minded websites really made a difference. Before the blackout, the majority in the congress had supported the proposal, but afterwards there has been more opposition than support. Some people have called protests unnecessary, because in their view the proposal was unlikely to pass anyway. Even further, some have criticized that it is overreacting to close down global service because of one country’s national politics. Nevertheless, the protest really changed minds, so it is clear that the effort was not futile.

Only two days after the protests, SOPA and PIPA were temporarily shelved. The proposals will be reconsidered, but one thing is sure. We haven’t heard the last of these proposals. They will be back soon. We can only hope, that passing of these laws will not be reality in their current form, since this could cause a serious threat to democracy and to the freedom of speech.

Mikael Järvelin
The Finnish Institute in London

A Londoner’s Experience of the First Open Knowledge Meetup in Finland

2012-01-16T15:17:00.001Z

Community Coordinator of Open Knowledge Foundation, Kat Braybrooke blogs about the first open knowledge meetup in Finland.

Last month in Helsinki, four Finns, a Russian and a Canadian huddled anxiously around a desk at Aalto University's School of Economics with a fleet of glowing laptops, finishing last-minute prep for the first Open Knowledge Finland meetup and hoping a few brave souls would show up. A few hours, 80 participants and many intriguing discussions later, I stopped in the midst of a conversation to reflect upon the inspiring Finns around me - and I realised I had witnessed the start of a movement.

I work as Community Coordinator for the Open Knowledge Foundation, an NGO that builds projects, technical tools and communities that promote open knowledge. A specific focus this year for the OKFN is to help enrich *regional* understandings of openness, which we do through building chapters, meetups and conferences that bring locals together in new ways. We have incubating open knowledge communities in over 10 locations, from Brasil to the Czech Republic, and this October's Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw saw over 400 members of 40 nations come together to build new projects and share ideas. I’m a Canadian from Vancouver, but I grew up in Las Vegas and now live in London, so I’m no stranger to this newly muddled form of international consciousness. And, like many other hybridised young people with roots around the world, I see myself first as a global citizen - and I believe in the potential of integrated digital and physical networks to support newly participatory civil societies.

While I was in Finland (my first trip so far north in my life), I found that the greatest advances in open knowledge and transparency are often introduced by citizens themselves, and that these concepts are especially strong in nations built on egalitarian principles of equal access and opportunity. I finally understood how fitting it is that Helsinki beat out 46 other cities to be named the World Design Capital for 2012 - a move that has spurred a multiplicity of new projects combining design, art, academia and technology with key concepts about openness (as seen in the neighbouring - and brilliant - Alternative Design Capital event). The city is in the midst of a key moment in its contemporary history, and I saw evidence of this everywhere I looked.

A few months ago, the first Finnish FABlab (a small-scale workshop for digital fabrication originated by MIT) opened at the Aalto University Media Factory - and over drinks last month with locals in Helsinki and at the Finnish Institute's 20th Anniversary dinner, I heard about countless other initiatives that had been started through new collaborations between public and private sectors, from OpenStreetMap Finland to the Centre for Open Source Solutions to Helsinki Hacklab to Sähköautot.

The decision of our talented Helsinki-based organisers to start working with the Open Knowledge Foundation to create a chapter in Finland was based on an observation - while positive legacies were already being built in earnest (as seen by the highly successful Apps4Finland campaign), existing initiatives often did not represent the full diversity inherent within the region's open data and open knowledge practitioners. The first Open Knowledge Meetup aimed to fill that gap by providing a welcoming space for individuals of all backgrounds and experience levels to meet in-person and collaborate.

After witnessing the results of last month's Meetup, a night buzzing with positive energy and new ideas (see photos, videos and notes from the event here: http://muistio.tieke.fi/open-knowledge-ehdotukset), I believe these aims were achieved. Participants started off by talking about the current status of open knowledge in Helsinki, and then broke into groups based on specific activities and ideas, with much discussion breaking out amongst listeners about how to best go about those actions, and how to succeed at such goals. Many of us met afterwards and continued to jam on ideas together, debating data and bytes until the early hours of the morning.

The next Open Knowledge Helsinki meetup is on the 28th of this month, and in the meantime participants are sharing ideas through the popular Open Data Ecosystem Facebook group, #avoindata hashtag on Twitter and mailing list. I know I speak for all of my colleagues around the world at the Open Knowledge Foundation when I say that I'm extremely excited to see what happens in the future.

Kat Braybrooke
Community Coordinator of Open Knowledge Foundation

Open Data Monthly Review 12/2011

2012-01-10T13:22:00.002Z

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

Kroes Pushes E.U. Open Data Policy

Legal proposals have been announced which will make what European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes in her blog calls a “treasure trove” of public data available with minimal charges for anybody to access and use. It is a move she says will stimulate a market worth tens of millions of euros as well as increasing transparency of governance.

Open data push is essential for growth, says Deloittereport

The use of open data could be a critical factor in determining the success or failure of the UK's growth agenda, according to a report from business advisory firm Deloitte.

Opendata, Google style

Which countries in the world have the highest debt? Where do people release the most CO₂ into the atmosphere? Are there any signs that inflation is rising in Europe? How is the provision of broadband facilities progressing? Open data, publicly accessible data that is usually released by government institutions, can provide answers to such questions – if the data can be found and analysed.

City of Burlington Launches Open Data Pilot Project

The City of Burlington is opening another access point to city information with the launch of an open data pilot project called Open Data Burlington. As a part of their ongoing e-Government strategy and commitment to enhancing transparency and accountability to residents, this pilot project will study how open data will work for the city, including the benefits to the city.

Open Data: U.S. House Will Make Legislative Docs MoreAccessible To Public

This morning, the House of Representatives took a tremendous step into the 21st century when the Committee on House Administration unanimously adopted “Standards for the Electronic Posting of House and Committee Documents & Data."

Open data platforms, innovation hubs among Africa'stop tech stories

From 2009, fiber optic cable deployment falling connectivity costs have dominated Africa's tech headlines. This year, the focus shifted from infrastructure to content and value added services to capitalize on investments, as both the public and private sectors provided incentives to developers. Technology is expected to be Africa's growth frontier and government services have been cited as a major driver, providing opportunities for business growth and better citizen participation.

Challenges to EU's Open Data Strategy

The government has been commended for, but warned about the implications of its new open data strategy. Commentators have stressed the importance of data quality and data manegement in operating the enormous vault of information held by the government, as well as recognising the importance of data sharing for economic competitiveness and public sector costs.

Mayor Emanuel Must Shed Old Paradigms for TrueTransparency Reform

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is under fire for his office's denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, with critics in the local and national press and blogs taking the mayor to task for shielding public records from public view. Underscoring this lapse in transparency is Emanuel's vow to foster "the most open, accountable and transparent government that the City of Chicago has ever seen." Cities like Boston, Phoenix, and Seattle all routinely release such information, according to reporting by the Chicago Tribune's David Kidwell, implying that they do transparency better.

OpenStreetMap: The Next Wave Of Commoditization ForStartups?

One of the striking features of some of the most successful startups over the last ten years – companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter – is that their infrastructure is based almost entirely around open source. Of course, that shouldn't really be surprising: open source allows people to get prototypes up and running for the price of a PC, which is great for trying out ideas with live code. And yet despite these zero-cost origins, open source software scales up to supercomputing levels - the perfect solution for startups that hope to grow.

iSOCO Collaborates With Ikastea, the New Portal of the Basque Country Educational Community

Alongside the Basque firm Teccon, the IT company is responsible for developing the web platform of the Basque Government Department of Education, Universities and Research. Ikastea is centralising the large flow of information and educational resources available in a single site, segmenting content according to the target audience and enabling the participation of students, parents and teachers. The portal brings together the various sources of the educational universe and incorporates a variety of initiatives such as Open Data.

IN THE BLOGS:

From open data to public data

Is open data just a glorified form of publishing or can its benefits go beyond transparency and reusability? How do you take open data beyond the realms of traditional publishers and data sources and spur people affected by the data to participate and contribute new ideas/data about development (and in effect become open data/development partners)?

Whatit will cost to free the rest of UK government data (spoiler: £0)

First, the good news. The UK government has made good on its promises to release open data across government in 2011, and this year has seen a dizzying sequence of open data announcements, most recently in the Open Data Measures in the Autumn Statement. Not only has the government opened the data, but it has put in place institutions (like the Transparency Board), portals (like data.gov.uk) and funding (through Technology Strategy Board). This is all profoundly good news and has enabled the growth of a cadre of open data companies like Cycle Streets, Open Corporates and my own company Placr. We are racing to build new companies built on the open data and we are already paying taxes that go back into the Exchequer, offering free services to the public and value-added offerings to businesses.

A Christmas Carol 2011, or How the Ghost of Open Data Showed Finland the Future

2011-12-23T10:45:00.012Z

Institute's Fellow Antti Halonen writes about open data development in finland and encourages people to use their data wranging skills for the good of society and democracy.

Last few weeks have been truly remarkable in terms of the development of open data in Finland.

In midst of the on-going discussion in the UK on the necessity and feasibility of Public Data Corporation (or Public Data Group, as it is apparently called nowadays) and potential setbacks that might cause for open data, Finland has taken bold steps towards opening up their data sets.

As noted in our previous post, the National Land Survey of Finland had decided to open up significant amounts of mapping data, a move that would be arguably one of the most progressive open data initiatives in Europe. Ministry of Finance had, however, initially decided to block the move. It alarmingly looked like Scrooge had come up victorious and Tiny Tims of Finland would be left without their Christmas data.

After an aggressive campaign by both open data activists and later the Finnish media, the Finnish government eventually decided to overrule the ministry’s decision and release the data as the Land Survey had originally suggested. The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Jari Koskinen, even stated that “it would be irresponsible not to exploit this opportunity for growth”. Data sets will thus be opened up in May 2012 for a free re-use for all public.

There is a reason to celebrate, but this is only the beginning.

In a wider scale, what we don’t yet really know is how open data is being used. In case of the UK transparency agenda the number of spending data users is lower than expected, and it is often quoted that there needs to be more context in data in order to facilitate better use of data.

Mapping data has exactly that context; it is relevant for citizens’ everyday lives and people can quite easily understand it. Therefore it is crucial that developers really seize the opportunity when the data finally is opened up next year: data has value only in its use.

It is not only developers who should step up and recognise their responsibility in further developing open data ecosystem. The rest of us need to find new ways of measuring the multiple positive impacts of open data on society, if we are to continue evangelising in a credible manner. Economic impacts are widely recognised but much more important is the impact on democracy. How to measure that impact remains relatively unclear.

Moreover, potential data users need to be nudged into fully capitalising their potential of using data for common good. The reality is that the number of data users is still quite low and they tend to use data mostly for personal reasons: they have to have some personal gain from the use. More altruistic motivations need to be supported.

In order to achieve the expected benefits, some concrete ways of facilitating the use needs to be developed. One potential way to further facilitate open data in Finland might be to start up a comprehensive data catalogue and encourage data providers both from public and private sector to adapt it. Another one might be to provide more education on data and programming skills. Public sector organisations have vast amounts of relevant data and might be willing to open them up, but don’t yet necessarily know how to do it. Likewise, many citizens would be interested in using data, but don’t have sufficient data wrangling skills.

The Ghost of Open Data is a powerful force, but alas, we can’t rely on that for too long. The on-going momentum needs to be capitalised and that means more work and probably more lobbying of public officials and politicians. Most of all, it needs a) someone to download new and shiny data sets and create wonderful services that benefit the whole society and b) someone to tell the rest of us why this is necessary for the society and our democracy.

Not necessarily the smallest of tasks.

Antti Halonen

Fellow at the Finnish Institute in London

Could European Open Data Strategy be a lever for change in Finland?

2011-12-16T12:14:00.006Z

Institute's Fellow Antti Halonen writes about the European Open Data Strategy and the possibility for change in Finland.

By the time of writing this, the Parliament of Finland is just about to start to discuss the issue of opening up data of the National Land Survey of Finland (Maanmittauslaitos). The on-going debacle has been arguably the most visible case of open data discussion in Finland up to date.

Case has its roots in the current Finnish government programme, which states that government further facilitates the opening up of publicly funded data sets. In November, the Land Survey announced that it would release all their mapping data in an open and freely re-usable format, thus losing 1,5me in annual sales profits. Opening up of these data sets is, however, expected to release significant social and commercial value, which would eventually exceed that immediate financial loss. Moreover, if completed, the move would be unprecedentedly progressive open data initiative in the scale of the whole Europe. The Ministry of Agriculture has already approved this, but one single department of the Ministry of Finance has reportedly decided to block the initiative.

There are couple of interesting points to be made.

Firstly, as i.e. Poikola has argued, is the question of political accountability: elected politicians have decided to support open data, but unelected officials effectively vetoed against it. Moreover, the civil servants from other ministries and even different departments of the Ministry of Finance appear to back the initiative. There is a possibility that this is mostly a question of power and where it lies: in the hands of accountable politicians or a few individual civil servants, who don’t even want their names in public.

Secondly, there is the wider European framework and how this Finnish case fits it. Vice-president of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, announced recently the new European open data strategy, which includes a complete revision of PSI Directive 2003 and will supposedly further enhance the status of open data in the Union and its member states. So far the Brussels’ whip has not been strong enough and there have been cases where member states have used several loopholes in the Directive and kept data behind closed doors, or behind the paywall, as is the case in Finland.

Further Brussels-led regulation is not particularly popular idea at the moment, but it will be interesting to see whether the Finnish Land Survey vs. Ministry of Finance case could prove to be a testing point for the new European data initiatives, when they eventually are concretised into a new Directive and new regulations.

Back in the Finnish parliament, the Minister of Finance, Jutta Urpilainen, has promised to take the matter into discussion with her ministry, but in reality’s sake, one must bear in mind that the minister probably has her hands full of Eurozone crisis at this time. There is a strong possibility for a nasty scenario, where open data gets buried under a pile of more urgent matters if the case is left for the ministry to handle by itself. Moreover, it very well may be summer already when the European open data initiative concretises into action and Brussels’ watchdogs can start gazing over reluctant member states, albeit the fact that vice-president Kroes explicitly encouraged member states not to wait for legislative changes but to start to release data immediately.

As civil society actors, we should be able to find potential solutions on how to influence the ministry in this matter, if we truly find open data important enough objective to pursue. It is quite likely that the Land Survey case will be the test of strength for the Finnish Open Knowledge community, which has begun to find itself of late.

Antti Halonen
Fellow at the Finnish Institute in London

Open Data Monthly Review 11/2011

2011-12-01T11:47:00.005Z

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

HP and CA Technologies Join Data Center Organization Open Data Center Alliance
Data center industry organization Open Data Center Alliance announced on Thursday that HP and CA Technologies have joined the organization. Now, ODCA now includes representation from more than 90 percent of the virtualization software market and more than two-thirds of the server hardware market, according to the report.

Monmouthshire council uses open government licence
Monmouthshire council has opened up data on its website to allow the public to create "useful apps" and re-use its information freely. The council has decided to adopt the UK government's open government licence, which provides for the re-use of public sector information with a number of conditions attached.

Next week is ‘Open Data Week’
The Irish Internet Association will next week hold an “Open Data Roundtable for Open Government” at the National Library of Ireland as part of Open Data Week, which will also include a series of events in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.

Top user companies accelerating cloud adoption, says user group
Year-old Open Data Center Alliance includes firms that represent $100B-plus in annual IT spending. The Wild West era of cloud computing is ending. So says cloud computing's new sheriff, a user group called the Open Data Center Alliance.

Open Data initiative moves into the world of consumers' personal data
The Open Data initiative took another huge step forward on Thursday 3 November with the launch of a new initiative that will enable consumers to gain unprecedented access to personal data from banks, utilities, telecoms providers and a range of other companies.

Open data 'new way of operating', says Francis Maude
Transparency is a new way of operating and the public sector is now more accountable to the public, aided by the release of more than 7,500 datasets, including 800 plus geographical linked datasets via data.gov.uk, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has said.

App-lying open data
Interested in the city's budget process? There'll soon be an app for that.
The City of London in partnership with UnLondon kicked-off a contest Thursday night at APK Live downtown that will see Londoners design a digital engagement tool to help others follow the 2012 budget process.

€27bn public data opportunity highlighted
The Obama administration, the British cabinet office and four Dublin local authorities are the “poster children” of a growing worldwide movement to unlock public data, according to researchers at NUI Galway.

The Open Data Center Alliance aligns with other alliances
The Alliance partners with Cloud Security Alliance and The Green Grid to tackle cloud and next-gen computing and data center models.

Open data used to defraud the government – report
Criminals are using open government data to defraud local councils, according to a new report from the Audit Commission. Local councils are obliged to publish details of any expenditure worth over £500. According to the Audit Commission's report, that data was used to defraud local councils to the tune of £7 million last year.

Digital Realty Trust to Integrate Open Compute Designs for Multi-tenant Data Centers
Data center developer Digital Realty Trust announced on Friday it has joined Facebook's Open Compute project, where it is adapting its multi-tenant data center designs so that customers are able to choose certain elements of the Open Compute designs, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.

Students win government open data competition
Downing Street has awarded prizes to university students in a competition to design apps based on newly released government datasets. The winning applications developed tools to help citizens to choose schools, report local eyesores and find local hospitals with the shortest accident and emergency waiting times.

Cameron and Maude praise students' use of open data to create apps
Students who have used government data on areas including health, education and the environment to create "revolutionary" applications have been praised by David Cameron at a Downing Street event.

Commission will adopt measures for an open data strategy
The European Commission will adopt on the 29 November an Open Data Strategy which means a set of measures aimed at increasing government transparency and creating a €32 billion a year market for public data.

Ireland unveils open data and eGovernment plan
he Irish government plans to embrace open government by increasing public access to government information, creating an open-data portal and improving data sharing across government agencies, it says in a Public Service Reform Plan published Nov. 17.

Open Data Institute to be built near Silicon Roundabout
Having scrapped the Institute of Web Science promised by Gordon Brown, government gives Berners-Lee and Shadbolt an open data research centre
The government will announce a number of open data initiatives tomorrow, including a new Open Data Institute near 'Silicon Roundabout'.

EU takes step toward open data
Civil Liberties Committee backs amendment demanding open access to EU documents, written by Labour MEP for West Midlands.

Ministry of Justice praised for opening up court data
An unbarred access to court data is a great leap forward for transparency in the UK, say campaigners.

UNDP opens financial data to public
Members of the public can now access financial data on the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) development activities for the most recent fiscal period, thanks to a new open data portal.

IN THE BLOGS:

Eaves.ca: International Open Data Hackathon Updates and Apps

The Guardian: All about Open Data and Open data: it's all in the app and The vital role of local councils in embracing open data

Open Enterprise: Of Open Data Startups and Open Businesses

Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: Finland Joins our Global Open Data Community and Open Data Day – a project I’d like to be doing and Scaling the Open Data Ecosystem

Opensource.com: The state of open data 2011

Ushahidi: Democratizing ICT for Development with DIY Innovation and Open Data

COMMENTS ON OPEN DATA:

Angela Guess: An Open Data Ecosystem

Alexander Howard: Apps for Entrepreneurs Looks to Accelerate Startups With Open Data

Nick Judd: Here's One Way Open Data Could Just Cost You More Money

Charles Leadbeater: Social media, open data and the future of government

Patti Prairie: Open Data for Real People

Mark Say: More carrot and stick needed for open data

Open Data Monthly Review 10/2011

2011-10-31T14:21:00.002Z

A review of latest news and blog posts in the field of open data.

IN THE NEWS:

RTI Supports QinetiQ's Leadership in Developing World's First Open Data Model for UK MOD
Real-Time Innovations (RTI), The Global Leader in DDS, today announced that it, among other open-standards companies and a broad range of industry participants, supported QinetiQ in the development of the Land Data Model for Def Stan 23-09. The U.K. Ministry of Defence (MOD) had chosen QinetiQ as leader of the Vehicle Systems Integration (VSI) Group, which consists of defense contractors based in the U.S. and U.K. The VSI Group was tasked with applying open-standards-based architectures to land-based defense platforms.

Television Archives Join Linked Open Data Movement
The EUscreen project has recently taken steps to expand the scope of its aim to provide unified access to large integrated digital collections related to European television history. By implementing the Linked Open Data principles and by signing the new Europeana Data Exchange Agreement, the materials that are made accessible through the platform have become more widely searchable, findable, linkable, and thus more connected to the world wide web, its users… and the machines that link them together.

Iceland to Open Data Center Powered by Renewable Resources
British data hosting company Verne Global has commissioned telecommunications group Colt to build a data center powered entirely by renewable energy in Iceland. The parts will be fabricated in the U.K. before being shipped to Iceland.

Google to Open Data Center in Dublin, Irish Official Says
Internet search company Google Inc. (GOOG) will create 30 full-time jobs in a new data center in Dublin, Irish Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said Friday.

Holding the fort: developing a new Civilservice.gov.uk
A website for the UK Civil Service was re-launched on Friday 30th September. This site is the primary means of communicating what the constitutional role of the UK Civil Service is, what it does and the codes it is bound by.

Open data activists cry 'betrayal' on Maude's corporation
Plans for a new public data corporation are a "bodge" and a "betrayal" of the government's pledges on open data, a coalition of transparency activists claimed.

Stockholm goes ‘open data’
The City of Stockholm will release the source code around some so-called application programming interfaces, and give access to some of the city’s many databases.

Open data study finds variations in housing prices in prestigious neighbourhoods of Helsinki
The street, the floor, and the prospect of upcoming refurbishments and renovations on the property are three aspects that a buyer of an apartment considers when deciding on whether or not to pay more for a new home than the average level for the neighbourhood.

The world’s biggest open data event
Hundreds of public servants, NGOs, journalists and developers will gather in a former factory building in Warsaw this week for what will be the world’s biggest ever open data event.

Open data: beware the empire striking back, insiders warn
Two central figures of the UK government's initiative to open its data for re-use have warned of the risk of ministers being thwarted by reluctant or apathetic bureaucrats. "There is a real risk of the empire striking back," Andrew Stott, the government's first director of digital engagement and a former deputy chief information officer, said last week.

Dublinked to support open data for businesses
Irish businesses and communities are being given the opportunity to tap into data collected by the Dublin regional authorities through a new online portal, which it is hoped will generate new business opportunities. The Dublinked initiative promotes open data, and facilitates access to information including planning application data from across the region, air and water pollution maps, noise maps, parking and traffic volumes.

The Europe's biggest open data event will count with the European Commission participation
Participants from over 40 countries around the world will meet at one of the biggest open data event, the Open Government Data Camp 2011, that will take place on 20-21st October in Warsaw, Poland. Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and Digital Agenda Commissioner will be one of the speakers at the opening ceremony.

Esri includes OS Open Data into Community Base Map
Ordnance Survey’s (OS) small and mid-scale OS Open Data products are to be included in Esri’s Community Topographic Base Map (CTBM).
In 2010, Esri created the CTBM for geospatial data holders, such as governments and organisations, to contribute information to.

Socitm slams plan for Public Data Corporation
Socitm has come out against the government's plan to create a Public Data Corporation, claiming that it will do more for existing institutions than the public's right to data. The organisation for public service IT professionals has made the criticism in its response to the government's consultation on open data, which closes today.

Open data plans 'fundamentally flawed'
Local authorities still 'struggle with the business case' for publishing their data for free re-use, according to the professional body of IT managers. In its responses to twin Cabinet Office consultations on open data, the Society for IT Management (Socitm) calls on a new government approach with more emphasis on joined up public services and less on "armchair auditors".

Facebook Seeks Free Love Among Data Center Giants
Facebook іѕ dead hοnеѕt аbουt building common standards fοr efficient hardware іn thе data center. On Thursday, thе social networking giant launched thе Open Compute Foundation, аn industry association thаt aims tο reduce thе cost аnԁ environmental impact οf thе computers thаt rυn fаntаѕtіс swaths οf thе Internet. Thе foundation formalizes аn effort thе social media giant ѕtаrtеԁ іn April, whеn іt ѕtаrtеԁ thе Open Compute Project (OCP).

Government to close open data consultations
People with an interest in government transparency and open data have been urged to voice their opinions quickly before two major consultations on the area are closed. Making Open Data Real, which looks how the government should make open data part of its every day business, and a second consultation on the new public data corporation are both to close on 27 October.

IN THE BLOGS:

Blog about Stats: Open data: Waiting…

ckan Blog: Warsaw and the ODGcamp CKAN presentation

CTOEdge: Open Compute Plus Open Data Center = A Better Cloud?

eaves.ca: The State of Open Data 2011

eFoundations: Two UK government consultations related to open data

Europeana: Open Data in the cultural sector: Cultural heritage data in Europeana

Freedominfo: Views on Open Data Contrast During ICIC Sessions

The Guardian: Best bits: open government Q&A and The future of open data?

Inside Higher Ed: The Promise of Digital Humanities

Microsoft Research Connections Blog: Open Data for Open Science: The Rise of X-Informatics

Newswireless.net: Open Data consultations

The New York Times: Behind the Oracle-Salesforce Cloud Brawl

Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: Open Data: Wishlist for the Next Year and Tracking the Sustainability of Open Government Data and Transparency Board urges widest possible response to UK data consultations

Pardon My Finnish: Open Data – Who cares?

Talis Consulting: Will Europe’s National Libraries Open Data In An Open Way?

Yawning Bread: Beyond freedom of information lies open data

COMMENTS ON OPEN DATA:

Cambridge Now!: Agenda From The Most Recent Waterloo Regional Council Meeting of October 5th

Jason Hibbets: Surfing the open data wave

Toni Preckwinkle: Good Government Through the Looking Glass: Transparency and Accountability

Adrian Short: Why Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part of the web underclass

Christopher Smith: Profiting from open data

W. David Stephenson: Why open data standards make good sense, now more than ever