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CC and Government
This webpage tracks developments and provides information about the use of Creative Commons licences by government agencies at all levels – local, State/Territory and Federal - in Australia.
Government is the area of greatest adoption of Creative Commons in Australia. From the Australian Bureau of Statistics releasing all census data under CC Attribution licences to the Australian Government releasing the entire 2010-11 Budget under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, more and more government agencies are using CC licences to distribute their copyright materials.
Want to know more?
Follow CC in Government AU on Twitter at: @govCCAu or search for the hashtag #govCCAu for updates. See our related project site, Access to and Use of Public Sector Information (auPSI), aupsi.org. Or check out the Australian section of the Government Use of Creative Commons page on the CC International wiki.
Finally our Guide to Applying Creative Commons Licences to Government Material has been developed to assist government agencies apply Creative Commons licences to their copyright materials when distributing them. This guide explains how copyright law applies to government material, how copyright can be managed to facilitate beneficial open access practices by government and how Creative Commons licences can be used to achieve open access to government material. You can also download a DRAFT version of the guide from QUT ePrint repository. We welcome your comments so please help us in creating a better guide for everyone.
Category Archives: Government
Access to public sector information: law, technology & policy – Volumes 1 & 2 Book Launch
Professor Brian Fitzgerald of the QUT Faculty of Law invites you to the launch of these two volumes.
Please RSVP to Elliott Bledsoe by Friday, 2 July 2010, by phone on 07 3138 9597 or e.bledsoe@qut.edu.au. Continue reading
Posted in Events, Government
Tagged Brian Fitzgerald, Gov 2.0 Taskforce, Innovation Review, Kate Lundy, Nicholas Gruen, PSI, Terry Cutler
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The Australian Parliament goes CC – with v3.0
Hopefully most of you have seen the official launch of the Australian v3.0 licences earlier today.
We’re very pleased to announce that the licences, only a few hours old, already have their first significant adopter. A couple of weeks ago the Australian Parliament officially announced, via the Australian Library and Information Association’s mailing list, that it will be porting its central http://www.aph.gov.au website across to a Creative Commons v3.0 BY-NC-ND Australian licence. This is the website which houses all the most important documents of the Australian Federal Government – including all bills, committee reports and, most importantly, the Hansard transcript of Parliamentary Sittings – so this is a major move for the Australian Government.
Credits—Photo: ’Parliament House‘ by Ryan Wick, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Show us the money! Oz Budget under CC
In the debate over the merits of last night’s conservative budget, there’s one thing we’d argue Swan did get right – the licensing.
The entire budget has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. This means the material it contains – the deficit strategy, the fiscal aggregates, the government’s responses to the economic crisis – is all available for free reuse, by anyone, for any purpose, as long as the source is attributed.
A single document, even one that’s 350 pages long, may not seem like that big a deal compared to some of the other open government initiatives over the last few years – like the release of the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s entire store of census data under CC. But as a public endorsement of CC as the licence of choice for the Australian Federal Government, it’s huge.
Following the strong support for open access in the government’s response to the Gov 2.0 report last week, this is a great show of the government putting its money where its mouth is (sorry, I couldn’t resist). In fact, the last week has seen the release of three major Federal Government reports – the Budget, the Gov 2.0 response and the NBN Implementation Study – all under CC licences. This seems to be a great indicator that the government really means what it says – open access is going to be the default position for the Australian Federal Government from now on.
Bring on the remixes, mashups and YouTube tributes!
Update: And for those interested, a couple of good articles on the budget’s CC licensing by Craig Thomler and Computerworld
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Australian Federal Government Commits to Open Access
Design by Ben Crothers of Catch Media CC BY 2.5
Big news from the Australian Federal Government on the issue of access to public sector information (PSI).
CCau followers will remember the Government 2.0 Taskforce report released in December last year, which gave Creative Commons a very big tick as the licensing model of choice for Australian PSI. The Federal Government’s official response to the report was released yesterday and is generally positive, with the Federal Government agreeing (at least substantially) to 12 of the 13 recommendations to come out of the report.
CC-licensed online education package wins AIMIA Award
We just found out that the Budd:e e-security education package published by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy won the Best Children’s interactive media and digital content category at 2010 AIMIA Awards.
The Budd:e package, which incorporates activity-based modules for primary and secondary school students was developed by Roar Film. Plus, all materials in the package are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia licence. That includes video footage of ccAustralia’s own Elliott Bledsoe.
Here’s what the judges had to say about it:
“Address the ever increasing importance of internet awareness and etiquette through a fun, interactive and stimulating way. Targets its audience well and conveys key messages and provides learning in an effect but indirect way.”
Congratulations to Roar and to DCBDE on the win, and for releasing the package under CC!
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$100,000 (in prizes) to play with the Victorian Government’s data
Just a quick heads up that the Victorian government has announced that it will be launching a competition over the next few weeks to encourage people to engage and make use of its government data, with over $100,000 worth of prizes to be won.
The competition echoes Mashup Australia, which invited people to remix data from the CC-licensed data.gov.au site. It saw over 80 new applications over the course of a month – lets see if we can do even better for the Victorian government.
We’ll let you know when the competition is officially launched – in the meantime, Mashup Australia veterans, or anyone who missed out last time, now’s your chance to get ready. Continue reading
Posted in Government
Tagged data.gov.au, Mashup Australia, PSI, Victorian government
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Victorian Government commits to CC licensing
As mentioned in our previous post, today is a very significant day for free culture in Australia, with the Victorian Government becoming the first Australian government to commit to using Creative Commons as the default licensing system for its public sector information.
The commitment is part of the Government’s response to its Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee’s Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data, which recommended that the Victorian Government adopt a “hybrid public sector information licensing model comprising Creative Commons and a tailored suite of licences for restricted materials.”
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by Brian Giesen, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Kookaburras, Bittorents and CC commitments – a big day for copyright in Australia
If you have an interest in copyright chances are that you, like us, have spent much of today getting excited by the two big copyright cases that were just handed down by the Australian courts.
For anyone who missed it, Judge Cowdroy of the Federal Court has handed down a decision that Australia’s third biggest ISP, iiNet, is not responsible for authorising copyright infringements undertaken by Bittorrenting clients. The decision is very long, but it is also well written and thorough, and we’re impressed with Cowdroy J’s common sense approach, with statements like “There does not appear to be any way to infringe the applicants’ copyright from the mere use of the internet” and “The law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another.”
Credits—Photo: ’Laugh Kookaburra Laugh‘ by -just-jen-, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Posted in Government
Tagged Bittorrent, Federal Court of Australia, iiNet, ISPs, Justice Cowdroy, Justice Jacobson, Men at Work, Victorian government
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Government 2.0 Taskforce gives CC a very big tick
Design by Ben Crothers of Catch Media CC BY 2.5
This is a bit belated, as it was released in 22 December – but we thought people would like to hear about the final report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce and its fabulous CC recommendations.
Headed by well know economist Dr Nick Gruen and including representation from the public, private and academic sectors, the Taskforce was launched in June by the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, to advise the Australian government on “increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information” and “encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.”
Over the last few months it’s been everywhere – running competitions, public forums, seemingly endless blog posts.
Now the Taskforce has released its final report – Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 – and pretty impressive it is too, with an excellent summary of the current state of play for Australian government online – the goods and the bads.
Key findings of the report, which is published by the Finance Department, include:
- Public agencies and public servants should engage more using the tools and capabilities of ‘collaborative web’ or Web 2.0. Forming or join existing online communities of interest around issues of relevance to government policy, service delivery and regulation will help public agencies and their officers become more informed, responsive, innovative and citizen-centric.
- Once public sector information is liberated as a key national asset, possibilities — foreseeable and otherwise — are unlocked through the invention, creativity and hard work of citizens, business and community organisations. Open public sector information is thus an invitation to the public to engage, innovate and create new public value.
- To seize the opportunities of Government 2.0, the existing public service culture of hierarchical control and direction must change sufficiently to encourage and reward engagement. Yet it must at the same time, stay true to enduring public service values of impartiality, propriety and professionalism.
Most importantly from our point of view – the report (which is under a CC BY licence) wholeheartedly endorses Creative Commons Attribution as the default licence for government material. In fact, it contains a page and a half long recommendation (no. 6) which spells out exactly how open content licensing can, and should, be made central to Crown copyright policy.
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Posted in Government
Tagged CC BY, CC BY Aus, Government 2.0 Taskforce, Lindsay Tanner MP, Nick Gruen
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More on Government Data – Geoscience Australia goes CC
We know we’ve been publishing a lot about licensing of government documents and data of late, but there really has been so much happening that we just can’t resist. This week’s story is one we’ve actually been meaning to post about for a while.
As of late November Geoscience Australia has officially adopted Creative Commons Attribution as the default licence for its website. This means more than 18 877 products available through the website, including 3690 datasets, are now free to be reused, repurposed and remixed, including for commercial purposes – as long as you attribute Geoscience Australia as the original source, of course.
Credits—Photo: ’Shattuck_23096-1, Uluru, NT‘ by SouthernAnts, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Posted in Government, Science
Tagged Australian Bureau of Statistics, CC BY, CC BY Aus, Geoscience Australia, PSI, Stuart Girvan
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Gov 2.0 report – they want your opinion
Today sees the release of the draft report from the Government 2.0 Taskforce for public comment.
Those who have been following our posts will remember that the Taskforce was launched in June by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner MP to advise the government on “increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information” and “encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.” Since then the Taskforce has undertaken an impressive number of initiatives is a very short amount of time, from their national consultation roadshow to the amazingly successful Mashup Australia competition.
Headed up by well know economist and commons expert Dr Nick Gruen, other members include a number of familiar names for the CC community – Assistant Secretary for the Digital Economy Branch at the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and former General Counsel for Creative Commons International Mia Garlick; Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse Museum Seb Chan; and our own Creative Commons Australia lead, Professor Brian Fitzgerald.
The draft report includes a number of recommendations relating to Creative Commons – in fact, it’s mentioned 67 times. The most significant CC reference is probably the Taskforce’s recommendation on extending opportunities for the reuse of government information, which is summarised (at p.xii) as follows:
By default public sector information (PSI) should be made available on the following terms:
- Consistent with the need for free and open re-use and adaptation, PSI released should be licensed under the Creative Commons BY standard;
- Where ownership does not rest with the Commonwealth, or is shared with other parties, agencies should seek to ensure its release under Creative Commons BY;
- From June 2011 all agencies that enter into new agreements with third parties should ensure publication under a Creative Commons BY licence;
- Copyright policy should be amended such that if published or unpublished works are covered by Crown copyright, the works should automatically be re-licensed under a Creative Commons BY licence at the time at which Commonwealth records become available for public access under the Archives Act 1983.
Comments on the draft report are due by 16 December (ie next Wednesday). As an interesting aside, they’ve set up an excellent consultation page, with the ability for people to comment on each paragraph in an open platform. Making it all the more easy to have your say.
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Queensland Museum – adding to the free photo movement
Three women going to the opera, Bert Roberts early 1900, Queensland Museum, 
We’ve posted before about the growing movement for cultural institutions across the globe to provide open online access to public domain images in their collections. And Australian institutions have been up there in the thick of the charge – the Powerhouse Museum, for example, was the second institution worldwide to join the Flickr Commons initiative, and has now been joined by four other Australian institutions. As a result the public can access archives they may otherwise never have seen by using only the click of a mouse.
Now the Queensland Museum has joined the party, uploading a test batch of 20 high resolution images from their collection for free online access. But what makes this initiative particularly interesting that it’s being conducted in collaboration with Wikimedia Australia and they’ve chosen to upload the photos to Wiki Commons, rather than Flickr Commons.
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Posted in Arts and Creativity, Education, Government, Images
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Bureau of Meteorology to release water data under CC
Photo: Zen Water by darkpatator
For Australia water (or the lack of it) is a big deal. So big in fact, that the Commonwealth Government saw the need to establish a national initiative for monitoring and publishing water data. Charging the Bureau of Meteorology with the task, their Improving Water Information Program will aggregate hundreds of other government departments’ and agencies’ information into the National Water Account, an integrated, national water monitoring and data collection service. And the Bureau are encouraging their partners to release their data under Creative Commons.
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Posted in Government, Science
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