CC and Government

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.

Our CC & Government Guide: Using Creative Commons 3.0 Australia Licences on Government Copyright Materials has been developed to assist government agencies apply Creative Commons licences to their copyright materials when distributing them. The guide explains how copyright law applies to Australian government material, how copyright can be managed to facilitate beneficial open access practices by government, how CC licences can be used to achieve open access to government material, and provides practical step-by-step guidance for agencies and their officers on licensing and use of government copyright materials under CC 3.0 Australia licences.

The Guide and its related factsheets are available at QUT's ePrints repository under a CC BY 3.0 Australia licence:

• Checklist
• Factsheet 1 - Is this material protected by copyright?
• Factsheet 2 - Who owns copyright?
• Factsheet 3 - Can CC be used on material already licensed to a third party?
• Facthsheet 4 - Can CC be used on material which includes material owned by a third party?
• Factsheet 5 - Can this material be licensed under CC?

A Guide written in relation to version 2.5 of the CC Australia licences is available at QUT's ePrints. This Guide remains available as version 2.5 has been applied to extensive government copyright materials to date.

If you would like to read more about our research in this area, please see the following publications:

Fitzgerald, Anne M., Hooper, Neale, & Fitzgerald, Brian F. (2010) The use of Creative Commons licensing to enable open access to public sector information and publicly funded research results : an overview of recent Australian developments. In Bourcier, Danièle, Casanovas, Pompeu, Dulong de Rosnay, Mélanie, & Maracke, Catharina (Eds.) Intelligent Multimedia : Managing Creative Works in a Digital World. European Press Academic Publishing , pp. 151-174.

Fitzgerald, Anne M., Fitzgerald, Brian F., & Hooper, Neale (2010) Enabling open access to public sector information with Creative Commons Licences : the Australian experience. In Access to Public Sector Information : Law, Technology & Policy. Sydney University Press.

Fitzgerald, Anne M. (2010) European Public Sector Information Platform Topic Report No. 13 - State of Play: PSI Reuse in Australia.

Hooper, Neale, Fitzgerald, Anne M., Barker, Tim, & McColm, Graham (2006) Government information licensing framework project stage 2 report. The State of Queensland (Queensland Treasury), Brisbane. (Note: this is the earliest report on our research which examined the potential for use of CC licences by government agencies and is the foundation stone for the subsequent work that we did in this area.)