Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

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c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
The principles presented above ensure that the availability of governmental data
is oriented to enable the appropriation of such data by the citizens, who can reuse
them in the network. Recombined, recontextualized and exhibited in various manners
— counting, for such, on the possibilities of automated processing, of granularity
and primarity of the databases — the information obtains value, and becomes
representative of different realities and forms of thinking.
Another series of principles for the definition of the concept of open governmental
data is of authorship of activist David Eaves. On September 30 th , 2009, in an
event during the Right to Know Week 5 , Eaves presented the Conference for Parliamentarians:
Transparency in the Digital Age. The objective of the panel was “to engage
parliamentarians in the debate and in the reflection on the new paradigm that
the digital world inaugurates for the right to information. Greater transparency in
the digital age requires more information management and more use of the state-ofart
information technologies. It calls for a fundamental change of attitudes, since the
immediate release of information up to the management of information with the
consciousness that the availability becomes the common procedure. How can the
public institutions start and accelerate such changes in benefit of the Canadians?” 6 .
As part of this panel, Eaves presented to the parliamentarians his three laws of
open governmental data: “If the data cannot be added by ‘spiders’ or indexed, it does
not exist; if the data are not available in open and machine-readable format, they do
not engage people; if a legal support does not allow the data to be recombined, it
does not grant power to the citizens.”
The laws proposed by Eaves 7 are directly related to the technical possibilities
guaranteed by the network. Machine-legibility, mentioned two years ago, in the
eight principles conceived in 2007, presents a change of paradigm in comparison to
the idea of transparency out of the context of the networked public sphere.
Different from claiming from the government’s clear information and wellcontextualized
data to ensure visibility of what happens inside the institutions,
5. Event that gathers schedules and meetings related to right to public information, in Canada. Available
at http://www.righttoknow.ca/. Accessed in Feb/2010.
6. Available at http://www.righttoknow.ca/en/Calendar/events-e.asp?date=9/29/2009. Accessed in
Feb/ 2010.
7. Original version available at http://eaves.ca/2009/09/30/three-law-of-open-government-data/. Accessed
in Feb/2010.
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