Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
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 claim is for information that does not need to be directly understood by the
individuals, but processed by the machines. The idea is that public information
is ready to be used also in software and applications, which recombine it and attribute
new senses to it.
The concept of open governmental data, therefore, is related to the understanding
that the way the governments make their information available shall allow the
collective intelligence to create better forms of working such information than the
government themselves could. A simple example of how this can work is the one
of the urban traffic control centrals. It is possible to ensure a better management of
public information, and also some optimization of resources, if the centrals keep
their resources to manage traffic, release data in open formats and let the citizens in
charge of using the information and communication technologies and the network
to produce maps and graphics illustrating the situation of traffic in a distributed and
self-managed form.
Also regarding the definition of open governmental data, one should observe
that the process of production of knowledge on the subject is much influenced by
the network dynamics. The eight principles conceived in 2007 were created in a
decentralized meeting of activists for an emerging cause, discussed through a Wiki
platform, disclosed by a video in YouTube and much disseminated through the
Internet. The three laws of David Eaves were posted by him in his blog, and the
amount of feedback received motivated him to launch, two months later, a call for
the collaborative translation of the article 8 .
In May 2009, also by means of collaboration and in a self-managed way, the
participants of Government 2.0 Camp, a disconference on electronic government
and its relations with the so-called web 2.0 wrote the 10 measurements for open
government: One more concept that aligns with the idea of transparency in the networked
public sphere. The first of these ten measures: Open data, was reproduced in
the blog of Sunlight Foundation as follows: “Open the data: The federal government
must make all data searchable, findable and accessible” 9 . In the sequence, the other
measures approach other characteristics of the open governmental data: Release data
8. Available at http://eaves.ca/2009/11/29/three-laws-of-open-data-international-edition/. Accessed
in Feb/2010.
9. Full version available at http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/04/05/top-10-measurementsfor-transparency/.
Accessed in Feb/2010.
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