Hello everyone,
You are now reading my first real post, with quote, comments and opinion on gov20 as I did not feel comfortable enough with discussing issues on that matter before.
My interest started during the Opendata barcamp at La Cantine, Paris, a french co-working space. I first heard there the topics I am now intensively documenting on, with a french point of view and there are slight differences, you will tell.
I will post in english for now as I am still seeking for information, analysis, comments and obviously the experts and feedbacks comes from overseas.
This blog aims to identifiy worldwide egov initiatives and applications and follow the french egov developpment (sic).
Indeed, we are still taking our time on this matter. There is a european directive concerning open data but it has not been transcripted in french application yet and the moto is: not obligatory ? not necessary.
It does not mean we’ve been lazy, we have actually done what we do best: we created an administration of open data called APIE. It has launched a proposal of licences and is (probably?) working on opening data by 2012 in France. It is not quite clear, but reading their website it seems to me they are planning on charging data access.
Tim O’Reilly wrote a guest post on Techcrunch on the topic of Gov 2.0 Summit. His points was that Gov 2.0 should aim to be a platform for citizens to build on.
“Too often, we think of government as a kind of vending machine. We put in our taxes, and get out services: roads, bridges, hospitals, fire brigades, police protection… And when the vending machine doesn’t give us what we want, we protest. Our idea of citizen engagement has somehow been reduced to shaking the vending machine.”
We are right here.
“Can we imagine a new compact between government and the public, in which government puts in place mechanisms for services that are delivered not by government, but by private citizens? In other words, can government become a platform?”
We want to go right there.
[...] Despite all of this, the global movement for openness has recently taken a radical turn thanks to the data.gov projects, the 2007 EU INSPIRE Directive (planned to be transposed in France in June 2010) and Sweden’s initiative to promote eGovernment projects during its presidency of Europe. All of these seem to have triggered some change within French government’s view of public data and some things have started to change. [...]
[...] En dépit de cette situation, un virage en direction de l’ouverture a été pris récemment par les autorités. Probablement grâce à l’apparition des différents projets data.gov anglo-saxons, des projets européens ont vu le jour comme la directive européenne INSPIRE en 2007 (dont la transposition française est prévue pour juin 2010) ou l’initiative de la Suède pour promouvoir les projets d’eGouvernement durant sa présidence de l’Europe. Il semble que ces différentes initiatives aient attiré l’attention des autorités françaises et que les choses commencent tranquillement à changer. [...]