I’ve been at FOSS4G 2009 here in Sydney for the last few days.  This has been an exceptionally interesting conference and given that Sydney is a long way for many people, there has been a very good turnout.

Thursday morning I chaired the morning session where we heard very interesting speakers.  The first speaker I had the honour to introduce was Senator Kate Lundy who has represented the Australian Capital Territory in the Australian Parliament since 1996.  Senator Lundy is currently Chair of the Joint Standing Committee for the National Capital and External Territories and a long-standing active member of the Senate Environment,  Communications and the Arts Committee.  Most importantly she is a strong advocate of the internet, digital technology and ICT innovation as an important driver of the Australian economy. 

A favourite web site of hers that I find very innovative in a Web 2.0 sense is the National Archives of Australia site called Mapping Our Anzacs, where the public can not only retrieve information about the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (which took the brunt of Winston Churchill’s unsuccessful Gallipoli campaign in the First World War), but can contribute their own relatives’ wartime experiences to a public scrapbook or create a tribute to relatives or others who participated as Anzacs in the war.

I have singled out a couple of things that Senator Lundy said  because they appear to represent a clear statement of government policy with respect to Government 2.0 and open geospatial data.

Government 2.0

The current government appears to be a major supporter of government 2.0, which is seen as an enabler of openness, transparency, and accountability.   But Senator Lundy stressed that making government data open and available to citizens not only provides for more transparent government, but it also creates opportunities for innovation which in turn drives economic development.  Senator Lundy said that “as has been evident in the US for many years, open access to government data can dramatically increase the value created from the data both socially and economically. This means the society as a whole benefits from access to the data.”

Open Geospatial Data

I have blogged previously about initiatives in the Government of Queensland and the Victorian Spatial Council about enabling open access to government data within government and outside of government.  But Australia has not yet established open and free access to geospatial data as has happened in the US at the federal level, California, Canada, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, and other jurisdictions.  Senator Lundy supports open access to data and in her presentation listed several initiatives the current government is undertaking to move in the direction of making geospatial data publicly available.  One thing in particular she said suggests a comittment on the part of the current government to establishing a policy of open access to geospatial data. “The Australian Special Minister of State has articulated the government’s view that the default position of government ultimately ought to be that all public sector information should be available online unless a case can be made not to release it. This view has been echoed in several portfolios and we have currently before parliament a Freedom of Information Bill and a Bill for the establishment of an Information Commissioner. These bills begin these reforms and provide the framework for future progress in this crucial area of public policy.”