Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Case for Open Data by the Australian Information Commissioner

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra where  John McMillan, the Australian Information Commissioner, is giving the keynote address for the "Big data, big opportunity" conference. Professor McMillan pointed out that the "G20 ANTI-CORRUPTION ACTION PLAN 2013 - 2014" made a glancing reference to open data (but I could not find it). He also compared the Australian Government's open data policies unfavorably to those of the USA and the UK. He also pointed out the the Australian Government plans to close down his office (the is the second case of the head of an agency doing important work which the Australian Government is shutting down). The Commissioner pointed out that an IP address can be used to identify a person and so is personal information (this seems an oblique reference to the discussion of meta-data access by security services).

 This is a PHD conference, where the program is mostly research students presenting their work in short snappy presentations (along with some keynotes by celebrities).One I am looking forward to is ‘Putting a Value On It’. The value that New Zealand educational entrepreneurs plan to create, Steve Thomas.

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