Brianna Laugher

Broad open access to PSI is a wonderful idea that it seems the government is now starting to explore. This is commendable! The thing about it is that people cannot imagine what is possible. When you make such data available it will have knock-on effects that you can't anticipate ahead of time. Some things are predictable -- for example, open licensing would allow the Wikimedia projects to make far greater use of Australian data. One example of this is photography. In the US all works created by the federal government are ineligible for copyright (ie public domain) by default. This means the Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia have a very large number of excellent photographs from US departments such as the military and NASA. People complain that this is "US bias" but in fact we would use the photographs that any government made available. But to be compatible that must allow modification and commercial use (eg. public domain, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA). So don't forget about the great impact PSI can have on the "third sector", non-government organisations. I think public sector information should be licensed CC-BY or placed in the public domain. Government is by the people, for the people -- so should government data be!