By Siu-Ming Tam Australian Bureau of Statistics May 2009 Informing the Nation – Open Access to Statistical Information in Australia
A 20-year journey From charged to free access –Cost recovery policy from1987 –Free PDFs in June 2005 –Free on-line statistics in Dec 2005 From “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved” –Open licensing framework –Attribution 5, Australia of Creative Commons in Dec 2008
Why free access? Free to choose one’s own affairs Choice requires decision making Good decision making requires information Open access to information removes the cost barrier for access Hence better decision making –Mission of NSOs Not everything is free, however.
Free vs charged services
The ABS website averages 1.5 million page views per week 5.5 years to double from 30 million page views to 60 million before 2005; and only 2 years to double after 2005 Information is widely accessed
Why open licensing? More high value added information products –“All rights reserved” vs “Some rights reserved They assign subset of copy owner’s rights to the user, unlike traditional information licences –Created through mixing and matching with Google Maps with geographical information Increased visibility –Filtering of user rights by search engines
What is Creative Commons Best practice a non-profit organisation Becoming more popular –In 2008, estimate 120 million works licensed, grew by 30% over the previous year
Creative Commons 4 types of categories –Attribution –Non-commercial –No Derivative –Share alike, i.e. with the same license for derived works
Creative Commons Six licenses – Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivatives –Attribution/Non-Commercial/Share Alike –Attribution/Non-Commercial –Attribution/No Derivatives –Attribution/Share Alike –Attribution
Creative Commons – Australian version Moral rights legislation –Licensed works cannot be derogative or prejudicial to the original authors’ reputation
How did ABS do it? Organisational support Agencies support New approach signified by –Updated copyright statement A CC image and link to license on the footer of every web page –Copyright and CC logo at end of every page printed
ABS Creative Commons licensing project adding "injector" software to downloadable files license stays with the file even after downloaded from the website Data is permanently licensed when injected with CC
Issues for discussion Questions Should more statistics be made free of charge on your website? Should opening licensing framework be used for NSO’s statistics?