by Dr Andrew Chen – Data flows around the world as computers trade in 0s and 1s, silently making decisions that affect all of us, every day. Meanwhile, we humans shout louder than ever before, spreading news and opinions through social media, polarising society and pitting ourselves against each other. What are the quiet, hidden...
‘Automating Inequality’ author set to speak in Auckland and Wellington on the impact of technology, data and algorithms on the poor and working-class. US-based professor and writer Virginia Eubanks will visit New Zealand in March for a series of events promoting her new book Automating Inequality and discussing the impacts of technology and big data...
Come along and hear from Kaitlin Thaney, Director of Mozilla Science Lab about the future of open research practice. We will also hear from people in universities, government, and the private sector who are active in open practice. As a inaugural director of the Mozilla Science Lab Kaitlin Thaney fosters an ongoing dialogue between the...
Daniel Strypey Bruce [This is a piece from a member the Creative Commons Aotearoa NZ community., and is licensed CC-BY-SA. If you want to write for us, please email matt@creativecommons.org.nz.] When Land Information New Zealand officials, prompted by the support in NZGOAL for free culture CC licenses, started liberating the publicly-funded map data they hold...
By Deborah Fitchett, Digital Access Coordinator at Lincoln University. The movement to open up research data is gaining momentum. Both publishers and funders are starting to require researchers to publish their data at the same time as the results and conclusions they’ve derived from it. Most recently, the National Science Challenges’ Request for Proposals (pdf)...
By Josh Wright In June 2011, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) launched the LINZ Data Service (LDS), a web-based tool which allows users to map and download LINZ data. LDS licences most of its data under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand licence. We sat down and had a chat with Manager Jeremy Palmer...
On his blog Econometrics Beat, Canadian economist David E Giles describes the open presentation of Statistics New Zealand’s (SNZ) data online: “This isn’t just a collection of boring spreadsheets. It’s a valuable and serious piece of data research.” He’s right—SNZ have been pioneers in maximising transparency through the open licensing of many of their datasets,...
By Josh Wright Since the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework was approved by Cabinet in 2010, NZ government agencies have released nearly 2000 datasets to data.govt.nz under a Creative Commons licence. There are a bunch of reasons for this to happen. First, open data is more efficient, as it makes it easier...
By Holly Grover In July 2009, the Ministry for the Environment started to release its datasets under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, becoming one of the first New Zealand government agencies to do so. The process started in 2007, when MfE found themselves with a range of expiring license agreements for the distribution of some...
Last week saw the release of the 2013 Report on Agency Adoption of the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government, which directs all Public Service departments (and others) to release their high value public data under a Creative Commons licence. The report noted that agency uptake of NZGOAL is steadily increasing, with sixty-nine percent of...
