Submission to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER), Government Reform Unit Open Data Licences Consultation Paper

Abstract

The Programmable City is a European Research Council (ERC) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded social science research project under the directorship of the primary investigator (PI) Professor Rob Kitchin. The project is based at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA), National University of Ireland Maynooth. Dr Tracey P. Lauriault, is a post doctoral researcher and a member of the open data PBWG.

Dr Lauriault solicited input from data experts at the AIRO, IQDA, Dublin Dashboard, NCG and the Programmable City to inform this response. These organizations rely on public data to inform research and public policy, they add value to these data by creating analytical products such as maps, charts, reports, papers and software. In addition, they collaborate with public bodies to disseminate their data, to transform data for re-use, and to make them tangible and accessible to the public. The NCG collect and manage their own data in addition to doing primary research with government data and developing open source software. The IQDA neither creates nor uses government data, but is a repository of primary date collected by social science researchers.

The following briefly discusses how each of these 4 institutions and the Dublin Dashboard work with data and how intellectual property issues are addressed. This will be followed by responses to the Issues for Consideration in Section 4 of this submission.

Keywords: Open data, open government, DPER, licence, DPER, AIRO, IQDA, NCG, Dublin Dashboard, Creative Commons, Programmable City