Open Knowledge Forum on Civic Information No. 2

Organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the UCL faculty of Computer Science (Ian Brown)

Web page: http://www.okfn.org/okforums/civicinfo2/

Speakers

• John Sheridan, Head of e-Services at the Office of Public Sector Information
• Heather Brooke of Your Right to Know
• Julian Todd of http://www.publicwhip.org/ on “Other publicwhip-type projects I’d like to see and why”
• Richard Pope talking about scraping a planning database in Brixton/Lambeth and Love Music Hate Racism’s use of PledgeBank

Where and When

• When: Tuesday 28th November, 1845 for 1900 start
• Where: UCL (London), Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building G08
  • The Roberts building is immediately opposite waterstones at the intersection of Gower Street and Torrington Place. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/about-ucl/location/maps/campus_2006_screen
  • Map of UCL within London (note that the Roberts building is at the bottom of the block shown as UCL on this map)

Registration

Attendance is free but please register at:

• http://www.okfn.org/okforums/civicinfo2/

Any problems (or additional information) email info [at] okfn [dot] org.

Subject Matter

This forum will focus on open ‘civic’ information. Civic information is material produced by government or other groups which is relevant to political activity by citizens. In particular it includes:

1. The law be it in the form of statutes or judicial decisions
2. Statements of elected representatives at the local and national level (for example the records of parliament in the form of Hansard).
3. Information about the activities of elected representatives and other governmental officials

As with the first forum on civic information our focus will be on both:

• projects and software that work to produce or make available open information
• the legal and social issues involved in obtaining and providing such information

Motivating all of these efforts is the goal promoting greater public involvement in the democratic system and increasing the accountability of a government to its citizens.

About the Open Knowledge Forums

Promoting open information – getting it, using it, sharing it

The Open Knowledge Forums are a series of informal gatherings centred on the subject of open information/data. It aims to bring together those /producing/ and those /campaigning/, and to cover everything from software to the law. The sessions are usually held in the evenings in London and their format is to have talks by three or four different people followed by a general discussion.

The Open Knowledge Forums are organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation: http://www.okfn.org/

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