This is a guest post from reader Isabella

Have you ever wanted a government organisation to be less opaque?
Or thought “if only we could get the data on that…”?
Or admired some gorgeous datavis and wanted more?

Now’s your chance! Get your ideas in BY WEDNESDAY 24TH to shape New Zealand’s Open Government Action Plan.

This dull-sounding document is important: it’s the plan for the work in local and central government to open up publicly funded data for reuse, and to open up government processes for better accountability, transparency and creativity. There’s more every year, and it’s getting better and faster. Help steer it!

Transportblog readers, bloggers, commenters and all – this is you.

We need people like you to be able to see into government’s decision-making processes and subject them to the praise, censure and improvement they deserve.

We need people like you to be able to get data on things that matter and turn them into insightful information and juicy, juicy knowledge.  So…

  • If you’ve ever had an idea for how the government – local and central – should be more open, go here and tell ’em.
  • If you’ve ever had an idea for a neat open data project, go here and write it down.
  • If you’ve ever known anyone else who’d have these ideas, send them here and tell them to write.

And do it soon! the engagement is only live til end of Wednesday 24th. (though you can be involved longer term – see here)

Want some background?

They say:

“The Open Government Partnership (OGP) recognises that government can be more effective when citizens are aware and involved in building an open society.  The focus of the partnership is on developing a two-year National Action Plan between citizens and government, and the government is currently running a process to develop New Zealand’s second plan.  One of the guiding principles for the plan is the innovative use of technology to be more transparent

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is an international programme where the governments of 70 countries have committed to becoming more open, accountable and responsive to citizens.

New Zealand joined the OGP in 2014 and is now developing its second National Action Plan (NAP) to identify the best approaches to open up government and data, over the next two years.”

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one comment

  1. I remember working in a city where they made bus on-time running data public.

    However they gave the data to the bus operator one month in advance of making it public. To give them a chance to respond.

    In that month on-time running improved spectacularly, and i understand has remained high ever since.

    Main message? Even the threat of public scrutiny of PT performance was sufficient to motivate changes.

    Pride and ego can, in the right circumstances, be wonderful motivatimg forces.

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