In particular two things happened this week:

1.  The UK Conservative Party, announced it was hiring Tom Steinberg (founder of mySociety) to help them make Government open and more efficient.
2. I finally fixed my bike intercom and started to catch up on all the podcasts I’ve missed for the past 3 months, I put the thing on shuffle and what should turn up as the first track but this CBC Spark interview with Councillor Andrea Reimer from Vancouver talking about their experiences in launching their own “Open City” initiative and how they went about it.

Neither of these are significant on their own, but it’s great evidence of the importance of the role of open government data in a modern society.

It’s great to hear this stuff in the headlines, but a commitment of 20 data sets within 12 months?  Seriously?  The US have 592 posted on their Data.Gov site and it’s only been on-line since May.  I wonder if the reason behind such a low target is the nervousness of the cultural change (inside and outside of government) that this will require.

Anyhow, the trawl through all of this lead me to this great quote from David Eaves on the Three Laws of Open Government Data:

The Three Laws of Open Government Data:

1. If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
2. If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
3. If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower

This is great advice for all of us and it’s something we should all have at the back of our minds as we wrestle with making Open Government happen.