

French PM releases the G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan for France - rhl
http://www.etalab.gouv.fr/article-french-prime-minister-releases-the-g8-open-data-charter-action-plan-for-france-121016042.html

======
rhl
At the last G8 Summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland this past June, the
Chiefs of State had agreed on an Open Data Charter committing their respective
governments to make efforts to bring more open data online in machine-readable
formats.

Today France releases its action plan for the implementation of the Charter,
and specifically commits to releasing more governement datasets and APIs for
hackers and startups to experiment with.

Specifically, we're committing to:

\- progressing towards publishing data openly by default,

\- building an open platform to encourage innovation and transparency,

\- developing Open Data policy in consultation with citizensand civil society,

\- supporting open innovation in France and throughout the world.

I'd be very interested in HN's feedback on how useful this can be for you, and
what else you'd like to know about our Open Data policy and how we're trying
to improve it!

~~~
wrongc0ntinent
Could you point to the source of the "hackers and startups" quote? Didn't find
it in the main article. (Edit: sorry if this is on a tangent) (Edit 2: well, I
didn't think it was a downvote-worthy tangent, considering the word's
connotations debate and this being an official govt url)

~~~
rhl
Our objective to support "hackers" and the startup ecosystem is mentioned
under Commitment #4 (supporting open innovation in France and throughout the
world).

~~~
mackwic
I know that nicknames are here because of anonymity and so on, but can I ask
you who are you to say that ?

In the current context, I can hardly see any window for introducing disruptive
innovation (I mean it, there is room for that) in France. Those who wants
don't have money (mayors, univs, scientists), and those who have don't want it
cause of so many reasons (employment would be the first).

Stays the middle-size societies, where the entry ticket is damn so high and
who are busy too think about the next tax that will be
created/canceled/rebranded/transformed/increased/wasted.

~~~
rhl
Of course! My name is Romain Lacombe and I'm the head of innovation for the
French Prime Minister's taskforce Etalab (data.gouv.fr) for Open Government
Data, which was created in 2011 by the former government and was reinstated by
the current one.

Whether or not there is room for disruptive innovation for France, only the
future will tell -- and those who build it. :)

All I can say is that we're hard at work to make the most of the
transformative power of open data and direct collaboration with hackers and
startups, and this plan is a significant commitment from our government which
I wanted to share with the HN community for constructive feedback.

(PS for what it's worth: I'm an entrepreneur myself, launched a venture-backed
startup in the Valley in 2008-2010 myself which was later acquired.)

------
weddpros
That's pure bs: www.data.gouv.fr is full of XLS and DOC documents. No raw
data, only aggregated statistics. Useless.

Documents and data are not the same...

I'm french, and NOT proud of it

~~~
rhl
Hi Weddpros -- thanks for the feedback. As it turns out, we agree with you.
That's why we've been working on a complete overhaul of
[http://data.gouv.fr](http://data.gouv.fr) to be soft-launched soon, and we
think you'll like it!

If you've followed [http://etalab.gouv.fr](http://etalab.gouv.fr) (mostly in
French, sorry), you may have heard we launched an open and collaborative re-
design process in the spring and summer, which lead to more than 60
substantial contributions and 9 events organized by our community of users
throughout France.

We then brought in a team of hackers to work inside of government -- believe
it or not, this is most likely the first instance of this in the French
government; unsurprisingly it worked very well -- and redevelop the whole
stack based off of CKAN.

Our code is live on
[http://www.github.com/etalab](http://www.github.com/etalab) if you'd like to
check it out. Stay tuned!

~~~
weddpros
is there a hidden meaning ?

[http://imgur.com/34ui71g](http://imgur.com/34ui71g)

~~~
weddpros
It was a temporary bug, your github is back online.

Building on the OpenSource CKAN project is a good thing. Similarly, you should
thrive to help people build on OpenData.

What really concerns me is the actual data that's made available, more than
the technology used to serve it.

For the time being, it looks more like electronic document management than
OpenData to me. The philosophy behind OpenData is not just "let's put office
documents online", it should be more "let's see what they'll do with our
data". Otherwise, where's the innovation? (except for the ideology)

~~~
rhl
Completely agree with the "let's see what they'll do with our data"
philosophy!

The three stated objectives of France's open data policy are: 1\. to make
government more transparent and accountable, 2\. to improve public policies
and public service delivery, and 3\. to enable entrepreneurs and civic
innovators to develop create new services based on this data.

That's why we've brought together more than 30 key players in the French
innovation ecosystem (VCs, angels, research institutions but also media,
larger French corporations, Google, Microsoft etc.) and organized a series
data-driven startup contests called DataConnexions.

You can check the best projects from the first 3 editions (from early 2012
onwards):
[http://www.etalab.gouv.fr/recherche/?query=dataconnexions](http://www.etalab.gouv.fr/recherche/?query=dataconnexions)

My personal favorite is an app developed jointly with the Greater Paris
transport authority that uses context-based modeling to predict train
occupancy levels at each time of the day, in real-time, taking into account
any perturbation on the network and live feedback from users:
[http://tranquilien.com](http://tranquilien.com)

------
kh_hk
Link to the license under which the data will / is being released. Pretty ok!

[http://ddata.over-
blog.com/xxxyyy/4/37/99/26/licence/Licence...](http://ddata.over-
blog.com/xxxyyy/4/37/99/26/licence/Licence-Ouverte-Open-Licence-ENG.pdf)

~~~
rhl
Thank you!

We developed the "Open Licence" in consultation with citizens, the Open
Government Data community in France (Wikimedia Foundation, Regards Citoyens,
etc.), and governments worldwide (the Transparency Team at the Cabinet office
in London) during a series of more than 50 workshops and meetings in 2011.

Glad you like it. Feel free to send feedback and/or <3 to my team mate
Alexandre Quintard (@AlexandreQK) of Etalab (data.gouv.fr).

~~~
kh_hk
Using it on the recent public feed of data from JCDecaux on the latest
iteration of my project [1], hope I am referencing the license accordingly! On
the source I am referencing the link to the JCDecaux website, but could to
etalab easily :)

[1]:
[http://staging.citybik.es/networks/velib](http://staging.citybik.es/networks/velib)

EDIT: Forgot to add, I should also release my data under a license and have
contemplated using the "Open Licence", but I am not yet sure on what will suit
best.

------
veganarchocap
That's a nice ethos to adopt as a government, but he can't ignore the
crippling taxes his government have instated since taking up office. I feel
very sorry for business owners in France at the moment.

~~~
jobigoud
Open data and open source encourage the commons and sharing. Taxes goal is to
have everyone contribute to common good. I see more of an alignment than a
contradiction. Remember that taxes are poured back in public transportation,
hospitals, social security, etc. (Not measured by PIB). Also remember that
what you read about in the media is biased by those that are unhappy.

------
samolang
That's great, but with tax rates of 75-100% for the rich I have a hard time
believing they'll attract a lot of serious entrepreneurs.

~~~
vmarsy
I'm not sure there's a lot of entrepreneurs starting with an income greater
than a million € though!

~~~
samolang
Nobody starts a company for the initial salary.

