Science Library Pad

Problems with audiobook voice control interoperability on smart speakers

Telling your smart speaker to play one of your audiobooks seems like an obvious use case.

And indeed it is supported.  But with vendor-specific lockin only.  Each vendor will only let you voice control audiobooks from their own store.

I'd like to see the library tech community do an interoperability lab test for voice control of audiobooks on smart speakers.

Amazon smart speakers

The Amazon voice assistant Alexa can control audiobooks on Amazon smart speakers (e.g. Amazon Echo), but for Amazon Audible only (Amazon owns Audible).

See Audible (an Amazon Company) - Voice Commands for Listening on Alexa Devices.

Google smart speakers

Google's voice control is called Google Assistant, and it can control audiobooks on your Google smart speakers (e.g. Google Nest or Google Home), but for Google Play audiobooks only.

See e.g. Listen to audiobooks on your Google Nest speaker or display and Google Assistant Help - Listen to audiobooks.

Apple HomePod smart speakers

Information below for iOS 17 / iPadOS 17 / HomePod 17.

The situation with the Apple HomePod is even stranger, as it does not currently have any built-in Siri support for playing audiobooks from Apple Books.

It currently only supports voice control of Apple Music and Apple Podcasts.

Oddly, you can use Siri to CarPlay audiobooks in your car no problem though.  See Play audiobooks with CarPlay.

Sonos smart speakers

Sonos supports three voice assistants: Sonos Voice Control, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.  This would seem like an awesome way to have multiple services available together, just distinguished by saying Hey Sonos, Hey Alexa, or Hey Google.  But that's not how it works, you have to pick one assistant and that's the only one that will be active (I can't see any technical reason why this should be the case, but it is).

However, on Sonos the voice assistants can't control audiobooks.  So you can connect your Sonos to your Amazon Audible account, but you can't use Amazon Alexa to control the audiobooks (again, there is no technical reason why this should be the case).

See How can I listen to Audible using the Sonos app?

Audible with Alexa integration is not currently compatible with Sonos devices.

Similarly, you can't use Google Assistant to control audiobooks on Sonos either.

A nonsensical mess

This is a nonsensical mess.  These services should all just interoperate.

Libby, Spotify and Audiobooks.com

There are other major sources of audiobooks, including OverDrive Libby used by most libraries, Spotify audiobooks, and Audiobooks.com (I think Audiobooks.com is owned by Storytel, it has had a chain of corporate owners).

SIDEBAR: If this looks like a diverse market, the underlying source for most audiobooks is Amazon Audible.  END SIDEBAR

As far as I can tell, there is no support for voice control of Libby or Spotify audioboks.

Audiobooks.com does have an Alexa skill with a long but reasonable command string e.g. "Alexa, ask Audiobooks dot com to play my book" but I assume this only works on Amazon smart speakers.

September 2023 - Apple HomePod 17 "Third-Party Music Services"

Apple has just, as in just this month in HomePod software version 17, released support for Siri integration with "third-party music services", by which it means anything other than Apple.  This is basically a standard way for Siri to start and control an AirPlay session from an iPhone or an iPad (I don't know if it would work from an Apple TV or a Mac).  It requires iOS 17 / iPadOS 17.  In essence Siri gains the capability to run what are currently manual steps of launching an app on a device, then selecting the content you want to play, and then selecting AirPlay to your HomePod.

Technical Details - SiriKit Media Intents

Apple puts the onus on the apps for "third-party services" such as Audible, Google Play, Libby, Spotify and Audiobooks.com to code support for Siri audiobook control.  This is done using Siri Media Intents.  I found it was clearly explained in the Apple WWDC2023 session Integrate your media app with HomePod (video).  There is specific support for podcasts and audiobooks.

This is actually a good standardized API to make a universal experience across different services.  One can hope that the other services will add this support. 

Technical Details - Personal Voice Recognition

Unfortunately, depending on AirPlaying from a device means that Apple has to be able to tell which device, and to know that you're authorized to play content from that device.  This means that you have to enable what Apple calls Personal Requests for HomePod, a service that requires Recognize My Voice to be enabled.

This means e.g. you won't be able to ask HomePod to play content for someone else, I don't think there is a concept of other authorized users.  If I understand how this works, if your grandfather wants to play audiobooks from his iPad, only he can request it from HomePod (which is also going to make setup and testing more challenging).

HomePod 17 - Whither Apple Books?

It seems like Siri should be able to play Apple Books directly on-device without the elaborate hoop-jumping of AirPlay to an iPhone or an iPad, but at a minimum one would expect Apple Books to be a demonstration of support for the SiriKit Media Intents needed to play audiobooks.  It's not clear if this is the case yet in iOS 17 / iPadOS 17, which is kind of puzzling.

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Crossposted to my tech blog.

Chan Zuckerberg Open Science

Information about Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) Science can be found at

https://chanzuckerberg.com/science

In particular, under "Our Approach to Supporting Projects", there is context about the CZI perspective on Open Science

https://chanzuckerberg.com/science#Approach

• Intellectual Property Should we build an IP portfolio, or should IP be generated by a CZI-supported investigator or research project, our policy is that the IP should be made freely available for academic and noncommercial use. Where IP is developed together with other organizations, we will promote non-exclusive licensing of technologies so that they have the broadest reach and impact.
• Data sharing and software We are deeply committed to developing and using platforms that disseminate data openly and freely. We are also committed to releasing software under maximally permissive open-source licenses, and developing software collaboratively in the open through sites like GitHub. We are committed to the long-term sustainability of our projects – when needed, we will explore alternative ways to ensure data access through permanent archives. Also when needed, we will work with regulatory groups to ensure that data requiring protection or controlled access are handled in a controlled and proper way in agreement with national and international standards.
• Publication We support full publication without conditions or restrictions on academic and publication freedom. We strongly encourage, and in some cases, may require, researchers to deposit manuscripts as preprints before peer review to increase access to research findings and to communicate results more quickly.

There is some additional text in the RFA for the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network, in the Collaboration and Open Science section

CZI supports open science values and principles. To accelerate scientific discovery and collaboration and rapid dissemination, CZI supports a consent, sharing, and publication policy for open and rapid dissemination of research results and a policy for software development that maximizes accessibility, reuse, and shared development.

You can also watch Dr. Cori  Bargmann, the President of Chan Zuckerberg Science, present a 2018 AAAS plenary entitled Accelerating Biomedical Research

http://players.brightcove.net/53038991001/Byx2STOH0_default/index.html?videoId=5736045412001

Previously:
April 25, 2017  Chan Zuckerberg - Meta and preprints

Canadian National Chief Science Advisor competition announced

Canada's Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan has announced the competition is open for the position of Chief Science Advisor (CSA) to the Canadian government.

Applications can be made through the Governor in Council appointments process.  Closes January 27, 2017.

The news release provides additional information:

• The Chief Science Advisor will report to both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Science.
• The Chief Science Advisor will be responsible for providing scientific advice to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Science and members of Cabinet.
• The office [of the CSA] will be supported by a team of scientists and policy experts.

Video of the announcement is available on Facebook.

The role of the CSA (formerly called "Chief Science Officer") is as indicated in the Ministerial Mandate Letter.

The letter says "Create a Chief Science Officer mandated to ensure that government science is fully available to the public, that scientists are able to speak freely about their work, and that scientific analyses are considered when the government makes decisions."

The job posting says "The Chief Science Advisor's main function will be to advise the government on how to ensure that government science is fully available to the public, that scientists are able to speak freely about their work, and that scientific analyses are considered when the government makes decisions."

Innovation Strategy consultation in Canada

the Government of Canada will focus on six areas for action:

• promoting an entrepreneurial and creative society
• supporting global science excellence
• building world-leading clusters and partnerships
• growing companies and accelerating clean growth
• competing in a digital world
• improving ease of doing business

press release - Building an inclusive and innovative Canada - June 14, 2016

The Innovation Agenda will look at how to strengthen applied research while promoting partnerships with businesses so that the knowledge and discoveries generated in the lab make their way to the market.

In other words, support for world-class research is critical to making innovation a national priority.

Speech: Launch of Innovation Agenda – Minister Duncan (Minister of Science) - June 14, 2016

The ideas market has launched, you can follow the short link for more information at canada.ca/innovation which will take you to the ISED site http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/062.nsf/eng/home or go directly to the ideas market site at

http://nationofinnovators.ca/index.php?lang=en

You can see the ideas under category Global science excellence at http://nationofinnovators.ca/ideas?view=ideas&layout=1pagetwocol&challenge_id=2

You can also tweet ideas, using hashtag #CdnInnovation

As well, the government has opened a two-week window of consultation on Reddit, which I think means it will close July 6, 2016.

There was a National Press Gallery event (which the above speech is from) and a Canada 2020 event at the Chateau Laurier.  The Canada 2020 event was livestreamed and the archive is available on YouTube.

I particularly recommend the presentation by Zayna Khayat, which runs from  41:44 to 57:50.  This link will start the video at that time: https://youtu.be/XwyRybnBiMI?t=41m44s

A reminder that the innovation strategy consultation is running in parallel with three other potentially-relevant consultations:

• consultation on support for fundamental science
• consultation on draft Open Government Action Plan 2016-2018 (including open science) closing June 30, 2016
• consultation on revisions to Access to Information closing June 30, 2016

immediate open access as the default by 2020 - European Council

The European Council - Competitiveness Council met May 26-27, 2016 with a two hour discussion about open science on the 27th.

Their conclusions on "The transition towards an Open Science system" (document 9526/16) have been published, of which particularly notable are

12. AGREES to further promote the mainstreaming of open access to scientific publications by

continuing to support a transition to immediate open access as the default by 2020, using the

various models possible and in a cost-effective way, without embargoes or with as short as

possible embargoes, and without financial and legal barriers, taking into account the diversity

in research systems and disciplines, and that open access to scientific publications should be

achieved in full observance of the principle that no researcher should be prevented from

publishing; ...

 

14. UNDERLINES that research data originating from publicly funded research projects could be

considered as a public good, and ENCOURAGES the Member States, the Commission and

stakeholders to set optimal reuse of research data as the point of departure, whilst recognising

the needs for different access regimes because of Intellectual Property Rights, personal data

protection and confidentiality, security concerns, as well as global economic competitiveness

and other legitimate interests. Therefore, the underlying principle for the optimal reuse of

research data should be: “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.

A high-level summary of the discussion and conclusions can be found on pages 12-13 of document 9357/16, Outcome of the Council Meeting, including

The Commission is deploying efforts on the development of a European Open Science Agenda that will include three main lines of action:
– The setting up of an Open Science Policy Platform as a high-level expert group focusing on framework conditions for an open science-friendly environment
– The promotion of open access for the results of scientific research and underlying data, mainly with a pilot project on open research data under the Horizon 2020 research programme
– The setting of standards for the management, interoperability and quality of scientific data to progress towards a European Open Science Cloud

There is also a summary in the main results

Chairing the Council, Sander Dekker, State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands, made the following statement: "Open Science is a topic which is very dear to our hearts. During the Netherlands presidency, we have aimed at bringing Europe to the forefront of global change and at leading the transition to a new way of doing research and science based on openness, big data and cloud computing. ...

and in the press release "All European scientific articles to be freely accessible by 2020"

Netherlands State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker ... "The time for talking about open access is now past. With these agreements, we are going to achieve it in practice." ...

From 2020, all scientific publications on the results of publicly funded research must be freely available. It also must be [possible] to optimally reuse research data. To achieve that, the data must be made accessible, unless there are well-founded reasons for not doing so, for example intellectual property rights or security or privacy issues.

and there is a brief summary video for the entire meeting.

The membership of the Open Science Policy Platform was also announced.  Feedback from civil society indicates some dissatisfaction that the membership is primarily institutional.

The video of the two-hour discussion is available, with key statements indicated in the sidebar (under "Live updates").  Click on "Open Science System" on the video page to go directly to the specific session, or go to 23:34 into the video (it is supposed to be possible to make a link to part of the webcast but it doesn't seem to be working).

Twitter and Hashtags

• #COMPET
• @EUCouncil
• @EU2016NL
• @SanderDekker
• @Moedas
• #openscience

Previously:
April 20, 2016  Open Science Cloud launched by European Commission

Open Science Cloud launched by European Commission

On April 19, 2016 the European Commission announced many initiatives under the umbrella of “Digitise Europe”.  Some are related to open science.

• Under European Cloud Initiative
• As of 2016: creating a European Open Science Cloud
• 2017: opening up by default all scientific data produced by future projects under the €77 billion Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
• The public and private investment needed to implement the European Cloud Initiative is estimated at €6.7 billion. The Commission estimates that, overall, €2 billion in Horizon 2020 funding will be allocated to the European Cloud initiative. The estimation of the required additional public and private investment is €4.7 billion in the period of 5 years.

Previously open scientific data was just a pilot in Horizon 2020, now it will become a requirement.

This is only one element of the larger open science initiative https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=home

The next item coming from the open science initiative will be the Open Science Policy Platform which will support policy formulation and implementation https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-science-policy-platform

It is also worth noting that on the Open Access side, the Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Call_for_Action_on_Open_Science was issued as part of an Open Science Conference April 4-5, 2016 and is expected to go to the Competitiveness Council on May 27, 2016.  It currently calls for 100% open access in Europe by 2020.

BACKGROUND

• Press Release - European Cloud Initiative http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1408_en.htm
• Full Communication (13 pages) – European Cloud Initiative http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=15266
• Home page – European Cloud Initiative https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/european-cloud-initiative
• Home page – European Open Science Cloud https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-science-cloud

Videos

• Günther OETTINGER, Member of the EC in charge of Digital Economy and Society http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I119779
• Carlos MOEDAS, Member of the EC in charge of Research, Science and Innovation http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I119778
• Q&A http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I119780

Twitter and Hashtags

• #DigitiseEU
• #OpenScience
• @OpenAccessEC
• @ICTscienceEU
• @DSMeu (Digital Single Market)
• @EU_eGov
• @Moedas
• @GOettingerEU

 

Open Government in Canada - 2016 consultations and Google Hangout

Minister Brison (President of the Treasury Board) will host a Google Hangout on Open Government, specifically on Canada's next national action plan for open government (as part of Canada's participation in the Open Government Partnership).

Google Hangout

• Wednesday April 6, 2016 at 1pm Eastern (13h)
• hashtag #OpenGovCan
• Twitter @TBS_Canada
• check open.canada.ca for more information

UPDATE 2016-04-10: Video of the 30 minute Hangout is available.

UPDATE 2016-04-11: Transcript of the Hangout will be posted to http://open.canada.ca/en/consultations/hangout160406  ENDUPDATE

Consultations

From March 31 to May 15, 2016 the government is running an online ideas consultation ("ideas market") where open government ideas for the Action Plan 2016-2018 can be submitted, upvoted, searched, and commented upon.

You can see the current ideas and submit your own at

Help shape Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2016–18

You can sort ideas by date, most popular, and most commented, but there aren't separate URLs for those options.

There will also be in-person consultations and you can email a detailed submission to [email protected]

The draft plan will be online in June 2016 for consultation.

Separately, from May 1 to July 1, 2016 there will be online and in-person consultations about the Access to Information Act.

Budget

In Chapter 7 Open and Transparent Government of Budget 2016,

Expanding Open Data Initiatives

The Government is committed to accelerating and expanding open data initiatives and to better involving Canadians in policy-making. Budget 2016 proposes to provide $11.5 million over five years to double the Treasury Board Secretariat’s budget for open government activities. This funding will allow the Treasury Board Secretariat to enhance its capacity to support engagement with Canadians, to design and deliver an ambitious open government strategy and to accelerate the provision of digital content.

Table 7.1 Open and Transparent Government indicates this $11.5 million will be allocated as $2.5 million in 2016-2017 and $2.5 million in 2017-2018, with the remaining $6.5 million from 2018-2021.

Presentations and Information

Minister Brison presented at the Canadian Open Dialogue Forum.

You can see the presentation on YouTube, from 41:40 to 1:02:48

https://youtu.be/HS9JXTj4ZBw?t=41m40s

The speaking notes are available, along with a news release.

The Action Plan 2016-2018

In his speaking notes and as delivered, Minister Brison indicates

Strategy on Open Government

Beginning today, Canadians can go to open.canada.ca to tell us their views on what should be in the next strategy on Open Government.

We’ll also be holding in-person discussions and using the technology at our disposal to consult with Canadians in a number of cities across the country.

The details of this process are available at open.canada.ca.

The plan resulting from the consultation will be released in the summer. It will cover the full range of open government actions, from open data all the way to open science.

Previous Plans

• Open Government Action Plan 2012-2014 (first plan)
• Open Government Action Plan 2014-2016 (second plan)

Plans run according to the Open Government Partnership Canada calendar, from July to June across two years (e.g. the second plan runs from July 2014 to June 2016).

Previously:
February 2, 2016  Canada - Open Science 2014-2015 assessment for OGP/OGAP
November 6, 2014  Open Science in Canada's 2nd Open Gov Plan

Disclaimer: I work on the Open Science commitment of Action Plan 2014-2016.

okfest14 - Eric Hysen, Google Civic Innovation - notes

Open Knowledge Festival 2014 - July 16, 2014

Keynote - Eric Hysen @EricHysen - Google Civic Innovation

"Let's build the road network of civic technology."

Video of presentation http://youtu.be/0UNRZEsLxKc?t=57m20s

Interview video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeyZxsQzes8

Excited by the great reaction to my talk at #OKFest14. I've posted the full talk https://t.co/fIBAWF3Zzm and slides https://t.co/p054R3uCqf

— Eric Hysen (@EricHysen) July 17, 2014

Google Docs URL for slides.

Text of talk.

• (we need) tools (that can) scale
• Google is building APIs
• what's important is not just code and content, it's connectivity (between parts of the ecosystem)
• right now we have a lot of incredible stagecoaches, but not enough roads
• 1) open isn't enough 2) interoperable 3) ecosystems not apps
• (right now open) data is released without incentives
• everyone is repeating the same work (e.g. transit apps)
• (open data released as) spreadsheets far exceeds the releases of data as structured (e.g. XML) data
• plus you must release the data under a proper license, that allows reuse and modification, in order to give developers certainty
• "open data is hardly ever appropriately licensed"
• open data is rarely updated, or when there is new data, it's released as a new dataset (rather than linked to the previous data)
• summary: open data needs to be structured, updated, licensed
• 1) open isn't enough 2) interoperable 3) ecosystems not apps
• (it is) too hard to connect different types of data
• we need unique IDs
• example: The Popolo Project (open government data specifications relating to the legislative branch of government)
• example: The Open Civic Data Project
• 1) open isn't enough 2) interoperable 3) ecosystems not apps
• hackathons -> apps -> then nothing
• hackathons produce apps, not ecosystems
• example: Code for Germany (based on Code for America concept) with multple OK Lab locations across Germany
• example: Voting Information Project
• example: Google Civic Information API

Q: Andrew Clarke, Omidyar @andrew_c_clarke - What is the most needed (thing in this space)?

A: government (unique) identifiers

csvconf 2014 - Data Hacking with Wikimedia Projects - notes

csv,conf 2014 - July 15, 2014

12:20 Data-Hacking with Wikimedia Projects: Learn by Example, Including Wikipedia, WikiData and Beyond by Matt Senate @wrought and Max Klein @notconfusing

Matt and Max have clearly done a lot of thinking about how to make a project work within the WikiMedia context.  The project they described is about automatically extracting information about open access content and then enriching multiple WikiMedia sites with the appropriate information.

Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5T6RoEckAQ

• Wikipedia is by far the largest of the WikiMedia projects
• In order to contribute successfully, you need to understand the community for each project, the cultural protocols.
• Rambot added US Census data to WikiMedia
• When contributing from an open access article to WikiMedia
• text to WikiSource
• media (images etc.) to WikiMedia Commons
• metadata to Wikidata
• signals (information about the article such as license) used to enrich e.g. citations in Wikipedia
• the bot is called RecitationBot
• goals:
• improve citation management
• integrate metadata into wikidata
• forge deep knowledge resources
• automation combined with human judgement
• Paths for Data Hackers (things to work on in order to succeed, particularly in WikiMedia context)
• reputation
• understanding of cultural protocols
• knowing the history and context of previous efforts, and fitting your work into that narrative
• connecting to community e.g. IRC, mailing lists
• RecitationBot is essentially a process of enriching newly posted citations
• can also initiate RecitationBot with a DOI as you create a reference

csvconf 2014 - CSV Validation at UK Archives - notes

csv,conf 2014 - July 15, 2014

11:55 session CSV Validation by Adam Retter @adamretter

Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pIBG5iv5XI

• has been working at UK National Archives
• there is a new digital archive for the UK - the Digital Records Infrastructure (DRI)
• need to ingest metadata from many sources
• CSV was decided upon as file format for metadata
• many possible errors in the CSV provided (including some people just rename Excel files, rather than exporting as CSV)
• approach: fail fast as repeat
• was decided to create a CSV Validator
• providing code to suppliers - now the suppliers can do up-front data validation
• want to be able to write rules, beyond just basic checks, and have it make easy enough to do so that domain experts can write rules
• CSV Schema language as a way to write rules
• https://github.com/digital-preservation/
• looking for developers to help advance this work

See also UK National Archives blog: CSV validator – a new digital preservation tool.

Web Experience Toolkit - CodeFest 2013

A modern technology for web components, the Web Experience Toolkit, had its second CodeFest.

The open source code and community are hosted on GitHub.

https://github.com/wet-boew/

Government of Canada employees have played a substantial leadership role in the creation of the toolkit, in its release on GitHub, and in growing the community.  It's a great example of government working in a modern way.

I've embedded links to the keynotes below, as well as a Storify of the event (I didn't attend, but I watched the keynotes on YouTube).

Event info at http://wet-boew.github.io/codefest2.0/

Keynote presentations

Ben Balter @BenBalter - http://ben.balter.com/open-sourcing-government/
https://github.com/benbalter/open-sourcing-government (repository for slides) - video from 14m43s http://youtu.be/E-AxzfaZQVc?t=14m43s to 1h13m

Raymond Camden @cfjedimaster -
https://github.com/cfjedimaster/CuttingEdgeHTML (repository for the slides) - video from 1h35m32s http://youtu.be/E-AxzfaZQVc?t=1h35m32s

Hillary Little @hilittle - http://www.hilarylittle.com/blog/2013/08/09/codefest-2013-keynote-2/ - video http://youtu.be/51hN1trnpXA

Previously:
January 11, 2013  open source in government - The Web Experience Toolkit

Related articles

The Software That Builds Software

video: changes impacting scientific publishing

Below is video of me presenting a modified version of my 2012 CALJ conference talk "Springtime for Publishers" to an NRC Research Press audience in Ottawa.

I will be presenting some related topics (with less of an open access focus) May 5, 2013 at the Council of Science Editors conference.  The session is scheduled at 4:15pm and is called Culture Shock: Managing the Change in Publishing.  I will be presenting with Cameron MacDonald of NRC RP.

A few notes about the presentation below:

• as indicated in the talk, I'm using the "springtime" language as a hook to hang concepts of change and revolution - I in no way want to indicate that the changes in academic publishing are comparable to the multi-country struggle of the Arab Spring
• I said the We the People minimum for response was twelve thousand - at the time it was actually 25k signatures, and it's now 100k signatures
• I said the Jenkins report (a Canadian report about research & development) but what I meant was the UK Finch report about access to government-funded research (see executive summary or full report - both PDFs)

---

Here's the deck I am presenting from:

Springtime for publishers - 20120711 from Richard Akerman

Since the presentation, there have been two important developments:

• On July 16, 2012 the UK government announced it would "open up publicly funded research"
• On February 22, 2013 the US government announced its response to the We the People petition (which by then had reached over 65,000 signatures): Increasing Public Access to the Results of Scientific Research - also see White House blog post Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research

data.gc.ca - consultation on next version of open data portal

Some thoughts from the Canadian public service about Canada's national open data, specifically as delivered through the data.gc.ca portal

... a gigantic level of excitement around the potential for pan-Canadian federated open data.  So the work that we do to drive interoperability between open data activities of British Columbia, or Edmonton, or the federal government, recognizing the fact that users and developers are going to want to combine and integrate data from multiple sources... that really gets us going.  All of the possibilities around the... re-thinking around how we make an open data portal that does a lot more than the original open data portal (which was largely experimental at the beginning and was always a pilot), moving that idea forward, specifically around user engagement.

Those of you who have used data.gc.ca to date will know that it doesn't come with a lot of tools for user engagement.  Our hope--coming out of events like this one today--is to help drive the design and delivery of that portal to maximize its functions in terms of engaging the users, or bringing users together with each other, in order to facilitate greater use, greater uptake of the open data.

And just from a third point... this idea that we are driven to deliver open data to developers to help with the development of apps--interesting, innovative ideas that will drive the kind of time efficiency that Ray mentioned earlier as well.  But we do have to remember to think about the citizens.  So the capacity for the platform or any government department or jurisdiction to ensure that the data serves the citizens (who may not be as technologically advanced) is also very important to us, and that gets us very excited about things like visualizations and interactive tools that will allow the citizens to see data in different ways that mean something to them.

Stephen Walker, CIO Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat

from video Innovating with Open Data.

You can reach Stephen, who is also the contact point for Canada's Open Government Partnership country committments, at

[email protected]

(613) 946-3052

You can see previous postings in category opengovca

Also see related articles...

Related articles

Gov as a startup - notes on talk by Audrey Chen of the CFPB

open source in government - The Web Experience Toolkit

UK Open Government and Transparency

Francis Maude is UK Minister for the Cabinet Office.  He spoke about the UK experience in January 2012 for the World Bank.

Governments are finding transparency risky, difficult and uncomfortable. But transparency sticks – it’s irreversible once you start. And I believe transparency will become the defining characteristic of future public policy.

...

putting out raw data in the public domain for entrepreneurs and businesses to work with. Creating an information marketplace. And this is where I believe the UK is leading the way today.

Data sharing is underpinning everything we do to improve public services and to drive new waves of growth.

...

Companies large and small are also using the data to create innovative, products and applications.

Already we’re aware of 47 independent app developers working in the UK giving information to rail passengers through their smartphones – in a market that has for the most part open up in only a few major cities.

London commuters can now use their phone apps to decide whether to rush for the train or get a cup of coffee thanks to greater transport data.

Francis Maude's speech to the World Bank – Transparency and Open Data

You can also watch the webcast recording (Windows Media format).

In addition to the UK open data site data.gov.uk there are two other initiatives of note: gov.uk from the Government Digital Service and G-Cloud.

gov.uk is a project to have a single homepage to access UK government services.  They have been using an agile methodology, and the gov.uk site is now in beta, following an alpha.   From a homepage that is a blog to an official Twitter feed at @govuk that retweets team members, it is a great example of innovation at the heart of government.

G-Cloud includes government use of the cloud as well as data centre consolidation.  They just launched the CloudStore, a list of approved services.  It includes the notion of trying to open up government procurement to a wider variety of players.  They announced CloudStore Open for Business on February 19, 2012 in their blog.  The CloudStore, which runs on MS Azure, will be available as open source.  You can follow them at @G_Cloud_UK

RT @cantwaitogo The full UK Gov #cloudstore will be released as #opensource. < great, thx #oss #govit #gov20

— Andrew Stott (@DirDigEng) February 19, 2012

open gov video - Minister Clement speaks at Public Sector Engage - Nov 22, 2011

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement gave a keynote address to open Public Sector Engage 2011.  He begins speaking at 03m15s in. The text of the speech is available, although he makes some asides that I believe are not in the text.

Opening remarks by the President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for FedNor, Tony Clement from PSEngage on Vimeo.

Key phrases:

• the importance of a collaborative approach
• technology as an important tool for change
• sometimes innovation means that you're going into areas that have not been gone through before
• Internet tools allow public sector employees to be more productive than ever before [my translation from the French]
• the public service must make sure it possesses the capacity and the expertise necessary to respond not only to today's demands, but also in 5, 10, 20 years [my translation from the French]
• competencies related to work, teams and collaboration will be necessary [my translation from the French]
• "I consider myself the Minister responsible for championing innovation in the government"
• the use of productivity-enhancing Internet-based tools & services that allow people to share information, engage in a dialogue, and collaborate
• open government in Canada: open data, open information, and open dialogue
• Canada has signaled its intent to join the international Open Government Partnership

Direct quote from Minister Clement:

Our government is encouraging the use of new Web 2.0 tools and technologies such as of course blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube... you name it. These tools help create a more modern, open and collaborative workplace and lead to more just-in-time communications with the public. I was recently before a Senate committee reviewing these issues and I said it makes no sense to have our employees--any employee--but certainly our new employees to have more access and more interaction in the coffee shop on their way to work than actually in their workplace. That is not a workplace of the future... I see a few heads nodding here so I think I've struck a little bit of a chord.

UPDATE 2011-12-19: You can watch his Senate committee testimony as well as read some of the quotes, linked from my posting Internet & social media - Official Languages examination - Senate Committee videos.

Previously:
November 23, 2011  Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government, social media [also from the PSE2011 event]

open data from the Province of British Columbia

site is live

http://data.gov.bc.ca/

Blog at http://blog.data.gov.bc.ca/ (under "Connect" on the main page).

Twitter account @Data_BC

Thoughts from David Eaves

the license is good. Obviously my preference would be for everything to be unlicensed and in the public domain as it is in the United States. Short of that however, the most progressive license out there is the UK Government’s Open Government License for Public Sector Information. Happily the BC government has essentially copied it.

eaves.ca - Province of BC launches Open Data Catalog: What works - July 19, 2011

Vancouver Sun data journalist Chad Skelton has asked for the public to help him find datasets of interest

@chadskelton Looking for juicy datasets on new B.C. #OpenData site. If you find one, please let me know
http://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/93356790091223040

BC Premier Christy Clark did a video about the site and about open government in general.

open data and innovation in Paris

On the occasion of the awards of the Grands Prix de l’Innovation de la ville de Paris on December 13th at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Jean-Louis Missika expresses his views on the dynamics of innovation in Paris. Missika, Deputy Mayor in charge of innovation and research universities discusses the various tools and structures put in place to support innovative companies and make Paris one of the most advanced in this area.

...

Our goal was to help return Paris to a land of innovation, that is to say, a place where young entrepreneurs and researchers can test their innovations. Finding a single port of entry is essential: the Laboratoire Paris Region Innovation and its legal, practical, and financial tools allow us to experiment on the ground.

innovcity.com - Jean-Louis Missika : “We are a city that has a special talent for innovation” - December 13, 2010

As indicated in the quote above, Paris has an innovation lab - Paris Région Lab - here's a video from 2009 with Jean-François Galloüin giving some background information (in French)

Here's a February 2011 interview (in French) with Jean-Louis Missika where he talks about the Paris open data site, opendata.paris.fr

Jean-Louis Missika, Adjoint au Maire de Paris by frenchweb

The Twitter account for the open data initiative is @opendataparis

AusGOAL: licensing for Australian government information

Licensing framework for Australian government information.

You will find very few references to ‘public sector information’ on the AusGOAL website.  That’s because AusGOAL is focussed on open access and licensing of ‘publicly funded information’.  We are partnering with organisations across a range of sectors that produce or administer publicly funded information, with the ultimate aim of uniting all of Australia’s publicly funded information, including PSI, under one open access and licensing framework.

AusGOAL blog - AusGOAL is Online - July 7, 2011

Main site: http://www.ausgoal.gov.au/

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/AusGOALgovau

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

Via the OKFN open-government mailing list: AusGOAL is Online

open access to publicly-funded EU research and data

In a speech to the LIBER 40th Annual Conference (Liber 2011) conference, Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda stated that the European Commission will be extending open access requirements so that it covers all EU-funded research as a principle, and she mentions that she is working to extend the current OpenAIRE infrastructure to include scientific data.  She also talks about the key role of research librarians to preserve scientific research & data.

She briefly discusses the Europeana repository, including full-text search, and a goal to hold 30 million digital objects by 2015.

Here's her presentation (YouTube video)

In case you're wondering about the first library she mentions at the beginning, I think she's referring to Nineveh.

She has a blog http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/ and frequently tweets from @NeelieKroesEU

The Liber conference tweeted from @liber2011bcn and used hashtag #liber2011

Video link via @carenmilloy via @ccbuhr

data.gouv.fr being developed by Etalab

Etalab is the group in charge of developing the French national open data site data.gouv.fr, the initiative is headed by Séverin Naudet.

They have the usual communications/engagement channels, including

• http://blog.etalab.gouv.fr/
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Etalab-datagouvfr/197220156965406
• http://www.slideshare.net/Etalab
• http://www.dailymotion.com/etalab (DailyMotion is a French video sharing site)
• http://www.scribd.com/datagouvfr

They don't seem to have a big Twitter presence (please feel free to point out any relevant accounts) but you can track some info by following hashtag #etalab

Séverin Naudet has done a lot of interviews, here is his latest one, from Europe1

Severin Naudet dans "Petit stream entre amis" by etalab

In passing he mentions he was in charge of the rationalisation of the French national government websites, through reorganisation the number of sites will go from over 750 to about 60.

video from ICSTI Workshop - Multimedia & Visualisations for Science

Just a quick post to gather together links to the videos from the sessions at the ICSTI Workshop "Multimedia & Visualisations for Science" held at Microsoft Research in Redmond on February 8, 2011.  You should be able to get downloads in most any format, if the player doesn't work for you.  The entire day's worth of video is online.

Featuring Michael Ackerman!  (No relation.)

• Session 1: An emphasis on interactive multimedia and visualization
• Session 2: Tools and technologies for communication and problem solving
• Session 3: Accelerating discovery through multimedia and visualization
• Session 4: Combining and refining data to reach new discovery

You can also find links to the presentation slides at ICSTI.

I think the hashtag was #icstiw11 but it wasn't clear, I also saw use of #icsti11 and just #icsti

Speakers / hosts who are on Twitter include

• Rafael Sidi (@rafaelsidi)
• Lee Dirks (@ldirks)
• Peter Fox (@taswegian)
• Jennifer Lin (@jenndox)
• and Microsoft Research itself (@MSFTResearch)

Thanks to Jennifer Lin for tweeting the link to the videos.

brief update on City of Ottawa open data

One of the benefits of restarting this blog is looking back and seeing how recent some of the changes to the Canadian technology and political landscape are.  It was only in May 2009 that we did the first ChangeCamp Ottawa.  That's just 17 months ago.  It was just a few days after ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009 that data.gov went live, and I asked whither Canada in the open data space.

A lot has happened in a year and a half.

City of Ottawa

There is now an active open data community for the city of Ottawa.

The city council has released open data

http://ottawa.ca/opendata

http://www.ottawa.ca/donneesouvertes (en français)

There is an apps contest called Apps4Ottawa currently running, with $50,000 in prizes.  It ends January 3, 2011.  Residents of Ontario are eligible to enter - you can even enter just an idea.

If you want to know more, there's an event as part of the University of Ottawa's participation in Open Access Week.

Thursday, October 21, 2010 from 5pm to 7pm (in English)
Desmarais Hall, room 4101

The CIO of Ottawa, Guy Michaud will be there, as well there will be demonstrations of some current applications and people to help you if you have ideas about developing an app to enter in the contest.

Also: free t-shirts!

There's an EventBrite signup as well as information on the University of Ottawa Open Access Week site.

Twitter accounts and hashtags to follow are: @ottawadata (the city account) , @opendataottawa (the account created by local developers) and #apps4ottawa

This was made possible by some great work by city staff, an Ottawa developer-organised hackfest that helped to convince the CIO, and councillor support.

There's also great news from other Canadian cities that I will cover in future blog posts.

You can also check out the Wikipedia entry Open Data in Canada for an overview of the current situation.  (Disclaimer: I wrote most of the Wikipedia entry, at least as of the time of this blog posting.)

For those of you in the library community, here are a few ways to participate in open data initiatives:

• make your library catalogue data & APIs available (open, with a non-restrictive license) - particularly valuable for a city's public libraries, but also useful in general for university libraries
• invite in local developers and other interested citizens
  • host a hackfest
  • invite presentations by local developers who have made library-related apps
  • have demonstration sessions where citizens can see how they can benefit from open data using websites and apps
  • create a programmers' reading list where you highlight library resources that can help people develop websites and applications, as well as general topics of open data, visualization, and open government

For some perspective on the governance, silo-breaking and open data challenges that the city of Ottawa faces, check out the video Ottawa Elections 2010 - Governance that was done in support of the Twitter-enabled "Debate 2.0" for the upcoming municipal elections.  Features local open data heroes Mary Beth Baker (@bethmaru) and Edward Ocampo-Gooding (@edwardog).

Google visualizes open government data

Official Google Blog - Adding Search Power to Public Data

We just launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data. So for example, when comparing Santa Clara county data to the national unemployment rate, it becomes clear not only that Santa Clara's peak during 2002-2003 was really dramatic, but also that the recent increase is a bit more drastic than the national rate

There is also a video about how it works.

via ResourceShelf

So Google, whom do I talk to about adding Canadian data?

ideas for book publishing innovation in Canada & an unconference

I have to admit, when I was scanning through Boing Boing and saw "Six good technological ideas for improving publishing", that word "publishing" started me off with the tyranny of low expectations.  However (and those of you who know me will know I don't go in for false praise) I was pleasantly surprised to encounter Michael Tamblyn's entertaining presentation which has six great ideas, some of which are relevant outside the specific world of book publishing.

(Sorry, initially published as a blocked link - have to unflashblock this content - hazard of browser-editor interaction.)

I have to admit, this is my first time hearing of (or at least my first time paying attention to hearing about) BookNet Canada and this particular event, BookNet Canada TechForum '09.

To be honest, I think it starts a bit slow - Michael Tamblyn starts off talking about the recession - I recommend you skip ahead to about the 3 minute mark where he gets into the meat of his talk.

He calls for a number of things, and I don't want to steal his thunder, but some highlights include:

* publishers getting smarter about how they share their data online - BookNet has an initiative called BiblioShare - "BiblioShare is a service that allows Publishers to store their most recent ONIX files at a central server that can then be picked up by any aggregator that needs them."

* publishers getting better at XML workflows - he indicates O'Reilly's Start with XML as one place to begin

* publishers opening their organisations up to innovation, and embracing ideas from creative technologists (I like this terminology of "creative technologist" a lot)

* publishers experimenting and connecting - BookNet is supporting an unconference called BookCampToronto on June 6, 2009

The one area of mobilizing data he didn't really talk about was connecting publishers to libraries (he focused on the connection to booksellers).  I think there are lots of opportunties in the library space, particularly for sharing data.

I know we often give publishers a hard time for being resistant to innovation - this is a great example of an individual and an organisation that are leading with their ideas.

I have to say I found their site a bit confusing.  There is a blog which doesn't seem to have an RSS feed.  There is an RSS feed, but it appears to be for news items.  There are supposed to be slides at There are slides from the TechForum at

http://slides.booknetcanada.ca/

but I could never get it to load.  You can also see Michael Tamblyn's slides directly on SlideShare.  There's also the blip.tv channel, which has a few other talks on it so far.  The blog slice that is about the TechForum is also useful.  The tag was bnc09 if you want to dig around further.

illuminate the government's operations with open data - Sunshine Week

The time has changed, the times have changed, the days are getting brighter - what better time for Sunshine Week.

Sunshine Week is a [United States] national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.

March 15-21, 2009

They have a blog, Facebook, Twitter and all that groovy stuff.  I couldn't find a declared tag, so I'm just using the rather long "sunshineweek".

Through their Twitter I find an interesting article from The Economist - Track my tax dollars.

THE taxpayers do their part, and faithfully fling their hard-earned treasure into the gaping public maw. Surely they should be allowed to know what happens to it. So why not put government spending online?

This also gives me a chance to link to a great TED video of Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the WorldWideWeb) talking about "linked data".  He talks about the importance of sharing data because you can build so much on raw data.  The data part starts at about 3:58 in, and the government data specific part starts about 9:46 in.



I also very much liked his simple message of "Raw Data Now!" - my experience with Linked Data, at least at Open Repositories 2008, was that it very rapidly descends into obscure discussions about the philosophy of data representations (e.g. "do we point at the data, or the metadata about the data?"). The most important thing is to just get the raw data up, and then we can work to have wonderful semantic markup things once we actually have something to work with.

Tim B-L video via ReadWriteWeb via TED