[LINK] Australian Data ARK

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Lochrin [mailto:dlochrin at d2.net.au]
> Sent: Thursday, 12 February 2009 10:19 AM
> To: The Link Institute
> Cc: Tom Koltai
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Australian Data ARK
> 
> 
> On Thursday 12 February 2009 02:11, Tom Koltai wrote:
> > I suggest that the establishment of the datacentre should
> possibly be
> > a joint Fujitsu/EDI/IBM with a Google frontend national database
> > centre,
<snip>
> I haven't read the original request for comments.  But is
> such a level of business focus, naming specific companies, 
> really appropriate? 

At the end of the question I said.....

I have no interest, either financial or personal in any of the companies
mentioned above. Other companies may be more suitable for the roles I
have delineated. With the exception of Google, all other company names
were utilised to allow the reader to view a vision, based on solid
reputable deliverables.

> In any case, I think the Government &
> Public Service would have its' own ideas about a proper 
> commercial / strategic solution.
 
Interestingly enough the Governments own solution - appears to be to
shred documents that are no longer of current policy making value.

> Did you say anything about use of public-domain standards, or
> do you propose to leave all that to Google etc?

I elected to leave it upto EDI controlled by an open committee. I think
that qualifies as a public standard.
 
> But the biggest question is ~why~ do it this way?  I'd have
> thought government is more interested in principles.

The Gov is interested in Guidance. Sometimes that consists of
principles, and sometimes it consists of spoonfeeding if you don't want
the advisors to intepret the principle of retaining our data for future
generations in their own way.

I also said elsewhere in the [50 odd page] Document that we need to
retain every Government email, memo and action item on every subject so
that researchers can readily find the data in the future. 

Tom