[LINK] ICT Predictions 2009 - little OT (gov't reports example)

[Anthony Hornby]

> We could also have some "Business process improvement"
> <http://tomw.net.au/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=261> which could
> see money saved elsewhere by better use of ICT. As an example, in
> university libraries I see copies of government reports being thrown
> away. The system seems to be that government agencies pay to have
> reports typeset for high quality printing. They then pay to have
> copies printed and sent out. Publicly funded libraries then pay
> someone to take the received reports out of the envelopes and throw
> them away. The librarians then direct researchers to the electronic
> copies of the reports on the agency web site. The library pays the
> cost of the researchers downloading download large, poorly formatted
> PDF versions of the reports (the agency also pays extra for serving
> up the bloated PDF files).


My library is free issue member of the Federal Library Deposit Scheme
as are all universities
http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/service-improvement-and-delivery/publishing-information/lds.html
or http://tinyurl.com/4vmgcs.

I have been trying for ages to get the feds to adopt a more sensible
approach to this. Why they can't provide a central repository for all
government reports with permanent URLs that is able to be simply
linked to for most users and to have content mirrored up by
University, state or National Libraries (under the Lots Of Copies
Keeps Stuff Safe principle for preservation) is beyond me. All
government reports should also be released under a creative commons
licence to allow us to copy and preserve them with ease. This was just
one of the recommendations in the Venturous Australia report.

<snip>
Some relevant recommendations .. personally I wish all the
recommendations are implemented, they will all have positive impacts
on society, the economy and particularly the information industry.

From: http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Documents/NIS_summary_web3.pdf

Recommendation 7.7
Australia should establish a National Information Strategy to optimise
the flow of information in the Australian economy.
The fundamental aim of a National Information Strategy should be to:
•utilise the principles of targeted transparency and the • development
of auditable standards to maximise the flow of information in private
markets about product quality; and
maximise the flow of government generated information, • research, and
content for the benefit of users (including private sector resellers
of information).

Recommendation 7.8
Australian governments should adopt international standards of open
publishing as far as possible. Material released for public
information by Australian governments should be released under a
creative commons licence.

Recommendation 7.14
To the maximum extent practicable, information, research and content
funded by Australian governments – including national collections –
should be made freely available over the internet as part of the
global public commons. This should be done whilst the Australian
Government encourages other countries to reciprocate by making their
own contributions to the global digital public commons.

Lots more great recommendations ... do have a read if interested
<snip>

We would love to get away from the current fundamentally broken
approach. There are so many services I would rather be spending staff
time on than opening boxes of reports, checking the manifest, working
out which we need to keep, tossing the rest and then reporting back to
LDS on what we discarded + linking to the online version in our
catalogue + storing a copy of the electronic original locally (where
copyright permits) anyway.

Regards Anthony