IRM midterm assessment and Open Government Steering Group meeting – 26 September 2024

Open Government Network Scotland
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Hi everyone,

Please find below a few updates from the Open Government team that will be of interest to network members.

IRM midterm assessment

We’re pleased to have re-appointed Andy McDevitt as Scotland’s Independent Reporting Mechanism earlier this year.

An IRM provides independent, evidence-based, and objective reporting to hold OGP members accountable, and to support their open government efforts.

Over the summer, Andy completed the midterm assessment for Scotland’s current open government action plan (2021-2025). This was developed by undertaking desk research, and conducting a series of interviews with those working to deliver the action plan.

You can read Scotland’s mid term report now on the OGP website.

OGP Steering Group meeting – 26 September 2024

The next Open Government Steering Group meeting is due to take place:

:spiral_calendar:Thursday 26 September
:alarm_clock:13:30 to 15:00
:round_pushpin:The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh

This meeting will act as a workshop for OGP Steering Group members to reflect on Scotland’s current open government action plan. This is an essential stage, as outlined in the IRM midterm assessment, to ensure that we take learnings from the current action plan forward.

If you would like to attend as an observer, please email Doreen.Grove@gov.scot.

Previous OGP Steering Group minute and progress reports – 19 June 2024

You can read back the minute of the group’s previous meeting on 19 June, and commitment progress reports (from December 2023 to June 2024) online.

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Thanks Neisha,

An excellent report as always.
Andy’s report is pretty good. It certainly offers an insight into the state of OGP processes, globally. Time now to see about making the insights a little more explicit, so we might change the US (on the inside of a National government department) and THEM (the Global citizens on the outside) culture. Time to reflect on how far you and your team have bought OGP’s support group.

We should also include your blog post here as well, so a new reader might grasp your team’s context. (i,e. the Scottish insider’s perspective).

I also point to the latest UK OGN’s "steering committee" minutes, and note their questions Can we use the (OGP) challenge in the global community to connect with other providing work elsewhere? Connect Scottish-based work to wider international community"

Let’s save time. Consider what may happen if Andy’s report was a Wikipedia article, and not a locked PDF report. And “we” started to compare between National IRM reports to discover (and co-create) what “they” had in common. I know the engineers who run each country’s R&E network wouldn’t be surprised about the tools these global groups wanted to share.

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Really like the idea of a wikipedia version of the report content. But is there a new more modern and engaging platform we could use for this? Where we can easily host live data as well as analysis?

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Thanks Rachir,

I made this suggestion to illustrate one interactive application which might help change the OGP culture - from an individual producing lengthy and locked reports, to a crowd who co-design and co–produce a constantly updated “article” (as Wikipedia pages are called).

This is a cultural change; little to do with which tool is used. So your question is the right one - communities can’t co-design until they have agreed on a specification for their shared tools. And you’d understand why, if we stand back and look at the larger OGP project from its Support Unit’s perspective, I made this comment to Simon on his thread.

So I will - even though no one around here participates in the voting process - start a thread called “Inter-community communication”. I’ll start by pointing to the tools which are used around the OGP silos that I know off, and ask their managers to pop in here, so we can at least monitor the eyeballs.

Who knows? One day we might even find some more participants who collaborate internationally rather than compare between towns and countries.

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Simon thanks for this and sharing learning is what OGP is best at - Andy’s report is of course also published on the OGP website, so there is an opportunity for civil society organisations from any OGP member to see it - but i take your point (and Ruchir’s) that there are other ways of promoting shared learning and i know the OGP support unit are always thoughtful of the best means of doing that - would this sit under any of the existing OGP challenges I wonder.

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You know Doreen.

It is funny. I have an email from Rudi@OGP support unit which finishes with “Beyond the tools of course this is more of a cultural change”.

I won’t tell you how many times Ive been a parcel that has been passed (pass the parcel) between OGP support unit employees. Of course they have learnt from the best bureaucracies in the world. In these situations I always ask, “so which Wikipedia articles have you contributed to?”

You have to laugh, because that’s the way culture works. An Englishman will insist on his meat, taties and two vegs up to the time he discovers a good curry.

I’ll leave you with the article I used as as discussion focus with Rudi and the team. Cause I’m not an advocate/teacher. I have enough of a challenge looking after my own learning. Its up to others to do the same. That’s why, in our present “democratic” culture, most people keep their mouths shut.

That said, how can you bottle Neisha? And put a Gold label on her.
(I feel like a judge on Scotland’s got talent)

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Hi Simon

  • Serious point: 'keeping mouths shut’ might just be because those who don’t speak have too much else to do to speak on whatever forum you speak on, or are ‘lurking’ (watching, learning, maybe reacting or sharing learning in other channels). See this by my colleagues at Edinburgh Napier University, for example: https://informationr.net/ir/25-4/paper880.html

  • Not-so-serious point:

  • TL;DR: please try to avoid stereotyping.

  • Detail: I was born and bred in England (father from Sydney, mother from Vienna but moved to England when she was 8 because her family were Jewish) I moved to Scotland for University when I was 19. So I’m not a typical Englishman - but I do not insist on meat, tatties and two veg - and don’t recall ever having done so. Then again, I’ve been vegan for 37 years, and the most, strongest foodgasms I’ve had were in south India.

Going back into silent learning now…

Bruce

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Thanks for sharing. Jumping on that bandwagon.
Serious Point: I’ve been ‘lurking’ trying to figure out just exactly what everyone does here. I need to figure out a way of being impactful at the highest levels (Gov, UN etc.). I’ve been on many community committees but never felt as if I made a difference. This is most likely a mid life crisis! However, if anyone has any ideas of where I can best fit, please let me know.
Detail: Born in Salford and lived for 30 years in the surrounding areas of Bolton. Moved to Moray, Scotland, 20 years ago.
Going back to lurking…

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Hi Doreen,

I need to make one point, because you and the Scottish OGP secretariat (and your civil groups) are one of only a few National cultures whose approach, over the years of observing, have offered me hope that the OGP project might eventually grow legs.

That said, its been stunning to watch how the Dutch public institutions can turn on a dime. Just nothing like it in the English-speaking world, which is hampered by the Westminster system and two-party politics. It’s hard enough, as you will know, to break down the barriers between government departments without letting in the unwashed public to create chaos with their unceasing demands.

You see progress as I do. How does one create public institutions of shared learning. Ill add “and give them a memory”. There is a public institution in most countries called an NREN without which policy makers are blinded by private IT/Media companies. I’ll point you at the Wikipedia revision I made back in 2010.

They are all different. This is how Dutch public servants often consider their role in their country. “I see SURF as kind of like the ‘shepherd’ of IT in society."
[FYI.](Scotland - Jisc)

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Thanks Bruce, Michelle,

Well I’m glad you both didn’t shut up this time.
Let’s get past the obvious. If we are shutting up on a forum, then we are observing. Can we get past the stupid Americanism, lurker, and its implications of stalking. The aim we all have is to co-invent institutions that encourage participation instead of observation.

Over the past 50 years, we (I) have seen the idea of “media” change from networks pumping out programmes around which, either advertising is wrapped or public money is subscribed. That’s changed. Now its about private networks offering access to “network services”, most of which have replaced print and physical agencies (travel, real estate. shops, etc) They still wrap (a lot more Global rather than National) advertising around the content and squabbling (which they encourage) .

On the National public networks, particularly the academic ones, their inhabitants produce articles/programmes that few read and have little or no influence on the real Global world. After a generation of change, they are unemployable. Public institutions are anachronism. There is little trust of them by their communities. Their self-interest and limited imagination is obvious.

At the risk of being censored. The Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing, and the UN’s agencies’ response to it, illustrates my point. The strangest part is that we can all see this is a game, about media, that’s being played. We all think about our present comfortable situation as National civilians, we see the nightly reports from Israel (and Ukraine) and surrounding countries, and we empathize what it means to be incidental collateral.

Its hard to stay silent when one is screaming at the TV news every night, and then going back to silently learning…

That seems to provide the impetus - the driving force - which creates new public institutions

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Hi folks

At the risk of going too far from open government…

I often do not comment on this forum because I have nothing to say: I often lack the expertise, knowledge etc to make meaningful comment. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

I and others agree that ‘lurking’ has unfortunate connotations. However, I guess we are stuck with it, at least as a search-term. Maybe a better term will arise - I hope so.

I suspect thatit is true that the majority of academics may well have little (immediate, direct) influence. This is at least in part because many of our outputs are not available free of cost outwith academia. There are various forms of open access (e.g. universities putting manuscripts on their own free-to-access repositories). I don’t know of a mechanism to search these repositories. My institution does provide some funding for public engagement, but it’s not much(in my opinion) and we have to compete for it.

My personal preference is to publish in fully open journals such as Information Research or Journal of Information Literacy. But there are problems here:

  • These journals are not well-known, as far as I know.

  • They do not have particularly high regard (impact factors etc)

  • Money!

  • That is, there are costs to publish in these journals, such as hosting files on servers. (As far as I am aware, reviewers are almost never paid, but can spend several hours on any review. If they are not paid, might they skimp on this work?)

  • At least for the journals I mention, copy-editors certainly aren’t paid, and I believe the editorial staff are also unpaid. So the journals rely on the staff having other income. Does this compromise the time they spend working for the employers who pay them?

  • If access to the journals is free to readers, and isn’t paid for by advertising revenue, or by authors (which risks vanity publishing) or by libraries (which are really pressed just now), who pays for them? And how can we move away from unpaid labour?

I wish I had answers to any of this. Feel free to point me to any.

I’d like to see Simon’s evidence of lack of trust etc, and I’d like to hear ideas about constructive ways forward, so I can help improve things. I also am somewhat emotional about the statement that I and my fellows are unemployable. (Perhaps this is about how society values things, but that’s a rabbit-hole we probably should avoid on this forum - much too far from open government!)

Simon: also thank you for your explanation of posting (a later email in this thread).

Final musing: I used to work in an educational publisher that was part of a media conglomerate. The TV parts of the conglomerate (at least in the UK) were all about creating programmes that would boost advertising revenue. I guess this conglomerate wasn’t alone in this motivation.

Enough for now!

Bruce

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Hello
I receive invitations from Neisha to meetings to be an ‘observer’. I have very little input here but do read the conversations and have no input into any meetings. I am happy to share my opinion on specific topics when asked for it. Otherwise…

rgds
Michele

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Thanks Bruce. Just terrific.

OK. Let’s start from your first request (please don’t talk to/about me as a third person). Trust in Government. If you trust the OECD then use the slider to compare years. Their reasoning is pretty common sense.

I must admit I’m surprised. Every librarian, globally, will have their insights into OER and open access after 25 years. They all know institutional-centric repositories are pretty useless and have been aggregating National and Global disciplinary (community) outputs/content since TBL invented the Web.

They’re public servants, so they’re good at aggregating content but not very good at building online communities. Most, that Ive met, feel guilty being part of a rort. That said, if they could build communities as easily as they aggregate content, the Elselviers of this world might have some competition.

If you think philosophically, you’ll see there is no (ideal) “mechanism to search these repositories”. There are just global communities, with a particular interest, using different languages, who are attempting to improve their local community and their common world.

You know the common point of connection? (and this is where I was at the turn of the century). i.e. The quiet geeks who run the publicly-funded R&E networks and have to come up with the standards, protocols and methods (not to mention the security) that enables people like you/us to communicate with one another and share our evidence.

They never shout about it.
BTW, Ever wondered why your Aussie dad called you Bruce (sorry, couldnt resist)

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Hi Simon

Moderators: you might want to move this out of the main channel. This community should not become the Bruce-and-Simon-bear-all-about-all-sorts forum.

Simon: because I’m not a telepath, I assume I should take ‘just terrific’ at face value, not as sarcasm.

Thank you for the link to the OECD data. I would like graphs that show changing levels in trust for each country, but I’m sure I can use the slider to get there.

I wasn’t aware of the term OER, so thank you for this too. Ditto the article on rort, which confirms that the rip-offs I see in the UK also happen in Oz. (By the way, my university will not pay article processing fees, thank goodness.)

I am not a librarian, although I have some understanding of librarianship via

Somewhat pedantic but I doubt that all librarians know about academic repositories. School librarians have their own problems to contend with, for example. More pedantry: academic librarians in the UK (and maybe other countries) are not public servants because they are not employed by local government. (If you mean that universities receive a lot of their income from the state, fair enough. But they also receive a lot of research funding from other, private sources.)

I agree that libraries of all kinds have been accumulating ways, to greater and lesser extents, to access online stuff since TBL. (Not so long ago I read how about the origins of Shibboleth, one of the ways of federating so we can access stuff without needing to log into individual providers. I’m amazed that didn’t happen almost immediately.) However, all of this is subject to lots of barriers: lack of cash, lack of training, lack of engagement between teachers/lecturers and librarians, lack of respect for librarians’ role in teaching information-handling skills etc.

I don’t understand your point about no (ideal) mechanism to search university repositories. (I agree that nothing is ever ideal.) In the current circumstances, where freely accessible versions may only be on university repositories, I think that people need to be able to search them, ideally all in one go, just like an institution’s library search enables searching all the sources it subscribes to. (That means both a mechanism and the training to use it, along with training to interpret and use what is found - and there we are back to information literacy.) If there is ever a worldwide, complete portal to knowledge, a Wikipedia/Google Scholar that is timely, complete, not owned by possibly questionable organisation, then I’m all for it. (But what if a despot comes to own this putative Multivac?) But in the meantime, we are where we are.

I agree that there are global/international communities. In my case, I look forward to doing some research with people in Finland and Canada who are also interested in information avoidance by people who have chronic diseases. (I realised a long time ago that I avoid information about my own Type 1 diabetes, so am curious about the impact of this. The people in Finland and Canada are also interested in the human sides of health information (avoidance). We just need to find some funding…) On a personal note, I feel I am (non-typical) British but also vaguely Australian, vaguely Austrian, jew-ish (despite being an atheist) and so on.

I agree there are also local communities, but posit the boundaries of these are very hard to draw. Like you, I respect geeks who build the mechanisms for connections. (I know the three-layer model, HTTP(S) requests etc exist, but that’s about it.) My own limited contribution is to run websites and provide what IT support I can for three of Edinburgh’s community councils and a hyperlocal participatory budgeting instance. The joy is that I do not live in the areas impacted by any of these. (I’m happy to go into detail offline outwith this channel, although community councils are probably closer to government than my words about librarians and universities.)

Nighty night

Bruce

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My dear Bruce,

Thank you so much. You have no idea how long Ive been waiting for someone with your (let’s call them) open library interests. That OECD “trust in gov” graph is pretty average, eh? The slider works, from 2006 to 2022, but it seems like they have ADHD. If you compare to other sources, Switzerland and China appear to be the benchmarks. :thinking: :flushed:

Just working through your Understanding the UK Info workforce doc. Thank you for the LARKIM (Libraries, Archives, Records, Information and Knowledge Management) acronym. New one on me, Two notes. Page 29. “The top four LARKIM professional bodies are ARA, CILIP, the Gurteen Knowledge Community, and IRMS”. I have nothing more to add to what David Gurteen has written. Bloody lovely.

Could we just focus on the Local Scottish, to start, as that’s what this thread is about. We can expand our focus to the National and INternational after that. OK. Our reduced focus is on related Scottish communities; CILIPS, milcop, SCDC](who seem a natural bridge in co-creation, the civil groups who revolve around the Scottish OGP secretariat, because they are the hub, and the one group who are always left out of the discussions, the identity guys.

These are the Local, National and International plumbers (network managers), for the communities above - the local/geographic (house) residents - who take for granted that the keys to their house’s front door will enable them access to a house where sewerage and water pipes flow. Today they don’t. Every house has so much sewerage and so little clean water. But sooo secure. Not.

Between the public house owners and this (European) community of plumbers (you glanced over them with your passing reference to Shibboleth) is the gulf to be bridged, Locally, Nationally and Internationally. Open network discussions are based around, as you’ve found, Federated Services and Levels of Access. The NREN guys had to invent that open/sharing network model. Take that INternational and you’ll find edugain.

I’m not sure how many thousand Unis, research labs and gov departments around the world are included in their inter-National federations. Main thing? You’ll understand their discipline is meat in the sandwich. They must regulate between Identity Providers, who issue the keys to various local houses in a global community, and Service Providers; each of whom are the internal decorators = application developers in Everyman’s speak and “Service providers” in network manager’s speak.

The sharing network model still isn’t being noticed much by the PUBLIC content industries, particularly the .gov networks which are primarily Microsoft colonies. There’s no secret why. Their old folks are led by their entrenched need for an (365) office suite. Reminds me of the 60’s typing pools, all pumping out and delivering the “correct” message; from each of their specialised departments.

OK, Can we collaborate here and help our moderator learn how to moderate without a ham fist. Not meaning to be insulting but its obvious Involve projects are withering due to either a lack of community-building in projects like this one or a common comms/media strategy between them… and so many others.

e.g. The idea of a UK democracy network was terrific, But the byline???!!! Read by 400+ democracy organisations. We read everyone’s newsletters & research so you don’t have to. OH Dear.

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Because replies < 8 characters are not allowed, :blush:

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Hi Simon

Sorry, I didn’t see your request for a précis when I first read your reply. Here goes:

Thank you for the links.

I am not a librarian, but I have a little knowledge, and have access to real librarians in Scotland.

I don’t agree that all librarians know about academic repositories, or that (academic) librarians are strictly public servants, but universities do get public money, so I think I see why you said this.

Yes, libraries of all kinds have been accumulating ways access online stuff since TBL, but there are practical barriers. One of the worst is librarians being seen as merely book-pushers, rather than being part of teaching teams.

I think there does need to be a way for searching academic repositories all in one go, rather than searching them one by one. These are where peer-reviewed outputs can be viewed for free. People also need to know how to access and use the knowledge in these outputs: information literacy. If a better knowledge repository comes along, yippee. But we are where we are now. And I fear a worldwide Multivac controlled by a despot.

Yes there are communities at all sorts of level of geography and interest. I gave some examples of my academic connections and interests. I also think we all have our own individualities (or ‘idiot-syncracies’ ).

It can be hard to understand communities’ boundaries, unless they are strictly geographical. (Even then, we may not know the origins of these borders.)

Like you, I respect geeks who build the mechanisms for connections. My limited contribution is to run websites and provide what IT support I can for three of Edinburgh’s community councils and a hyperlocal participatory budgeting instance. But this mainly uses tools created by better minds than mine. Another contribution I occasionally make is to share things across community council boundaries. (There is an Edinburgh Association of Community Councils, but not all Edinburgh CCs take part!)

Nighty night

Bruce

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Mmm we all welcome useful ideas and constructive discussion but I for one would be grateful if all would do so in a kind and positive way

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