Creating Socio-economic Value through Open Public Data
Speaker : Ms Waltraut Ritter,Research Director, Knowledge Dialogues, Hong Kong & Visiting Professor, International School of Information Management, Mysore.
About the Topic: At the ministerial OECD meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy in June 2008 in Seoul, the member states agreed on the need for governments to work with business, civil society and other parties to promote and expand access to public sector information and promote the re-use of data worldwide. Public sector organisations produce, collect and share vast amounts of information, such as meteorological, traffic and socio-economic data, health and statistical data, cultural information and others. Public sector information is the “raw material” for new added value services, but it is often difficult for third parties to re-use it. Many countries have updated their public information laws to adapt to the new opportunities through the digitisation of information. PSI re-use (Public Sector Information) goes beyond traditional e-government concepts and transactional information exchanges between public sector and business/citizens. The awareness for PSI issues, from policy to legal and technological questions varies from country to country and depends on open information flows between different stakeholders, as well as a change of mindset in the public sector. This new thinking encourages new forms of public engagement and leads to democratization of government data.
What are the trends and developments in public information in India ?
Will the Electronic Delivery of Service Bill (EDS) increase transparency and enhanced cohesion ?
About the Speaker : Waltraut Ritter is managing director of Knowledge Dialogues which she founded in Hong Kong in 1997, specializing in applied research relating to innovation, knowledge, and intellectual capital. She has worked in information and knowledge management since 1989, when she served as information management consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in Geneva and New York. In recent years, she has focused on the knowledge economy and innovation initiatives for national and international agencies in the public sector.She is visiting faculty at the International School of Information Management the University of Mysore (India) and was Professor for Knowledge Management at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She holds an MA in Information Science and Sociology from the Free University of Berlin and an MBA from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.She has been involved the UN World Summit of Information Society process from 2003 to 2005 and subsequent UN Internet governance forum (IGF) working group on Open Data. She is a founding member of the New Club of Paris, a knowledge economy research network supported by the Worldbank, OECD and EU. She also serves on the Digital21 Strategy advisory board of the Hong Kong Government and as research director for the Asia Pacific Intellectual Capital Centre, a non-profit think tank on knowledge economy.