[Sigifp-l] [Fwd: [ciresearchers] FW: World Summit on free Information Infrastructures]
Michel J. Menou
Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr
Sat Oct 8 15:38:18 EDT 2005
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*From:* owner-egip at jrc.it [mailto:owner-egip at jrc.it] *On Behalf Of
*Christopher Corbin
*Sent:* Friday, October 07, 2005 6:16 PM
*To:* EGIP
*Subject:* World Summit on free Information Infrastructures
*Importance:* High
Recent events in London provided if one needed such a reminder that
Civil Society has as an important role as the public and private sectors
within the Information Society and as such should not be ignored when
considering information age infrastructures.
Geographic Information (GI) and the use of spatial technologies was very
much in evidence at the World Summit on /Free Information
Infrastructures/ (http://www.okfn.org/wsfii/ ) that was held in London
on Saturday and Sunday 1st and 2nd October 2005. The event was the high
point of a weeklong series of hands on workshops and demonstrations,
which could be summarised as capacity building events but at the grass
roots level of the community. A brief synopsis of the event can be
perused at http://www.mappinghacks.com/ dated 4th October 2005 provided
by Jo Walsh.
The event was attended by well over 250 people of all ages and
nationalities that had an interest in harnessing the potential of the
Information Society to support /communities/ whether they are within the
urban or rural environment. Examples presented during the summit
included communities within urban areas such as Berlin, Budapest,
London, Montreal, New York, Vienna and rural areas in Denmark (the
Djursland broadband project), Indonesia, India, Zambia. Many of the
individuals and groups attending were actively working voluntarily in
their spare time on community-based projects such as free wireless
networking, free of copyright mapping, to name but two.
As the /Community/ was the central theme for the summit the venue chosen
was very appropriate as it has been a focus for the local Limehouse
community for well over a century! For background interest the history
of the Limehouse Town Hall can be found at
http://www.limehousetownhall.org.uk/drupal/
Poverty maps of the area created by Charles Booth well over 105 years
ago can be viewed the London School of Economics & Political Science web
site at the following URL:
http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=view_booth_and_barth&m.l=0&m.d.l=0&m.p.x=12156&m.p.y=6666&m.p.w=500&m.p.h=309&m.p.l=1&m.p.p.l=2&m.t.w=128&m.t.h=80&b.p.x=21377&b.p.y=8472&b.p.w=500&b.p.h=309&b.p.l=2&m.v.x=441&m.v.y=165
<http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=view_booth_and_barth&m.l=0&m.d.l=0&m.p.x=12156&m.p.y=6666&m.p.w=500&m.p.h=309&m.p.l=1&m.p.p.l=2&m.t.w=128&m.t.h=80&b.p.x=21377&b.p.y=8472&b.p.w=500&b.p.h=309&b.p.l=2&m.v.x=441&m.v.y=165>
<http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=view_booth_and_barth&m.l=0&m.d.l=0&m.p.x=12156&m.p.y=6666&m.p.w=500&m.p.h=309&m.p.l=1&m.p.p.l=2&m.t.w=128&m.t.h=80&b.p.x=21377&b.p.y=8472&b.p.w=500&b.p.h=309&>
Today’s demographic profile and maps for the same area today can be
browsed at the Neighbourhood Statistics web site URL:
http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/NeighbourhoodProfileSearch.do?profileSearch=E14+7HA
There was plenty of innovation and creativity demonstrated during the
two-day event. The innovation in part has probably been spurred on in
reaction to Civil Society becoming disenfranchised by today’s
infrastructures, data and information pricing, copyright protection
frameworks to name but a few that have been put in place by both
Government and Private sector organisations. Interestingly the community
projects were providing the citizens with the opportunity to regain
their personal intellectual property rights (your current location, your
address for example) and as such avoid having to buy back what many
would consider as rightly belonging to them!
The implications of charging for political boundaries impeded the use of
geographic information at the Community level. As such the voluntary
produced information web sites that improved the usability and
assimilation of the raw data produced and published by Parliaments for
example were finding it expensive to include GI analysis and data search
and location functionality within such web sites as /They Work for You/
http://theyworkforyou.com/ the Public Whip http://publicwhip.org.uk/
Write to Them http://www.writetothem.com/ Pledge Bank
http://www.pledgebank.com/
The Open Geodata Manifesto received numerous plugs during the event and
this can be perused at http://okfn.org/geo/manifesto.php you may well
feel inclined to sign up to the manifesto after considering the
manifesto and join the 400 plus that have already done so from across
the world.
You maybe interested to visit a few of the mapping projects that were
demonstrated during the event which used free open source mapping
software and data that have been produced by individuals and communities
and made freely available to all albeit under Creative Commons Licence.
On some of these web sites you can actively add data to increase the
quantity of information and the extent of the geographic area contained
within the system. These basic mapping data sets when combined with
other freely available public sector data related to the localities such
as schools, hospitals, crime, environment (air pollution, noise
pollution) lead to the provision of good low cost community based
geographic information systems. The next step envisaged is to provide a
free open sourced infrastructure that links all these free
community-mapping projects but in the hands of Civil Society for the
Society which may well come into being in the future.
Open Street Map http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Mumbai Free Map http://freemap.in/
Mapbender http://www.mapbender.org/
The GeoServer Project http://geoserver.sourceforge.net/html/index.php
The holistic approach of the event dealt with the issue that although
much can be achieved using voluntary contributions there was still a
need for financial support to enable community projects to reach a
sustainable position especially once the Community became dependent upon
them. Funding techniques such as Open Capital http://opencapital.net/
were presented and debated which interestingly are beginning to be used
within Local Government. (Reference the EGIP intervention subject
Geographic Information Markets 1 dated Tuesday 4 October 2005 0748 hours
regarding in Annexe G National Land Information Service, where on page
12 there is mentions of the creation of a Community Interest Company
(CIC) a new publicly owned company named C-NLIS to manage the affairs of
NLIS.)
Overall the event demonstrated how Capacity building occurs at all
levels within society and that data sharing and trust were important
attributes within community infrastructure projects, just as they are in
all of the sectors that use GI infrastructures.
The event provided many examples on the need for an inclusive
Information Society where all can contribute and partake freely and
equally and as such was useful to any one that was intending to attend
or to contribute to the United Nations World Summit on the Information
Society that will take place in Tunis 16th to 18th November 2005.
http://www.itu.int/wsis/
regards
Chris (Corbin)
Brighton
Sussex
England
Telephone: +44 (0) 1273 553110
email: corbinceh at ntlworld.com
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