What’s in a name? Spent convictions in the Internet Age.
Paul Clarke’s recent post about naming of offenders and the issues around open data also misses one point of the 21st Century. Lou emphasises the points about names and spent convictions; but I suspect, modern culture, has a much larger but less complicated issue.
When Will Perrin first heard about the plans for an Open Data Institute, this was his comment:
After a decade, I left my old research fellow job at the start of November. Having not had enough of my November activities, sleep and yoga, quite yet, I’m not looking to start something new immediately, but am starting to, slowly, look around for something from January. I should probably start putting my CV together soon. I’ve not had to for a while.
While the “Open Data Definition” argument has been won – on the web, for free, for anyone, for ever; reality has a habit of tossing up edge cases, that don’t come up in theory.
The MoJ released an update to its protocols for Open Justice Court Data, and the Guardian article quoted Will Perrin advocating for names to go along with detail.
Because this has just driven me insane for an hour or so, until finding the random paragraphs needed. In case you’re googling the same problem 
There are two consultations on data currently running, one on Open Data, and one on Public Data.
One size will not fit all, and those tensions must be managed.
I’m have some interesting conversations recently.
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“Somewhere along the way, however, we seem to have forgotten that causing political change is about action” — Carne Ross in his LSE talk. He continues “we have slipped from a discourse, from a commitment, an understanding, that it is action that changes things, we’ve shifted from action to inaction, or to, put it bluntly inaction: campaigning”
After a decade working (lately) as a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, I’m mostly moving on (and South, to Cambridge).
It’s been a pleasure to work on large scale social science Government data (under license, contract and restriction) and research methods projects, but now it’s time for something else.
While it is extremely rare that I talk online about my role there, there a clear parallel between some discussions with Dear and Valued Colleagues, and the positions that Bill, Ben, other Ben and others take on the digital age of open data.
For now, I’ll be taking a couple of months break (I hope), working on some fun things, and we’ll see what’s next.
This is a draft that’s been sitting unpublished for a while, doesn’t really go that far, but is a useful reference for something that might follow.
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Disruptive Proactivity