I agree with Eliot about POLi - but POLi exists exists precisely because the banks won’t provide an open frictionless payment system as he describes. They’d rather merchants paid the banks ticket clips through VISA debit or similar. This won’t change without regulation (turkeys, Christmas).

Colin Jackson
Independent Technology Consultant

On 7/02/2013, at 7:18 AM, Glen Barnes  wrote:
>> 
> "A citizen of New Zealand cannot legally abide by the law if he/she cannot know what the law requires without paying money".
> 
> While standards are not laws they are a requirement that you must adhere to so are morally the same?

An MED (now MBIE) analyst would say: this is a pragmatic decision to fund the development of standards. The detail of standards only matters to the tradespeople or industry sector they apply to, and this is a way of getting those people and companies to fund them. Why, they will say, should taxpayers fund engineering efforts?

This isn't clear cut. Yes, it would be lovely to have diamond-like clarity and transparency on all aspects of the law. But I'm not convinced that can be run as a moral argument.

Colin

On 7/02/2013, at 6:59 AM, Nathan Torkington  wrote:

> (a) it is morally untenable for legally-mandated standards to be on
> commercial footing, any more than it would be for legislation to be hidden
> behind paywall (as it was in early days of digital revolution, which
> quickly was overturned);

Can we justify this assertion rather than just stating it as a principle?

Colin

Happy to help.



Colin Jackson
Independent Technology Consultant

On 21/03/2011, at 1:34 PM, Julian Carver  wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> There was general enthusiasm for this concept from the govt and local govt
> people at the Smart Government conference. People could see real value in
> having a hybrid barcamp/release day, as a part of the lead up to the Remix &
> Mashup Competition 2011 in August.
> 
> I now need people willing to help organise an event. I'm still really on the
> back foot life wise and work wise following the earthquake. I'm willing to
> lead the process, but need people to help make it happen. GOVIS have already
> offered to provide a venue.
> 
> So, if you want to see an Open NZ led open data event alongside GOVIS on
> 20-21 June, please let me know (either off-list or on list) whether you're
> willing to pitch in and help.
> 
> Roles include:
> 
>   - Coordinating sponsorship
>   - Organising catering
>   - Promotion
>   - Taking registrations
>   - Setting up on the day
> 
> Who's with me?
> 
> Julian
> 
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Julian Carver > wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I had intended to send this email three weeks ago, but then my world got
>> turned upside down (I live in Chch). Things are slowly coming back to
>> normal, thanks in part to the awesome efforts of those of you involved in
>> eq.org.nz.
>> 
>> In early Feb I discussed with the folks that organise GOVIS, the idea of
>> doing an open data/govt barcamp just before or after the main GOVIS conference
>> in June. They are very keen.
>> 
>> It'd be great if we ninjas could discuss the type of event we might want to
>> hold, and people's interest in helping organise this. We can then go back to
>> the GOVIS committee with a more concrete proposal.
>> 
>> Below are some details on what/when GOVIS is, the open data related events
>> planned for this year (to show where this might fit in), and some ideas of
>> the type of event we could run.
>> 
>> I wanted to raise this now with ninjas as there's likely to be some
>> discussion on this at the Smart Government conference later in Wellington
>> this week, and it'd be good to have some sense of what you think to feed
>> into that. It's fine if we (as Open NZ) take a couple of weeks to discuss
>> and think this through. I'll report back to you next week on the Smart Govt
>> conference, to help progress this.
>> 
>> So what do you reckon? What kind of event could we run alongside GOVIS?
>> 
>> Julian
>> 
>> *What is GOVIS?*
>> GOVIS stands for the Government Information Systems Managers Forum. It
>> began in 1991 and became an incorporated society in 2007. GOVIS is an
>> all-of-government network run by volunteers.
>> GOVIS holds a large conference about every two years. The next one is
>> on 20-21 June at Te Papa in Wellington. More info at http://govis
>> .org.nz/Events/GOVISConference2011.aspx
>> 
>> *Open Data related events in 2011*
>> 
>>   - Smart Government Conference, 17-18 March in Wellington - commercially
>>   organised conference with some international speakers. Great lineup but a
>>   pretty mediocre chairperson.
>>   - GOVIS, 20-21 June at Te Papa in Wellington - day two is specifically
>>   focused on govt information.
>>   - GOVIS open data barcamp or similar - could be on 19 or 22nd June
>>   depending on what we want to do
>>   - NetHui, 29 June - 1 July in Auckland - workstream on "government and
>>   openness" that Laurence is chairing (and hopefully ninjas will contribute
>>   to)
>>   - Remix & Mashup 2011
>> 
>> There are probably other ones that I've missed, so do add any others to the
>> list.
>> 
>> *What kind of event could we run?*
>> 
>>   - A regular barcamp like we did in 2008 and 2009
>>   - A more structured unconference like the Microsoft led one in 2010
>>   - A 'release day' focused more specifically on helping govt folks who
>>   want to release data (for the Remix & Mashup comp, or more generally),
>>   but who are unsure about how to do it, how to get over the legal, data
>>   quality, format, technical issues. A more practical hands on day, helping
>>   get data out there and creating some wins, a bit like DOC did for Remix
>>   & Mashup last year.
>>   - Something else?

Sure, I assumed it had been replaced. My point was that it's not new to do semantic analysis of search terms in govt search.

Cheers

Colin

Tim McNamara wrote:

> This goes far beyond stemming words, and so forth. Well done. Is this
> massaging done via a machine learning process? I'm assuming they're curated
> by hand.

In fact, the portal (as it was then called) has done this since the version that was launched 8 years ago in 2010. Then, a lot of work was put into constructing two thesauruses, one about "subjects" (i.e. nouns) and the other about "functions", i.e. verbs. The aim was to find "canine registration" when some typed "dog licensing".

Cheers

Colin