GILF for the Nation

Overview

The Government Information Licensing Framework for the Nation Project (NGILF) is developing a new approach to assigning clear and simple use rights to public sector information. Based on the Queensland Government sponsored GILF, NGILF supports the adoption of information management practices that:

§         make it easier for users to understand what they can do with the information;

§         ensure that the government has the authority to publish or distribute information (i.e. not contravening privacy, confidentiality, security, intellectual property or copyright); and

§         reduce the risk of the government and its customers using information inappropriately.

The GILF Project was originally initiated by the Queensland Spatial Information Council (QSIC) to improve and standardise information licensing practices. A trial implementation of the new Framework was conducted in the Office of Economic and Statistical Research (OESR) in Queensland Treasury during 2008 and included legal, policy, governance and technical components. In parallel, significant research has been undertaken as part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRC-SI) Project 3.05 on access and pricing of public sector information and it is anticipated that this work will also be available to the other jurisdictions.

National Coordination

The Cross Jurisdictional Chief Information Officers Committee (CJCIOC) reporting to the Ministerial Online and Communications Council (OCC) has identified licensing as an issue requiring a national solution. In May 2008 the CJCIOC approved a Work Plan for a Government Information Licensing Framework for the Nation Project (NGILF). To be an effective national solution for information licensing the CJCIOC recognised that it would be important to allow all Australian jurisdictions time to review the work completed to date by the Queensland Government and to validate the proposed model in each jurisdiction.

The Work Plan for a NGILF is funded jointly by all jurisdictions and includes:

• The development of an online e-learning toolkit to be located at www.gilf.gov.au that:
• provides a site for the Framework that is widely accessible
• educates information creators, publishers and users about licensing of public sector or government information; an
• provides a decision support tool to assist information creators and publishers to apply appropriate licences to copyright works and materials or information products.

• Identification of an Information Licensing champion in each jurisdiction (November - December 2008);
• The opportunity for key information officers from all Australian jurisdictions to learn about the Framework and to validate it for use by:
• attending the GILF for the Nation Round Table on 11 November 2008
• Presentations from the Round Table 

 GILF Framework for the Nation (PDF 3,300KB)

 Access and Reuse as a Driver of Innovation (PDF 144 KB)

 GILF Legal Status Review (PDF 230 KB)

• attending an seminar on the online e-learning toolkit.

Policy Statement and Supporting Principles

The NGILF policy is to use standard licences to assist customers to understand the lawful uses they may make of public sector information.

The Framework introduces information management practices to reduce risk of legal liability and encourage appropriate use of public sector information:

• identify and protect personal and other confidential information;
• identify and respect the IP and © contained in any information;
• confirm which legal entity has the right to control the use;
• determine the rights of use to be granted under a licence; and
• ensure that metadata describes the product and original purpose for creating it.

It also encourages custodians to think more broadly about who the potential users of public sector information might be, to help some agencies in preparing information for publication, and to make it easier for these customers to understand how they can use public sector information (in a legally appropriate way):

• apply a GILF licence (embedded in product) and relevant marking; and
• use metadata to aid discovery.

Guidelines

This document provides practical advice to information custodians, creators and publishers about how to use the Framework. The guidelines include a checklist to assist custodians within the public sector to undertake a legal review of information products and services - to determine the copyright owner of an information product, the intellectual property contained in an information product, and the use rights or licence that can be applied to an information product (a legal status review). The Guidelines will be available in early 2009.

www.gilf.gov.au online e-learning toolkit

The legal status review is being developed into an online e-learning toolkit which will incorporate materials developed during the project in Queensland and includes other educational materials available to all jurisdictions.

Standard Set of Licences

These cover 95% of public sector information transactions, and comprise a set of 7 standard licences - 6 Creative Commons (Australia) open-content licences which can be applied to the majority of copyright government information plus one legal agreement for licensing the release of data when specific use restrictions apply:

• Attribution (BY)   
• Attribution - Non Commercial (BY-NC)
• Attribution - Share Alike (NY-SA)
• Attribution - No Derivatives (BY-ND)
• Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives (BY-NC-ND)
• Restrictive Licence (RL) for releasing confidential or commercial information in a secure way to authorised parties (eg for research or in order to improve government services).

Supporting Technology

This includes prototype licence injector software within a Web Content Management System used for web publishing.