Governments and databases

This talk will focus on (1) the transparency of international trade and knowledge governance negotiations, briefly, and more generally, the role of (2) government decisions about what data to collect, and (3) the need to focus on the possibilities and challenges of databases development and maintenance, that relies upon user generated data.

Policy Recommendations

1. Governments should routinely solicit public comments, asking if changes in the ways that data is collected, stored and disseminated would be useful, and why.

2. Governments should store and disseminate data in formats that follow open standards that can be implemented by multiple applications on multiple operating systems.

3. Governments should support the development of tools and platforms for databases that base based upon user generate data elements.

4. The development of databases that rely upon user generated data should include processes of consultation to allow discussion of possible uses and future extensions of the database, interoperability, and other issues of interest to the public and potential users of the database platform.

5. Government agencies need to develop better database tools to facilitate transparency of private sector contacts and communications with high level government officials.

6. Governments should maintain databases of private sector employment before and after agency employment, to inform the public about revolving door issues.

7. All new drug registrations should include disclosure of (a) all clinical trials, and the results of those trials, (b) the costs of conducting those trials including total costs and cost per patient.

8. Companies selling drugs should be required to report national and global sales for the product, in units and revenue.

9. The development of databases is expensive. Many databases have global audiences. The WTO should undertake work on an agreement to address the supply of global public goods. This agreement should include, among other things, commitments to collaborate in the development and funding of databases that are global public goods.

10. A legislative proposal from 1991 was designed to open up and improve the management of government databases, promote open standards and interoperability, limit prices, and to give the public regular opportunities to engage agencies on policies. Here is a copy of the bill http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/03/26/1991-iiaa/, from the 102nd Congress. In reading the bill, remember it was introduced in 1991, the same year the first web site was built at CERN, and three years before the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created.

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