Once upon a time we were pushing forward policies on Open Data in Brazil - we've been participating and shouting out loud about the possibilities of transparency and participation if the government just released it's data in open standards and with open licenses.
Then came along a congressman from the labours party - Paulo Teixeira - whom at the time we thought was an ally.
He told us that sitting at his desk there was a bill proposition about freedom of information and wanted to know if the bill was already covering those wonderful possibilites of openness in times of networked society.
Now let me you that altough we were activelly advocating for open data for a whole year - we had no idea that this bill was circulating in the congress. And that is to say how little we knew and know about the political process.
Still, we said: 'Lemme take a look, Mr. Congressman'. And so we did. And it turned out that the law was pretty good but didn't had a single mention on open data nor it's principles.
And so we wrote to Paulo, telling him that while the law was pretty good it did not had a single mention on open data, and told him about the eight principles:
- Data Must Be Complete
All public data are made available. Data are electronically stored information or recordings, including but not limited to documents, databases, transcripts, and audio/visual recordings. Public data are data that are not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations, as governed by other statutes.
- Data Must Be Primary
Data are published as collected at the source, with the finest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.
- Data Must Be Timely
Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
- Data Must Be Accessible
Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.
- Data Must Be Machine processable
Data are reasonably structured to allow automated processing of it.
- Access Must Be Non-Discriminatory
Data are available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
- Data Formats Must Be Non-Proprietary
Data are available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
- Data Must Be License-free
Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed as governed by other statutes.
Or something among those lines... After a week or so he did write back, only to say that altought he did understood that this was an important subject he was not able to write about it - and asked if we could do it for him.
We could not! We were not legislators - he was - we were tech-savyy hackers who worried about transparency and open data, but didn't know a thing about writing laws.
And we answered just that. Or something among those lines...
To what all he had to say was: "Oh, very well. But I do have to send in suggestions before the end of the month. If you don't write - I won't send any."
So we came back to the mailling list - the Transparency Hackers is before anything a Google Groups mailling list - and decided that we could not waste this opportunity.
A thread and half of emails later, on the last day before the congressman deadline, we had compiled a bunch of suggestions and ideas from the discussions in the mailling list.
We opened up the 'law.odt' document and started (re)writing the law. We introduced all the 8 principles in the text and changes a few other paragraphs empathizing openess and the use of free software.
As it turned out, it was easier than it appeared. Curiously almost all the words were in Portuguese - with a few legalisms exceptions like 'caput'.
And so we send that document back to Paulo Teixeira which in turn send it without any changes to the Special Committee that was created to discuss the subject and that he was a part of.
All the time we were reasonbly secure that as the text would be reviewed again and again, eventually someone would rewrite the 'law.odt' into something more legal.
So the changes appeared in the president of the committee report and after a weeks it was approved by the House of Chambers and forwarded to the Senate, where it had a few bumps and stood for a long time in a hold hostage in a comission by an evil senator (former president of Brazil) by the name of Fernando Collor. Eventually, we won and after a struggle that lasted more than 20 years - Brazil finally had it's own Freedom of Information law.
Recognized as one of the most advances in the world, in part because of the paragraphs that addresses how the information should be open.
And wanna know what the scariest part is? The text - regarding open data and it's principles - it's exaclty the same that a bunch of tech-savyy hackers that didn't know a thing about writing laws wrote.
To be completely honestly and transparent... there was a tiny change:
On the article 8., inciso 3o, alinêa II where we wrote:
II - allows the recording of reports in different eletronic formats open and non-proprietary, such as spreadsheets and texts, as to allows easy analysis of the information;
Got changed to:
II - allows the recording of reports in different eletronic formats, **including,** open and non-proprietary, such as spreadsheets and texts, as to allows easy analysis of the information;
This was introduced in the Senate and was actually an important change, since otherwise the government would not be allowed to publish data in closed formats such as PDFs. (Not that I would complain much about it.)
And so that's the story. About how we understood that we could write law. That this is no arcane knowledge held only by a few - even if those few are chosen democratically by the people - and that everyone can and should do politics and policies.