Make IT Policy

Liberal Democrat IT Online Policy Consultation

Interesting article in the Guardian yesterday about

an attempt to map the Isle of Wight’s roads in one weekend for OpenStreetMap.org, a website that helps create maps free for anyone to use for any purpose. If Ordnance Survey and other national agencies will not make their data freely available, then OpenStreetMap, developed over the past two years, will re-collect it from scratch.

It links to the Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens.

So far, this isn’t an area where the Liberal Democrats have policy one way or the other – although given our historical distrust of monopolies, whether state or private, I suspect it’s something we would support. The current situation also puts up a financial barrier to all kinds of party activity which could be helpful to fellow citizens: looking up local councillors and campaigners, creating tools to make it easier for people to report casework etc. etc.

Perhaps a motion to conference?

Following the first round of consultation based on our original consultation paper, the responses generated and the party’s fundamental values, we developed a full Information and Communication Technology policy paper and accompanying policy motion for debate at the party’s Federal Conference in Spring 2003. It was passed by conference overwhelmingly, so the paper now forms the policy of the Liberal Democrats.