Gov 2.0 International: Global Innovation Meeting Local Challenges, "The O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Online Conference." Thursday, March 11th. Cost: Free.
9:00am - 11:15am US-PST
12:00pm - 2:15pm US-EST

Gov 2.0 is a worldwide revolution—from the United States to Australia and everywhere in between. Members of government are interacting with citizens via social media and open data efforts are spreading from city to city. At this Gov 2.0 Online Conference, you'll hear about open government efforts in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel. The speakers will share stories and lessons learned, and answer your questions. Learn about some of the Gov 2.0 best practices that have helped effect important change in other countries, and discuss effective ways to use specific tools and processes in other settings.

We posted about Carl Malamud's address to the Gov2.0 Summit in september, but BoingBoing reminded us that there is now video of his address (below). Carl's speech is quite rousing and reminds all of us what we can and should be doing to facilitate access to government information. You can also get his pamphlet online to read along with the address.

And don't forget to read Appendix A: "29 things government could do today." One thing I would add to that list is that every witness statement inserted into the official record in the course of public Congressional hearings should be considered in the public domain regardless of its original copyright status (some witnesses submit published articles, book chapters and the like as part of their written statements which means that the Google Book Project *still* treats post-1923 scanned government publications as if they were in copyright and only shows snippets instead of full-text.)

“Government as platform” means exposing the core information that makes government function, information that is of tremendous economic value to society. Government information—patents, corporate filings, agriculture research, maps, weather, medical research—is the raw material of innovation, creating a wealth of business opportunities that drive our economy forward. Government information is a form of infrastructure, no less important to our modern life than our roads, electrical grid, or water systems. (p.21)

[Thanks for the reminder BoingBoing!]