Slashdot Mirror
Poland's Prime Minister Goes For Open Government
rysiek writes "In a surprise announcement, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared new policy toward a more open state: ''All information funded from public sources should be available as public property, free for everyone to use it as they wish,' said Tusk last week, during a meeting with NGO leaders in Poland. (English translation.)
This is very unusual in Europe, and in fact puts Poland ahead of other EU states. A loose web of Polish NGOs for more than two years has advocated more open public information laws. A bill to that effect
will now be presented in Sejm (the Polish parliament)."
Wow the birth of an information superpower.
Relax, it's just talking, there is an election comming this fall, so he has to fill voters' brains with dull promises. So.. nothing to be excited about, it won't happen.
Open government data in exchange for blocking file sharing links. Sneaky. Last attempt at internet censorship failed, they are at it again.
Can't help myself hearing the voice of Jim Hacker in my head while reading the citation. Or is it just me seeing a huge similarity to "Yes, Minister" here?
Considering that Polish Government has been using FOSS in the majority of the governmental boxes, it is nice to see that their Government looks upon proven qualities of "openness", as well. Playing open minded, with cards shown. Nice.
.Play.Open.Minded.
They can say whatever they like in panels, if there is no concerte decisions and laws to bring those promises to action. The fact that Poland is an ex-Soviet state that ranks very low, even on European scale, in Economic and Political freedoms and corruption does not raise my optimism either.
huja tam
Moreover, the translation suggests his statement was made with significant caveats. TFA's third paragraph suggests that info funded by public sources is public...unless it's not in the best interests of the state, or is defined as classified – the example given is of treasury and economic research. The guy is talking about creating a category of free information, not making everything publically available as the summary claims. Seems it’s about moving Poland towards the position already occupied by the rest of the EU, not barrelling past it.
google is not easy to do
My first thought was: "Hmm. A discovery about Poland's Prime Numbers? What's the definition of a Poland's Prime anyway?". Ok. Time for the first coffee of the day, I guess.
The problem with Slashdot memes is that YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
This policy is quite old, so if anything our Prime Minister just restated existing policy. However, there is a catch -- beurocrats can put as many obstacles as they want, i.e. you want a public information? Here we go with xerox, with bad printing, just 700 pages, find what you want.
A lot of goverment also violates that policy and... nothing happens.
In short, forget about policies and law in Poland, only personal influences matter here. We don't even have freedom of speech.
In France the open data did the same big step on May 6th: http://georezo.net/blog/inspire/2011/05/06/decret-sur-le-partage/
Is it a movement of the G8 to fight WikiLeaks?
We need a real leftist party.
Not SLD which is "liberals painting themselves red".
Not PiS which while leftist in economy, is ultra-right in other issues.
A real party that will fight for the rights of the working man.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Whats more, Obama is coming today to Poland, maybe it has something to do with it...
So please don't waste you time on translate any texts spread by Polish government :)
Sorry, but there's a very long way from saying that "something should be" to that really happening. Polish public administration has a long tradition of various "shoulds" that never materialised and even longer tradition of working non-transparently to produce hopelessly flawed and inconsistend legislation.
While I believe Mr Tusk, he has little control over his administration that is split into hundreds of autonomous units, each doing their own business.
Openness is not enough. What is required is accountability.
For example, the Greek government decided to publish its records in opengov.gr.
In that site, there is a lot of information published, including phone bills from public services. But there is no reference to what phone numbers public servants call, making the freedom essentially useless: we, the citizens, don't know if the public servants spent money phoning other public servants or sex hot lines, for example.
Openness is not useful without Accountability.
Polish Prime Minister?
Not Enough Consonants Exception raised.
In March this year polish government tried to ram through draconian law that would require registering web sites in local authorities, allowed some beurocrats from KRRiTV (polish FCC equivalent) to decide which content is appropriate, which is not and charge fines / mandate takedowns of content considered "inappropriate" by those beurocrats. Whole affair of passing this crap was "to harmonize with EU laws" of course.
This caused a huge upheaval, especially in ranks of rulling party electorate that considers itself liberal, so the whole process stopped in its tracks - government officials backed off it, propably because of nearby parliamentary elections and now tries various damage control measures, including meetings with various groups and advertising how open they would like to be (and we don't have much choice as the second largest party in Poland are outright hardline neocons (called "Law and Justice" - which is a joke) who already tried to establish their own totalitarian, failed but still stay strong blocking any meaningful political power from being a viable alternative to Civic Platform).
Polish language is so hard that no one will understand the documents anyway.
First, you need to define "worker". Is someone struggling as a self-employed in his one-man plumbing company a worker? How about a politician's secretary? A real estate salesman? Coal miners?
Second, without companies there won't be any jobs for "workers" to attend to. Without rich people, poor people will be even poorer.
How about a trying to make life better for everyone instead? In my experience as a former socialist activist in Sweden, most people on the far left think that it's most important to make everyone economically equal, usually by making the rich poorer. In reality though, that only causes everyone to become more miserable, even though the difference between wealthy and pool become smaller. I've since left socialism and indentify myself politically as liberal. I still loathe conservatism (especially value conservatism) as much as ever. I've realised that the right thing to do is focusing on making life better for the poor and the only way to accomplish that in practice is to make things better for everyone, even the already wealthy and especially the middle class.
Socialism is based on jealousy and that is not a very good foundation for anything.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
What will it take for us to realize (or admit) that the people who run the business of government are driven purely by self-interest? They don't work for you. They don't work for me. That's nothing but age-old lip service, as old as the idea of organized coercion itself.
These people work purely for themselves, and that is precisely why all governments expand in both power and revenue throughout their lifetimes, never willingly or permanently reducing the size of government.
OK, I live in Poland. First I will write why it doesn't matter what is written in this article. Next I will write why this article is a bullshit. [1] a) One year ago Prime Mnister Tusk tried to create a law that allows a censorship of the internet. People start shouting "WTF", "GTFO", etc, so he withdrew. About one year later he tried do the same thing but in more subtle way. b) Probably as you know about one year ago Polish President Kaczynski has died in the plane crash. Three things about this and Mr. Tusk: - Mr. Tusk during private call with Mr. Putin approved adverse way for Poland to explain the plane crash - Mr. Tusk didn't revealed list of actual special forces collaborators which are connect with mass-media (shortly before his death Kaczynski wanted to do this) - Mr. Tusk didn't revealed agreement with "Gazprom" which is adverse for Poland (shortly before his death Kaczynski wanted to do this) c) During the last Bill Gate's visit in Poland the whole Polish Government licked Gate's shoes. Today nothing change, and it doesn't matter about which political party we are talking. d) This year will be elections. Forget about what politicians talk in a year before an elections. Just remember what they did during a year after an elections. [2] The most important part of the article is: " As explained by the Prime Minister, may appear a new category of cases that are not state secrets, but whose disclosure would not be expedient in the interests of the country as legal expert commissioned for use in financial negotiations conducted by the Treasury." Short summary: Mr. Tusk is a bad gay and this article is about fucking Polish people harder not about more freedom. PS Poland is a state of mind. Not as much as Russia but still too much. I will give you a key to Polish mentality. Anyway, I bet you can't understand it. Watch the best Polish comedy called "Mi" (eng. "Teddy Bear") made by Stanisaw Bareja: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Bear_(film) This film is a pure surrealism for a western man but I swear it's the truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHkCqkn0VKE
From Jon Wilbanks, Creative Commons' VP of Science, in the last Terena conference:
https://tnc2011.terena.org/web/media/archive/12A
It'sless about money and more about employee's rights. The pretty talk about free market of jobs is conveniently omitting bosses who are liars and thieves.
Free market is all about the "customer" (employee) staying well informed about the qualities of "goods" (job conditions) at various providers. Not so in the job market.
There were sites where the employees could describe the real situation at their workplaces. They were all shut down by litigation by employers whose business was hurt by truth about false promises that attract talented, dedicated employees and leave them disgruntled and disillusioned a year later, when their expertise and talent provided the boss with wealth, and them - only with faltering health.
You might try to litigate but if you are redundant, you can't afford the lawyers (and you earned your boss enough cash for the best lawyers to defend his side). And if given job market is narrow, your boss will let other bosses know that you dare to sue your employer - and you won't find a job in your specialization.
So no, it's not about "raising minimum salaries" or "giving more time off work". It's about protecting the letter of the contract between the employer and the employee, aiding the employee in asserting their rights, keeping dishonest employers from hiding their dishonesty, preventing dishonest abuse of position of power to deprive employees of their rights ("use your overdue holidays now and you're fired") and so on.
The law concerning employee protection in Poland is quite good. I'd say vastly superior to the US law. The problem is enforcing it is a real challenge and there are no strong institutions that would take the employee's side in case the law is broken.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The issues discussed today included also Internet blocking schemes, mandatory data retention, regulation of the convergent on-demand services as well as liability of Internet service providers and notice and takedown procedures. The Internet community representatives have welcomed progress on some of the issues as well as indicating items still to be resolved during working meetings starting early next week.
http://www.isoc.org.pl/201105/internet-dialogue-poland
Marcin
What you are talking about in this post has nothing to with needing a "real leftist party". It has to do with better contract law enforcement and the presence of a vibrant job market. If their are significantly more people available to do a particular job category than there are jobs, it doesn't matter what the laws are, these types of abuses will happen. On the other hand, if you are in a job category where there are more jobs than there are people capable of doing the job, you will not have a problem with this sort of thing, there will be employers clamoring for your services.
I agree that it is a real problem when an employer promises one thing at the hiring interview, but delivers a completely different job setting. There are ways to discover this during the hiring process if you know what you are doing. I have turned down severl jobs because the vibe I've gotten off of those who would be my future co-workers was not consistent with what the hiring manager was saying about the corporate culture.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Obama is coming today to Poland, maybe it has something to do with it..."
I am not sure the US government leads the world in its action on opening up its data for the public to see so I am not sure the Polish authorities will be doing this to impress the US - I don't the the US government will necessarily see this as an important step forward by Poland and won't aid trade discussions etc.
Probably this has more to do with impressing the local population, getting re-elected, etc.
This "pro-Open Government" statement comes from a Prime Minister of a government that, not long ago, wanted to create a Registry of Disallowed Websites and Services in an attempt to fight some sort of criminal activities (related to gambling, IIRC).
Some people claimed that such a Registry was a first step towards censorship. Post-socialist Poland closed its Censorship Office in 1991.
Vibrant job market is a pipe dream for which there is no recipe. Many tried and failed.
The contract law is okay as it is, it's that the law system that is hard to access for "joe average", and no institutions that watch over upholding the law by default - it's always the person who is being screwed over that has to fight the legal battle, and receives no help or favors - the same fees apply to a milionaire factory owner and to a broke employee who got screwed over, except it's a negligible drop for the employer and a roadblock for the employee.
There -are- institutions that are intended to watch over this. The problem is their inspectors are corrupt and their competences limited. This all could be remedied by restructuring them with efficient internal control, more power for the inspectors, ability to work undercover, protection to witnesses and so on. This would be quite doable through law that regulates operation of such institutions... ...but nobody's gonna do it because businessmen fund the politicians and it's in the businessmen best interest to keep these organizations powerless. The essential law is good, but there are serious holes in its enforcement - employees can't complain 'cause "law is on your side, go sue the crooks" and the crooks are happy because they can deal with anyone who sues them. Only a strongly "people's" party could challenge the system. But there's none at the time and it doesn't seem like any could happen in foreseeable future.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Current Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, also promised some similar form of transparency, that turned into a joke. I hope this is true, but I wouldn't hold me breath.
There is no much surprise for more enlightened, rationalist and fixed firmly on ground part of our society. Like no others before, and unlike the opposition, foreign affairs, house of prime minister and parliamentary club of ruling party got open accounts on facebook. On internal side, once in a while they collect questions and regularly reply to concerns, questions. On min. FA site, there are regularly coming pieces of information about current moves of head of ministry as well as his office. Many positive changes have happened in Poland recently, many more to come.