Dimensions of openness in education/Open policy

Open Policy Around the World Government adoption of open licenses may prove to be one of the most significant advances for openness in education in the future. Said well by David Bollier (Links to an external site.), “Governments are coming to realize that they are one of the primary stewards of intellectual property, and that the wide dissemination of their work—statistics, research, reports, legislation, judicial decisions—can stimulate economic innovation, scientific progress, education, and cultural development.” If governments around the world are going to unleash the power of hundreds of billions of dollars of publicly funded education, research, and scientific resources, we need broad adoption of open policies aligned with the belief that the public should have access to the resources they paid for. At a fundamental level, “all publicly funded resources [should be] openly licensed resources.”

CC licenses and tools have been implemented by government entities and public sector bodies (Links to an external site.) around the world. And over the last few years, there’s been an increasing focus in governments aligning to the principle that the public should have access to the materials that it pays for. These funding mandates, which require that grantees release content produced with grant funds under an open license, has been a increasingly commons way for governments to support openness. Legislation involving the open licensing of publicly funded educational materials has been passed in Brazil (Links to an external site.) Poland (Links to an external site.), the United States (Links to an external site.), and Canada (Links to an external site.). The UK has championed an open access policy (Links to an external site.) for publicly funded research under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Governments in Australia (Links to an external site.) and New Zealand (Links to an external site.) have opted for comprehensive open licensing policies for all government-produced works, by default releasing public information and data under CC BY. The Dutch government has taken this one step further, opting to release government information directly into the public domain (Links to an external site.) using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.

In addition to governments, other publicly-minded institutions like philanthropic foundations and intergovermental organizations (Links to an external site.) are supporting open licensing. Several foundations have already implemented or are considering requiring open licensing on the outputs of their grant funds. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Links to an external site.), the Open Society Foundations (Links to an external site.), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Links to an external site.) already require their grantees to release content they build with grant money under open licenses. And CC continues to explore (Links to an external site.) how to evaluate current copyright policies within the foundation world and suggest how foundations (and their grantees) can benefit from open licensing for their grant funded materials. Intergovernmental organizations like the Commonwealth of Learning (Links to an external site.) and the World Bank (Links to an external site.) have adopted open licensing policies to share their publications too.

Open advocates – whether it be in support of open sharing of publicly funded educational materials, open access to scientific research articles, access to a huge trove of cultural heritage resources from libraries and museums, or open licensing for public sector information and government datasets – have been increasingly active over the last few years, particularly in working to educate policymakers about the importance and benefits of open licensing. These efforts include the development of declarations such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative (Links to an external site.), Cape Town (Links to an external site.) and Paris (Links to an external site.) Declarations on Open Educational Resources, the Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (Links to an external site.), the Panton Principles (Links to an external site.), and many others. Advocates have been key in communicating the need for governments to consider open licensing, whether it be for federal agencies (Links to an external site.), governing bodies like the European Commission (Links to an external site.), or through multilateral negotiations such as WIPO (Links to an external site.). And the grassroots open community has been extremely active in raising awareness of open licensing, whether it be through the tireless work of CC Affiliates (Links to an external site.), the broad network of open data activists from the Open Knowledge Foundation (Links to an external site.), legal experts championing Open Government Data Principles (Links to an external site.), and persons participating in events from Open Access Week (Links to an external site.) to Open Education Week (Links to an external site.) to Public Domain Day (Links to an external site.). All of these actions have rallied around the common theme that governments and public bodies should release content they create or fund under open licenses, for the benefit of all.

Since the beginning of Creative Commons, governments and public sector bodies have leveraged CC licenses and public domain tools to share their data, publicly funded research, educational and cultural content, and other digital materials. Governments are increasingly leveraging CC licenses as part of their strategy to proactively share resources, promote effective spending, and champion innovation. A massive amount of work is ahead, and with a committed community of advocates, interested governmental departments, and open minded policymakers, we can together work toward a close integration of open licensing inside the public sector. If we do so, governments can better support their populations with the information they need, increase the effectiveness of the public’s investment, and contribute to a true global commons. This increased access through openness will be a huge boon to education, lowering the cost and raising the quality of education around the world.

Source: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/4/pages/open-policy-around-the-world?module_item_id=52830

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