Government use of Creative Commons
Currently this is a scratchpad for referencing known government uses of CC licensing and public domain tools (and government recommendations of same). Please add to the list and turn compelling uses into Case Studies.
Examples are needed for national/federal, state/provincial and local/city/county governments (or their equivalents) as well is inter-governmental bodies such as the European Union and United Nations.
Nation-Specific
Armenia
- Official website of the Armenian President. CC BY-ND 3.0 Unported.
Australia
- Australian Parliament. The Parliament’s central web portal http://www.aph.gov.au houses the most important documents of the Australian Federal Government including all bills, committee reports and, most importantly, the Hansard transcript of Parliamentary Sittings, and the portal will be published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Version 3.0 Australian license.
- Australian budget delivered May 12, 2010 was released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. Also the Gov 2.0 response and the NBN Implementation Study
- government data - three of the largest sources of Australian government data sets - Australian Bureau of Statistics, Geoscience Australia and the still beta data.australia.gov.au - are all licensed by default under CC BY 2.5 Australia and/or CC BY 3.0 Australia . Together these sites provide free access to all of Australia's census data, official geoscientific information and knowledge, and other miscellaneous government data (such as the location of public toilets). The ABS and Geoscience Australia have detailed copyright and attribution guidelines, to assist with user implementation. data.australia.gov.au played a major role in the Mashup Australia competition run by Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce.
- Water Information - the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has launched the official website of its Improving Water Information Program with a default CC BY 3.0 Australia licence. This aggregates hundreds of other government departments' and agencies' information into the National Water Account. They have a range of explanatory materials about the licence and are building licensing tools and metadata into their Australian Water Resources Information System.
- ABC Pool - this initiative of Australia's largest public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), is releasing material from the ABC archives for reuse under CC licences. It's first major release has been as part of the Gene Pool project, celebrating Charles Darwin's Centenary.
- National Library of Australia - various policy materials
- Powerhouse Museum - releases a large range of material under CC, including its photo of the day, downloadable pdfs from its Play program and the museum's general collection information and data.
- Queensland Museum - releases photographs from its collection on Wiki Commons under CC BY-SA .
- NSW Department of Education and Training - Dynamic Calculus': Teaching Resource
- Aged Care Queensland's eMentoring Handbook
- National Copyright Unit - Creative Commons for Educators fact sheets produced for the Smartcopying website in conjunction with Creative Commons Australia.
- Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy - Budd:e E-security Education Package. The Budd:e package won Best Children's interactive media and digital content at the 2010 AIMIA Awards.
- Mosman Municipal Council's Community Engagement Strategy is released under a Creative Commons licence and includes as a key priority “to promote the use and dissemination of Council’s materials while retaining Council’s rights of authorship”.
Australian government reports recommending CC usage
- Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 - report of the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce
- Government Response to the Report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce - agreement in principle that Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) should be the default licence for all PSI
- Government Information and Licensing Framework - a Queensland Government strategy on open access and use of information
- Venturous Australia: the National Innovation Review - report recommends government use of CC licences, and is released under CC
- Victorian Government's Economic Development Committee recommends CC licensing for public sector information.
Bulgaria
- Bulgarian President. CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.
- Chief Prosecutor of the Republic of Bulgaria. CC BY 2.5 Bulgaria
- Bulgarian Foreign Ministry. CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.
Chile
- Chilean Government Official Site, whose site is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Chile.
- The Library of the National Congress, whose site is licensed under CC BY NC SA 2.0 Chile.
- The Guidelines for Governmental Websites and its Observatory, run by the Ministry of Economy, are licensed under CC BY NC SA 2.0 Chile.
Colombia
Greece
- http://primeminister.gr CC BY 3.0 Greece
- http://www.opengov.gr/ CC BY 3.0 Greece
- http://geodata.gov.gr/geodata/ CC BY-SA 3.0 Greece
- http://opengeodata.gr CC BY 3.0 Greece, first implementation of the INSPIRE directive
- http://antiproedros.gov.gr CC BY 3.0 Greece records the public sector workforce in accordance to the IMF rules
Guatemala
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobiernodeguatemala/ under CC BY-NC-SA generic
Italy
- http://poliziadistato.it/ The official website of the italian police, CC BY NC ND 2.5 IT
Korea
- http://www.president.go.kr/ The Office of the President web site, CC BY NC ND 2.0 KR
- http://blog.naver.com/mb_nomics The Official Blog of the President, CC BY NC ND 2.0 Kr
Mexico
- President Felipe Calderon Website, BY NC ND 2.5 Mexico. http://www.presidencia.gob.mx
- National Sports Comission http://www.conade.gob.mx
- Federal Government guide for website building recommends the use CC licenses
Netherlands
- CC0 as default copyright policy of the Dutch national government's single website. Will contain websites for all the ministries. Everything that is available on www.rijskoverheid.nl is available without restrictions unless it is noted otherwise.
- Creative Commons Licensing for the Public Sector (pdf)
New Zealand
- NZ Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) framework standardises the licensing of government copyright works for re-use using Creative Commons licences and recommends the use of ‘no-known rights’ statements for non-copyright material. It is widely recognised that re-use of this material by individuals and organisations may have significant creative and economic benefit for New Zealand. Was released for public discussion on August 27, 2009. The framework will enable greater access to many public sector works by encouraging State Services agencies to license material for reuse on liberal terms, and recommends Creative Commons as an important tool in this process.
- The Ministry for the Environment’s Land Cover Database and the Land Environments New Zealand classification has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence on the Koordinates website - http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/news_and_events/news/koordinates_showcases_govt_cc_datasets
Russian Federation
- All materials (fotos, texts, videos, audios, etc.) of Kremlin.ru (Official Website of President of the Russian Federation), Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY 3.0 Unported)
Spain
- Statistical information on the Statistical Institute of Catalonia site is licensed by default under CC BY 3.0 Spain.
- http://www.slideshare.net/justicia/the-use-of-creative-commons-licences-in-the-ministry-of-justice-of-the-government-of-catalonia/
- The Basque government opened a portal called Open Data Euskadi http://opendata.euskadi.net/ that uses CC BY 3.0 Spain.
United Kingdom
- data.gov.uk, including all affiliated websites such as Ordinance Survey's maps. "aligned to be interoperable with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence" [1]
United States
Federal
- Works by the US federal government are automatically part of the public domain in the US as stipulated by http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#105
- White House web site, President Barack Obama, CC BY 3.0 US
- President-Elect Transition Team, Barack Obama and Joseph Biden. CC BY 3.0 Unported. (Not an official federal government site, but an election team site, hence not required to be public domain.)
- The U.S. Department of Education has made OER an invitational priority in their Ready to Learn (PDF) and Ready to Teach (PDF) grants.
State
- New York State Senate, Senate Content, CC-BY-NC-ND with CC+ allowing non-political fundraising use of content.
- State of Virginia, legislation that indicates a preference for state-funded materials to be released with a CC (or equivalent open) license.
Local government
- RecoverySF, CC BY 3.0 US.
Intergovernmental Organizations
European Cultural Foundation
- The European Cultural Foundation's project Labforculture.org releases materials under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
European Union
- http://www.communia-project.eu/about COMMUNIA - The European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain, funded by the European Commission (the executive of the European Union), CC-BY-SA (Unported)[2]
- European Cultural Foundation - http://www.labforculture.org/
Inter-American Development Bank
- The Inter-American Development Bank is requiring the adoption of Creative Commons by the organizations that receive funding from the Bank in the context of the FOMIN (Fondo Multiateral de Inversiones) initiatives, particularly the ICT4BUS, a fund that promotes the adoption of e-commerce in the American continent, which has financed more that thirty initiatives in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries. Banks require those initiative to use the GPL to license any software developed by organizations receiving support from the bank, and CC to license the documentation related with those computer programs, such as user manuals.
United Nations
- UNESCO OER documentation and toolkits - http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/
- United Nations University OpenCourseWare - http://ocw.unu.edu/Courses_listing
- United Nations University Media Studio - http://mediastudio.unu.edu/en/about/
- United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Knowledge Platform - http://logosundp.org/; http://logosundp.org/about/terms
- The UNDP Virtual School for Latin America and the Caribbean - http://www.escuelapnud.org/
