In an Australian government first, the Victorian parliament has adopted Creative Commons (CC) licensing as its default licensing system for access to public sector information (PSI).

Not all information will be covered by CC licensing and the government has been advised by the Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee to implement a hybrid scheme where restricted data will be covered by other licenses.  However, based upon evidence by provided by the GILF project, the Committee has proposed that around 85 percent of material could be appropriate for CC licensing.

Creative Commons Australia believes the most salient recommendations were:

• Recommendation 11: That the Victorian Government develop a consistent copyright licensing system for use across all government departments
• Recommendation 14: That the Victorian Government adopt the Creative Commons licensing model as the default licensing system for the Information Management Framework.
• Recommendation 15: That the Victorian Government adopt a hybrid public sector information licensing model comprising Creative Commons and a tailored suite of licences for restricted materials.

In a further move to showcase and endorse the Government’s dedication to information access and innovation, the Minister for Information and Communications Technology John Lenders has invited Victorian Innovators to compete for $100,000 and develop applications that make use of the new licensing system.

The online competition, entitled ‘App My State‘, is designed to encourage innovators to create applications that will benefit residents, visitors, businesses and government. Website, social networking and smart phone applications will be judged on “their innovation, design and development, usefulness, accessibility and general excellence.”