The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has just released an issues paper called Towards an Australian Government Information Policy which tries to define what data generated by or collected by government should be made publicly available. Find the paper at http://www.oaic.gov.au/publications/papers.html. The announcement is good news for researchers who might want to make use of government data for research. For example, on p. 54, the paper states : Information held by the Australian Government is a valuable national resource. As recommended by the Government 2.0 Taskforce, unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary, access to that information should be open, that is: • free • based on open standards • easily discoverable • understandable • machine-readable,and • freely reusable and transformable.