Those interested in open access to public sector information will be excited to see the results of a recently released Australian Federal Government Review of the National Innovation System, http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview.

The final report, titled VenturousAustralia, was prepared for Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, by consultants Culter and Co, headed up by industry consultant and strategy adviser Dr Terry Cutler. It places a strong emphasis on open innovation, stating in the introduction:

“Today innovation is understood to involve much more than the transmission of knowledge down the pipeline of production from research to development to application. In the age of the internet, with the opportunities for collaboration which it opens up, open innovation is increasingly important.”

Most importantly from an open access point of view, it was Recommendation 7.8 which is most exciting:

“Australian governments should adopt international standards of open publishing as far as possible. Material released for public information by Australian governments should be released under a creative commons licence.”

The full report is available at http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Documents/NIS-review-web.pdf.