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We are living in a data-centric society, with governments and businesses increasingly looking at what they can do to gain insight and improve the flow of data. Encouraging the release of data as 'open data' is one measure that would remove barriers to access, increase use and facilitate downstream data innovation. Using examples from firstly the non-geoscience and then geoscience sectors, this paper outlines three factors that can lead to a successful open data programme. These are (1) having a clear strategy with a well-articulated vision; (2) ensuring that data are not only free but also technically accessible and delivered under an open licence; and (3) continued investment in the programme to ensure its long-term success. However, not all data can or should be open, and organizations and governments must be careful that their interventions do not have unintended consequences that might reduce incentives to collect, maintain and share data. A primary concern is the financial sustainability of a dataset, but this also extends to other risks that would prevent the data being widely shared such as the inclusion of personal data or third-party intellectual property. In these cases, use of a data-sharing risk assessment framework, and the application of the FAIR principles of findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable can be used to increase data sharing and maximize the benefits that can be realized from geoscience data.

On the cusp of a judgment by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, this article examines the 2017 Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench decision in Good Spirit School Division No 204 v Christ the Teacher Roman Catholic Separate School Division No 212. In this case, the SKQB ruled that non-Catholic students attending a publicly funded Catholic school were not entitled to per-student funding grants administered by the provincial government. This article reviews the case using a historicist lens informed by the philosophy of Edmund Burke, which the author suggests is appropriate in the Canadian constitutional context. Through this constitutional lens, the author examines the constitutional history of separate school funding in Saskatchewan and other Canadian jurisdictions. The author suggests that this history reveals the premium on educational choice that has informed educational policy in Canada. With this history in mind, the article turns to the SKQB judgment. It suggests that the application of several of the key interpretive tools was flawed in light of this history, the development of Charter jurisprudence, and a richer understanding of "state neutrality" in the Canadian context.

Involving subordinates in the process of making organizational decisions is widely thought to be helpful in improving the quality of decisions and also increasing the "ownership" of those decisions. However, participation also can have dysfunctional or even counterproductive effects. In a school system, the school principal or superintendent who is interested in utilizing participative decision making must have an accurate perception of when the staff should or should not be involved. To facilitate this, the authors suggest a three-part schema for classifying problems as viewed by subordinates: the Zone of Indif ference, Zone of Ambivalence, and Zone of Sensitivity. Based upon these con cepts, the authors developed and tested a technique for assessing the views of school faculty members as a source of data to guide principals and superin tendents in deciding whom to involve in dealing with what problems. The tech nique is broadly applicable to other types of organizations as well.

This paper describes the Information Systems Groups at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), The Australian National University (ANU), and the University of Canberra (UC). Each group has a distinctive background that reflects its position in Canberra, Australia's seat of federal government. ADFA is essentially a private university for the Australian Defence Organization; ANU was set up to be a national research institution; and the UC group for many years focused on meeting the training needs for computing professionals for the federal government. Despite these distinguishing characteristics, the subject matter taught and researched in the three groups has a large degree of commonality and each group regards itself as 'vibrant' and happy with what it does. A low degree of professionalisation is perceived, however, relative to older disciplines, as there is a disjunct between what is taught as core knowledge and what is taught as research methods, a lack of social prestige, and a lack of acceptance as a discipline with a unique symbol system.