Bug on the submission website > Help needed

Hello everyone,
I have started submitting answers for France (on Firefox) but I was unable to do so because of a bug.
I filled the procurement tenders dataset for France (http://global.census.okfn.org/submit/?place=fr&dataset=procurement) and then the following message apeared “conflict: There is already a queued submission for this data. See the queued submission”. When I click on “See the queued submission: http://global.census.okfn.org/place/fr/undefined”, the following message appears: {“status”:“not found”,“message”:“not found here”}
What can I do?
Thanks for your help!

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Looking at the census the submission for procurement appears correct http://global.census.okfn.org/submission/d9ed80c4-b5f5-4701-a81d-6176431a4dc2 and has been submitted by you.

You can’t revise a submission until it has been reviewed and either approved or rejected. Are you happy with the submission or do you want to change it? If you want to change it, the only thing you can do until it’s reviewed is add a comment.

I hope that helps.

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Thank you @Stephen! Really helpful.

Hi Claire-Marie,

I will repeat myself from last year.
People from the french government in charge of the national OpenData should
not take any part in the filling of the census index for France.
This is what would be called a serious conflict of interests…

Benjamin with Regards Citoyens

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Hello @RouxRC,
I have asked C. Le Guen that reported it to @Mor that I want to make clear, like last year that I work at Etalab, so for the French governement on open data when I submit anything. I want to be fully transparent on that, and it is also the reason why it is very clear on my Open Knowledge profile on this forum that I work for the French government, at Etalab.
Additionnaly, nobody at Open Knowledge told me that I could not contribute and, to my best knowledge, the Index methodology does not ban government employees from participating.
Finally, I will not review anything, I am not and I do not want to be the French reviewer, I am just submitting so I do not see where the conflict is…

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Well I believe this should be a precise rule that people who actually
organise the release of opendata can not evaluate themselves the quality of
their own work. And even if it is not a written rule, I believe this should
be one of personal ethics for anyone.
Last year, Etalab people did some last minute changes to some themes that
had absolutely no change over the year and suddenly became more open just
because the reviewer took the last submitted contribution.
As a result, France was ranked #3 without any real reason for this bump
over the considered year… Considering how much the french government and
Etalab paraded about this meaningless ranking, I believe yes, this is a
real conflict of interest.

Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou

@RouxRC 2 initial thoughts - and to be clear, i’m not clear there are hard and fast rules so this is something that others, including editors may have different perspective on.

  • I think it is ok for government representatives, including those involved in open data initiatives, to submit to the Census. However, they would not, of course, review their own submission - so independent review would occur before that submission became an actual “Entry”.
  • Let’s focus on getting great review this year of the entries for France - and elsewhere - and leave aside specific feelings about previous outcomes :wink:
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Dear @RouxRC,

Just to add to @rufuspollock comment -

  1. I don’t think we should encourage governments not to submit. Even more so, I think that if you see that government submit, you should review the submission and comment on it, so the reviewer can see the full picture.

  2. There are some places in the world that has good relationship with the government and submit together such in Finland and Norway. I think that to exclude governments will achieve the opposite result.

  3. The review process this year is thematic, not country based, so it suppose to eliminate bias toward specific submitters.

Again, I am encouraging you to comment on @cmfg submissions, and I encourage all of you to work together.

4 Likes

All right Rufus and Mor, I understand your positions, although I do not
share them entirely:

  • regarding collaborations between civil society and gov during the process
    of submitting, I totally agree that submitting together can be a great way
    to get a chance to discuss all the subjects at once physically and expose
    the actual problems to the people in charge
  • but regarding solo contributions coming from gov people actually in
    charge of what they are ranking, I really do not see how it can help having
    necessarily biased view. Governments use the census to promote their work
    so they will naturally always tend to present a nicer picture of the
    reality. The only case were I would see it useful would be if absolutely
    nobody from the civil society would fill the census in a country, in which
    case I personnally have a hard time to believe such countries have official
    dedicated teams.

We collabore regularily at Regards Citoyens with Etalab and I met with
Claire-Marie a few times already, this is not the question here.
Our experience in France last year showed that contributions from Etalab
were deliberately ignoring known issues. Similarily, Claire-Marie’s
discussed contribution here on procurements says it is fully open whereas
we both know not even half of the national procurements are included in the
released data…

So yes, of course these contributions will be commented, and
counter-contributions will be submitted, but I believe a debate in the
community on the matter of such contributions might be relevant.

Benjamin

@RouxRC - the debate in the community is vital, this is why we have this forum. However, I think the comments should also be done in the index platform as well. Why wont we ask other people to participate like @pzwsk ?

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@mor Are you starting a new thread on this please?

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Yes, here is the link to the new topic - Governments submission of data to the Global Open Data Index?

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