Ottawa: 14 July 2010

The Government of Canada launched a public consultation on the 10th May 2010 regarding the creation of Digital Economy Strategy for Canada. The consultation closed on the 13th July 2010. BY the time the consultation closed over 2000 Canadian individuals and organisations registered to share their ideas and submissions. The consultation was supported by a consultation document titled: Improving Canada’s Digital Advantage: Strategies for Sustainable Prosperity - Consultation Paper on a Digital Economy Strategy for Canada (40 pages, ISBN 978-1-100-15782-5).

The statement published from the Minister Clement on the closing of the Digital Economy Strategy Consultations states:

“We want to get this right. It’s important to Canada’s economic and competitive future. We want to make sure that the resulting strategy for Canada’s digital economy reflects what we’ve heard from you over the past 60-plus days.

Other countries have typically taken between 6 and 18 months to develop their strategies, so it’s reasonable to expect that Canada’s strategy will be developed in a similar time frame.

This website is now closed to any further submissions, but I invite you to check back here for news and further developments as we put together our strategy for Canada’s digital economy.

Of course, we didn’t put everything else on hold while the consultation was taking place.

In recent weeks the Government of Canada announced investments under the Broadband Canada program, introduced new copyright and anti-spam legislation, and updated our privacy laws for the digital age. All of these measures are critical cornerstones of the digital economy.

The Government of Canada is looking at realigning resources and continuing to invest in initiatives that yield the greatest return, that are vital to Canada’s long-term competitiveness.”

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One of top three ideas with an Idea Status ranking of +338 is that of Open Access to Canada's Public Sector Information and Data that states:

“Create a data.gc.ca for Canada’s public sector information (PSI) and data in parallel with the excellent NRCan GeoConnections model (e.g. GeoGratis, GeoBase, Discovery Portal).

These PSI & data should be shared at no cost with citizens, be in accessible and open formats, searchable with standard metadata, wrapped in public domain or unrestricted user licenses, delivered within an an open architecture infrastructure based on open standards, specifications and be interoperable. It should be governed with open government principles whereby data & PSI are shared first and arguments to restrict are made only for legitimate privacy and security reasons which should also be disclosed. It should have a permanent home and include both the right combination of multi-departmental (e.g. CIC, INAC, HRSDC, NRC, NRCan, etc.) inputs, trans-disciplinary human resources (e.g. Librarians, archivists, scientists) along with IT specialists & engineers. It should be built in consultation with Canadians to ensure it is designed with user needs and useability in mind. (This is how the GeoConnections program built the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure).

The Government of Canada produces administrative data for the purpose of program delivery (e.g. Canada Student Loan, location where new Canadians land, the number and location of homeless shelters, etc.), and it produces data for the purpose of governing for example: the data collected by Statistics Canada (e.g. Census & Surveys, National Accounts); Environment Canada (e.g. air & water quality, location of brown sites); Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (e.g. satellite and radar imagery); Industry Canada (e.g. corporate registry); Canada Revenue Agency (e.g. Charities dbase); National Research Council (e.g. Scientific data); SSHRC (e.g., social science research data) and more. These data have already been paid for by Canadians via taxation, and the cost of selling these data back to citizens on a cost recovery basis is marginal or more expensive (e.g. Cost of government to government procurement, management of licences, royalties, government accounting and etc.) relative to the benefits & reduced overhead of delivering these data at no cost. Furthermore, Canadians often pay multiple times for the same data, since each level of government also purchases the same data, federal departments purchase these data from each other and there are examples where municipalities purchase the same data multiple times from Statistics Canada. This is not only a waste of taxpayer money it goes against the principle of create once and use many times and of avoiding the duplication of effort.

Data & PSI are non rivalrous goods where sharing and open access to these does not impede other from doing so. Open access stimulates research and IT sectors who will have the resources they need for the creation of new data R&D products (e.g. Applications) and services (e.g., web mapping), evidence based decision making (e.g. Population health), and informing public policy on a number of key Canadian issues (e.g. Homelessness, housing, education). In addition, evidence from Canadian City Open Data Initiatives (e.g., Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, and Ottawa) have demonstrated that the cost and time to find and access data & PSI within government have been greatly reduced since finding these are easier and negotiating access becomes a non issue, which in turn brings savings to citizens and greater efficiencies within these institutions. Finally, participatory and deliberative democracies include the active engagement and inputs from citizens, civil society organizations, the private sector, and NGOs along with their government. Making these data available increases the collective knowledge base of Canadians and stimulates public engagement, improves efficiencies, and fuels innovation.

These are already our (citizen’s) data & PSI, why not share share them with us and enable citizens and the government to work together to stimulate Canada’s economy, create innovative industries and formulate evidence based public policy.”

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Canada’s CBC has published a news topic titled: Access key theme in digital strategy comments that reviews the consultation.

Related news topics

Canada lags Australia, UK & USA!