Looks like Canada is ‘Going for Local Open Data Gold’
3 August 2010: London, UK
Across Canada, local municipal governments are engaging and empowering communities at the grassroots level by simply making their data and information freely available for re-use. Major Canadian cities have launched open data portals, including the Canadian capital Ottawa and more are on the way.
Which Canadian Cities have open data portals established by local governments?
The following public sector information data catalogues are government sponsored and provide direct access to local government data in raw re-usable formats. They are all listed in Category ‘One’ on the ePSIplatform Public Sector Data Catalogues page, which includes data.gov style catalogues, internationally.
- Edmonton: City of Edmonton Open Data Catalogue (launched January 2010)
- Nanaimo: Nanaimo Data Catalog
- Ottawa: OpenData Ottawa (launched May 2010) Follow on Twitter: @ottawacity
- Toronto: toronto.ca/open (launched November 2009) Follow on Twitter: @open_to
- Vancouver: City of Vancouver Open Data Catalogue (launched September 2009)
Many of the Canadian municipalities with data portals also demonstrate political commitment by adopting formal local government motions supporting open data portals and principles. The launching of the Vancouver data portal is one such example and can claim to be the one of the first, if not the first city anywhere, to pass a formal motion (Open 3 Motion) (21 May 2009). The Ottawa city council has also adopted Open Government Open Data Principles in the report that informed the Open Data Motion they passed.
Which Canadian Cities are planning local open data portals (from the West to East Coast)?
The Calgary City Council passed a recommendation on the 22 March 2010 to pilot a public data catalogue during the autumn of 2010 and work is currently underway. The Calgary City Blog announcement comments about the initiative:
“The concept is to promote transparency and also to promote innovation and reuse of the data. … The City will engage citizens in recommending both the types of data sets and formats that would be most useful.”
The London, Ontario Open Data Team’s tweets suggest that London is next up for an open data portal. London Open Data Team (citizen led) succeeded.
A great initiative! London ON citizen lead #opendata website is now online http://bit.ly/cAFhcn via @Emerging London and @opendatanetwork
"London, Ontario, Board of Control "Gives the Thumbs-up" to Open Data", by Thomas Cermak, 21 July 2010.
Discussions about an open data portal for Montreal are showing up in tweets and online forums. For example the following tweet takes one to a blog discussing Montreal’s potential alongside international trends.
Montréal has data, a lot of data RT @liberTIC: Open Data in Canada Montréal? « Pheromone Lab: http://bit.ly/bljbwG
On a Google Groups set up for DATATO , there is discussion about pushing Montreal towards an open data initiative and sharing experiences with Toronto.
“Just signed up. I am working with some people in Montreal to push our city towards open-data. I readily like the concept of requesting specific data sets from the city and I was curious to know if your code is available to create a Montreal version of Datato.org? If so, please let me know as I would be very keen to see the possibilities of building a sister site. … Many of the data set requests in Toronto are equally applicable to Montreal, so there could also be some ways for us to share those requests as well without infringing on the specific items for each city.”
In the province of Nova Scotia, the ‘Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia’ is publishing links to news stories and blogs such as: ‘Open government: By the people, for the people’.
Momentum for these projects started mainly as citizen driven initiatives and they continue to have strong community support and involvement. Perhaps, the local level is indeed where the community (business and citizens) can most easily connect with governments and want to influence government policies and re-use the data which affects their daily lives. The following tweets echo this sentiment.
Absolutely! RT @michaelmikhaiel: Toronto and data - a love story. http://bit.ly/dogoIk
Reason #opengov and #opendata is so big at the city level is because that's the touch point for our day to day lives (via @mastermaq)
The Learning Curve and Critiques
- While these open data portals are presented as beta and the learning curve by local governments, businesses and citizens is still in progress, the experience gained to date suggests positive outcomes.
- Are there critiques and issues? Yes, in a blog post entitled: “Its not open data so stop calling it that”, published on the 27th July 2010, the author Glen Newton makes a distinction between ‘data release’ and ‘open data release’. The author draws attention to the issue of the restrictive terms of the licences on the Candian open data portals or that the licences don’t ensure stability in re-use.
- It seems that these issues are recognised and efforts are underway to address them, for example: The ‘ChangeCamp Ottawa 2010’ included an “Open Data Terms of Use Session” with an informative discussion of the issues. Via the Open Knowledge Foundation ‘Open Government’ email list there is also a report by Tracey P. Lauriault about a legal advisory group set up with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) which is dedicated to working on terms of use as well as the city of Ottawa has working group on the topic with the expectation that new terms of use will be adopted.
The Open Government Initiative at the Federal level is just now gaining momentum
Canadian local open data success is in direct contrast to the federal Government which is only starting to acknowledge the need for a Canadian Digital Strategy which includes making available public sector information for re-use. For example, the recently appointed Information Commissioner, Suzanne Legault, acknowledges that Canada is lagging internationally in matters of open government and points to the need for planning and implementing Canadian policies: Plan for a Digital Canada.ca. Reports from the recent Canadian Government ‘Digital Strategy public Consultation’ indicate that Canadians do want easy access to central government public sector information to be part of Canada’s future for economic prosperity, as well as a key factor needed open and transparent government.
Currently, Canada federal Government does not have a ‘data.gov’ style portal similar to Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom or United States. There is an exciting civil society led initiative catalogue by David Eaves and colleagues: datadotgc.ca which is leading the way.
Canada Sharing and Learning Internationally
The following examples indicate how Canadian local open data initatives are reaching out to learn from others and to share experiences, internationally.
The open data success stories are shared via tweets internationally, for example:
- How #opendata saved $3.2 billion http://bit.ly/bbFNKP #canada #charities #taxes /via @flowingdata
- Guest post by David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca, on the Open Knowledge Foundation site entitled: “Learning from Libraries: The Literacy Challenge of Open Data”
The Edmonton Open Data Team and City of Edmonton’s Chief Information Officer, Chris Moore, during an Open City Workshop – International held during March 2010 posted the following comment.
“Those who are considering an Open Data initiative in their region may want to communicate and educate certain local audiences that frequent their site. You now have that opportunity, thanks to the City of Edmonton’s willingness to share with other communities, not only here in Alberta and in Canada, but also around the world. I’ve had personal discussions with people from the US, Australia, even with Annemarie van Campen who is excited about the Dutch “fresh government” Open Data initiative. I love the “fresh government” tagline, it’s brilliant.”
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