Many words about a Parliamentary committee

[Michael Mulley]

Hi list,

I spoke to the House committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics today. I know several people on here are interested in how it went; here's my report.

The witnesses were myself and, by video from Edmonton, Chris Moore. (This was a recent invitation, and I learned it was just going to be me and Chris only the day before. I'd describe myself as, uh, apprehensive, especially as I wasn't able to set aside much time to prepare. With more time, I'd have loved to have more discussions beforehand and see if I could involve list members & others interested in the subject.)

I've pasted a copy of my opening statement below. I found it surprising that I--a coder with no policy background and not particularly much policy knowledge--was essentially the first person seen by the committee after the Information Commissioner. I saw my role as more or less a pitchman's: to introduce the basic concept of open data; try to ensure that people knew what data was and what, more or less, "open" means in this context; and to communicate as best I could a sense of excitement, that this wasn't another debate about access to information or disclosure but that it represented a real potential for researchers and citizens and was something lots of Canadians felt strongly about.

Chris spoke largely about Edmonton's experience and successes, and about the international jurisdictions he's been able to work with around data issues.

I'd anticipated and tried to prepare for questions around how and why open data would be valuable, and spent my time beforehand looking for examples and arguments around this. There were no such questions, and I used none of the examples. (My inner optimist says this is because the committee members were convinced. My inner optimist, however, has been known to be wrong.) The bulk of questions went, rightly, to Chris. Here's what my extravagantly sleep-deprived brain can recall at the moment in terms of questions:

- Next steps for the committee, and how open data applies to different branches of government

- Whether the existence of community sites like mine represented a failing on the part of the state

- Licensing -- what an "open" versus a "Creative Commons" license meant

- A couple of questions (from the Conservative side) around possibilities of fraud or misrepresentation when republishing data, and whether there were risks of people tampering with data's "integrity"

- A question about whether I thought data about disease incidence -- an offhand example of mine -- should be available to everyone.

- A series of questions about dealing with a glut of information, and whether too much data leads to a focus on the instantaneous over the historical

- Questions about international models, Australia in particular

- How Edmonton approached commercial users of its data

- What "open government" meant to us

- How to approach official languages in the context of an open data policy

- What specific changes to Access and privacy legislation might be required

No exchanges ever got in the slightest bit contentious; I don't recall anything Chris or I said ever being challenged. If I had to gauge the feeling of the session, it was one of sometimes mildly bemused interest, with no particular hurry but also no particular sense of opposition to the ideas being discussed. (But this is the assessment of a shoddy intuition faced with a situation--Parliamentary committee--it's never encountered before.)

Carolyn Bennett noted that the committee would be engaging in public online consultations on this study. A letter from David Eaves with advice to the committee was circulated to all members.

And that's your open-data eyewitness report. Below is what I said at the beginning of the session.

----------------

Hi. Thank you for inviting me; I'm very happy that Parliament is conducting this study, and I'm honoured to be able to contribute.

I'm here because, about six months ago, I launched a site called openparliament.ca. I know at least some of you have seen it and have said nice things about it, which I appreciate very much. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it's a site that republishes the Hansards of the House and tries to make them more engaging and useful. You all have pages on the site, which show anything you've said recently on the House floor, along with media coverage, votes, any legislation you've introduced, and so on. It's all searchable; you can sign up for e-mails or updates when a given MP speaks, a bill is discussed, or a particular keyword is mentioned. I made it as a volunteer, spare-time project, and I'm hugely pleased that people have found it useful, and that it's used by tens of thousands of Canadians each month.

Now I should say that I've never worked for, in, or even really with government. So if I'm going to talk about open government, the subject of this study, it'll be very much from an outsider's perspective.

“Open government” is a fairly vague term that's meant many things over many years. But the current usage—you'll also hear “Government 2.0” as a synonym—means, to me, the idea that recent advances in technology can enable a government that is collaborative, cooperative, and able to both spark innovation and capitalize on it. Now, this is certainly an appealing notion, but it's also a bunch of vague, happy words that would be difficult to disagree with. So to talk about something more concrete, in an area where I have at least a little knowledge, I'll focus on one particular idea: that of open data. Let me quote Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce, whose excellent report I'd really recommend you look at: “Public sector information is a national resource, and releasing as much of it as possible on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social value and reinforce its contribution to a healthy democracy.”

So: data. Now, many people, when they hear the word “data”, their eyelids start to grow heavier, their shoulders start to slump. I think that's a pity. When I hear “data”, I get excited. To me, data means possibility. It means opportunity. It means discovery. And I really hope I can share with you at least some sense of that excitement.

Let's take care of definitions. When I say “data”, I mean big piles of information, structured so that computers can make sense of them. Like Hansard. Like pollutant inventories and industrial safety reports. Like bus schedules. Like satellite imagery. Like the list of registered charities and their public filings. Like government-funded scientific papers. Like digital maps and details on the postal-code system. Like records of prescribed drugs and disease occurrence. There are endless examples. 

And if you ask anyone working in technology how great the value of data can be, the answer you'll get is: immense. Increasingly, the Internet economy is driven by companies working to figure out how to extract value from data. Ray Ozzie is a computer legend, currently a leader at Microsoft. Let me quote him: “Data is the flint for the next 25 years.” And a corollary to that is that the value of data is often not apparent at first. Less than a decade ago, many people didn't think that web search data—the terms people type in to the little search box on their computers—was all that valuable. Companies offered web search, of course, but often as a sort of loss leader. Then Google came along, and realized that, in fact, this web search data was worth many billions of dollars a year. Several studies have attempt to measure the value of government data. A European study put the market size for the EU's public-sector information at 27 billion euro, and other reports have come up with similarly staggering numbers. It's tremendously valuable, and to lots of different groups: to those interested in public policy, whether researchers or just engaged citizens. To businesses in all manner of industries. To civic-minded Canadians, who have a new way of engaging with government. And to government, which of course uses this data for planning and program delivery, but can also benefit from much of this external innovation.

If we recognize the value of government data, it's the “open” in “open data” that allows that value to be unlocked. That word means many things, and I think it's worth the time for me to try and unpack those. The first is—and there's a piece of jargon coming up, but I promise it's important—machine-readable. Let me use my site to explain what I mean by that. I republish Hansard, which I get from the Web site of Parliament. But because of the way it's made available, getting the data out so I can republish it is difficult, and took quite a bit of time and trickery on my part. The methods I use are fragile—if Parliament changes the look or format of its site, mine breaks. And because getting the data out is difficult, it's much harder to do all sorts of useful things, like making my site fully bilingual or reporting on committees. In my case, this isn't the end of the world—the hurdles have caused plenty of frustration, but the site nonetheless exists. But often data that isn't machine-readable is simply too difficult to make productive use of. To make data available in a machine-readable way which is more conducive to exploration is, for the most part, not difficult from the point of view of technology. The roadblocks here are matters of will and of culture.

“Open” in the context of open data also means “free”. Now, in English that's one word but means two very important things. They should be free of cost because that's how they will most efficiently create economic value and support innovation, and because sharing information that already exists costs government next to nothing. They should also be free as in speech, by which I mean available under terms that allow repurposing and redistribution, which is exactly where the greatest value lies. And I want to stress that repurposing isn't an addendum, a blue-sky wishlist item. Openparliament is an example, of course, but there are others, even if I restrict myself to my own life. I lived in NY for a while, where there's a wonderful site called Everyblock, which takes the mundane details of municipal government—business permits, building permits, restaurant inspections, crime reports, hearings—and repurposes them to publish a sort of newspaper for your own block. What's dull in aggregate becomes interesting when it's filtered for what's relevant and nearby, and that makes participating in local government that much more likely. Another personal example: I studied public health briefly, where one often tries to take disparate datasets – cancer incidence, say, and pollutant release—and try, in combining and repurposing them, to generate hypotheses to make Canadians healthier.

That's why it's crucial that the default posture of government be sharing, not a closed door, and why the default terms for government information should be an open license, like Creative Commons, and not the current innovation-killing restrictions of Crown Copyright.

And anyone who's tried to work with government data has come up against that default posture of secrecy. Some personal examples: under Speaker's Permission, I am able to republish House Hansards, but that's not true of the Seante—republishing that is illegal. Your official photographs are under Crown Copyright, and I was unable to get permission to use them. On the municipal level, in Montreal, I've tried to get digital maps of the political districts and I've tried to get bus schedules, and I've been rebuffed, despite knowing that it would take literally five minutes to send me the latter. 

A friend in Halifax tried a few years back to get the same information there and was denied, but he went farther – an Access to Information request, denied, and a court challenge, denied, with one of the grounds for denial being that a digital map was not a document but a mechanism for producing documents. Now, needless to say I disagree with the decision, but there's something in that phrase that catches my interest: a mechanism for producing information. Yeah. In an information economy, that's kind of the point.

A means of creating information—well, just last Saturday, thousands of people across the world, and hundreds in Canada, got together for an Open Data Day, an event spearheaded by David Eaves in Vancouver and a great team from right here in Ottawa. I participated with the group in Montreal, where about twenty people met and worked on a dozen projects on the municipal level, among them a site to discover which of the city's skating rinks are open and when they've been cleaned, and a system to warn drivers when there's new construction along their daily route.

Digital maps as a means of creating information—that's borne out by the experience of NRCan, the only federal department with a thriving open data culture, whose geographic datasets are used by a huge community of researchers, who'll tell you just how valuable they are. They're used heavily by industry—mining and forestry, of course, but also real-estate developers and burger joints. And even by me—I used data from NRCan's GeoGratis for a recent project related to finding polling places in municipal elections.

There are many points of view from which to argue for open data, and then for the broader concept of open government. I've given you only one—for example, I haven't really mentioned accountability and transparency—but I hope I've been able to communicate some of the excitement that I and increasing numbers of Canadians feel about this, and that Canada will join what is growing worldwide movement.

[Jonathan Brun-2]

great stuff, turn it into a blog post so we can tweet etc.

JB
jonathanbrun.com

On 2010-12-07, at 7:27 PM, Michael Mulley wrote:

Hi list,

I spoke to the House committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics today. I know several people on here are interested in how it went; here's my report.

The witnesses were myself and, by video from Edmonton, Chris Moore. (This was a recent invitation, and I learned it was just going to be me and Chris only the day before. I'd describe myself as, uh, apprehensive, especially as I wasn't able to set aside much time to prepare. With more time, I'd have loved to have more discussions beforehand and see if I could involve list members & others interested in the subject.)

I've pasted a copy of my opening statement below. I found it surprising that I--a coder with no policy background and not particularly much policy knowledge--was essentially the first person seen by the committee after the Information Commissioner. I saw my role as more or less a pitchman's: to introduce the basic concept of open data; try to ensure that people knew what data was and what, more or less, "open" means in this context; and to communicate as best I could a sense of excitement, that this wasn't another debate about access to information or disclosure but that it represented a real potential for researchers and citizens and was something lots of Canadians felt strongly about.

Chris spoke largely about Edmonton's experience and successes, and about the international jurisdictions he's been able to work with around data issues.

I'd anticipated and tried to prepare for questions around how and why open data would be valuable, and spent my time beforehand looking for examples and arguments around this. There were no such questions, and I used none of the examples. (My inner optimist says this is because the committee members were convinced. My inner optimist, however, has been known to be wrong.) The bulk of questions went, rightly, to Chris. Here's what my extravagantly sleep-deprived brain can recall at the moment in terms of questions:

- Next steps for the committee, and how open data applies to different branches of government

- Whether the existence of community sites like mine represented a failing on the part of the state

- Licensing -- what an "open" versus a "Creative Commons" license meant

- A couple of questions (from the Conservative side) around possibilities of fraud or misrepresentation when republishing data, and whether there were risks of people tampering with data's "integrity"

- A question about whether I thought data about disease incidence -- an offhand example of mine -- should be available to everyone.

- A series of questions about dealing with a glut of information, and whether too much data leads to a focus on the instantaneous over the historical

- Questions about international models, Australia in particular

- How Edmonton approached commercial users of its data

- What "open government" meant to us

- How to approach official languages in the context of an open data policy

- What specific changes to Access and privacy legislation might be required

No exchanges ever got in the slightest bit contentious; I don't recall anything Chris or I said ever being challenged. If I had to gauge the feeling of the session, it was one of sometimes mildly bemused interest, with no particular hurry but also no particular sense of opposition to the ideas being discussed. (But this is the assessment of a shoddy intuition faced with a situation--Parliamentary committee--it's never encountered before.)

Carolyn Bennett noted that the committee would be engaging in public online consultations on this study. A letter from David Eaves with advice to the committee was circulated to all members.

And that's your open-data eyewitness report. Below is what I said at the beginning of the session.

----------------

Hi. Thank you for inviting me; I'm very happy that Parliament is conducting this study, and I'm honoured to be able to contribute.

I'm here because, about six months ago, I launched a site called openparliament.ca. I know at least some of you have seen it and have said nice things about it, which I appreciate very much. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it's a site that republishes the Hansards of the House and tries to make them more engaging and useful. You all have pages on the site, which show anything you've said recently on the House floor, along with media coverage, votes, any legislation you've introduced, and so on. It's all searchable; you can sign up for e-mails or updates when a given MP speaks, a bill is discussed, or a particular keyword is mentioned. I made it as a volunteer, spare-time project, and I'm hugely pleased that people have found it useful, and that it's used by tens of thousands of Canadians each month.

Now I should say that I've never worked for, in, or even really with government. So if I'm going to talk about open government, the subject of this study, it'll be very much from an outsider's perspective.

“Open government” is a fairly vague term that's meant many things over many years. But the current usage—you'll also hear “Government 2.0” as a synonym—means, to me, the idea that recent advances in technology can enable a government that is collaborative, cooperative, and able to both spark innovation and capitalize on it. Now, this is certainly an appealing notion, but it's also a bunch of vague, happy words that would be difficult to disagree with. So to talk about something more concrete, in an area where I have at least a little knowledge, I'll focus on one particular idea: that of open data. Let me quote Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce, whose excellent report I'd really recommend you look at: “Public sector information is a national resource, and releasing as much of it as possible on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social value and reinforce its contribution to a healthy democracy.”

So: data. Now, many people, when they hear the word “data”, their eyelids start to grow heavier, their shoulders start to slump. I think that's a pity. When I hear “data”, I get excited. To me, data means possibility. It means opportunity. It means discovery. And I really hope I can share with you at least some sense of that excitement.

Let's take care of definitions. When I say “data”, I mean big piles of information, structured so that computers can make sense of them. Like Hansard. Like pollutant inventories and industrial safety reports. Like bus schedules. Like satellite imagery. Like the list of registered charities and their public filings. Like government-funded scientific papers. Like digital maps and details on the postal-code system. Like records of prescribed drugs and disease occurrence. There are endless examples. 

And if you ask anyone working in technology how great the value of data can be, the answer you'll get is: immense. Increasingly, the Internet economy is driven by companies working to figure out how to extract value from data. Ray Ozzie is a computer legend, currently a leader at Microsoft. Let me quote him: “Data is the flint for the next 25 years.” And a corollary to that is that the value of data is often not apparent at first. Less than a decade ago, many people didn't think that web search data—the terms people type in to the little search box on their computers—was all that valuable. Companies offered web search, of course, but often as a sort of loss leader. Then Google came along, and realized that, in fact, this web search data was worth many billions of dollars a year. Several studies have attempt to measure the value of government data. A European study put the market size for the EU's public-sector information at 27 billion euro, and other reports have come up with similarly staggering numbers. It's tremendously valuable, and to lots of different groups: to those interested in public policy, whether researchers or just engaged citizens. To businesses in all manner of industries. To civic-minded Canadians, who have a new way of engaging with government. And to government, which of course uses this data for planning and program delivery, but can also benefit from much of this external innovation.

If we recognize the value of government data, it's the “open” in “open data” that allows that value to be unlocked. That word means many things, and I think it's worth the time for me to try and unpack those. The first is—and there's a piece of jargon coming up, but I promise it's important—machine-readable. Let me use my site to explain what I mean by that. I republish Hansard, which I get from the Web site of Parliament. But because of the way it's made available, getting the data out so I can republish it is difficult, and took quite a bit of time and trickery on my part. The methods I use are fragile—if Parliament changes the look or format of its site, mine breaks. And because getting the data out is difficult, it's much harder to do all sorts of useful things, like making my site fully bilingual or reporting on committees. In my case, this isn't the end of the world—the hurdles have caused plenty of frustration, but the site nonetheless exists. But often data that isn't machine-readable is simply too difficult to make productive use of. To make data available in a machine-readable way which is more conducive to exploration is, for the most part, not difficult from the point of view of technology. The roadblocks here are matters of will and of culture.

“Open” in the context of open data also means “free”. Now, in English that's one word but means two very important things. They should be free of cost because that's how they will most efficiently create economic value and support innovation, and because sharing information that already exists costs government next to nothing. They should also be free as in speech, by which I mean available under terms that allow repurposing and redistribution, which is exactly where the greatest value lies. And I want to stress that repurposing isn't an addendum, a blue-sky wishlist item. Openparliament is an example, of course, but there are others, even if I restrict myself to my own life. I lived in NY for a while, where there's a wonderful site called Everyblock, which takes the mundane details of municipal government—business permits, building permits, restaurant inspections, crime reports, hearings—and repurposes them to publish a sort of newspaper for your own block. What's dull in aggregate becomes interesting when it's filtered for what's relevant and nearby, and that makes participating in local government that much more likely. Another personal example: I studied public health briefly, where one often tries to take disparate datasets – cancer incidence, say, and pollutant release—and try, in combining and repurposing them, to generate hypotheses to make Canadians healthier.

That's why it's crucial that the default posture of government be sharing, not a closed door, and why the default terms for government information should be an open license, like Creative Commons, and not the current innovation-killing restrictions of Crown Copyright.

And anyone who's tried to work with government data has come up against that default posture of secrecy. Some personal examples: under Speaker's Permission, I am able to republish House Hansards, but that's not true of the Seante—republishing that is illegal. Your official photographs are under Crown Copyright, and I was unable to get permission to use them. On the municipal level, in Montreal, I've tried to get digital maps of the political districts and I've tried to get bus schedules, and I've been rebuffed, despite knowing that it would take literally five minutes to send me the latter. 

A friend in Halifax tried a few years back to get the same information there and was denied, but he went farther – an Access to Information request, denied, and a court challenge, denied, with one of the grounds for denial being that a digital map was not a document but a mechanism for producing documents. Now, needless to say I disagree with the decision, but there's something in that phrase that catches my interest: a mechanism for producing information. Yeah. In an information economy, that's kind of the point.

A means of creating information—well, just last Saturday, thousands of people across the world, and hundreds in Canada, got together for an Open Data Day, an event spearheaded by David Eaves in Vancouver and a great team from right here in Ottawa. I participated with the group in Montreal, where about twenty people met and worked on a dozen projects on the municipal level, among them a site to discover which of the city's skating rinks are open and when they've been cleaned, and a system to warn drivers when there's new construction along their daily route.

Digital maps as a means of creating information—that's borne out by the experience of NRCan, the only federal department with a thriving open data culture, whose geographic datasets are used by a huge community of researchers, who'll tell you just how valuable they are. They're used heavily by industry—mining and forestry, of course, but also real-estate developers and burger joints. And even by me—I used data from NRCan's GeoGratis for a recent project related to finding polling places in municipal elections.

There are many points of view from which to argue for open data, and then for the broader concept of open government. I've given you only one—for example, I haven't really mentioned accountability and transparency—but I hope I've been able to communicate some of the excitement that I and increasing numbers of Canadians feel about this, and that Canada will join what is growing worldwide movement.

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Awesome!

Sorry I could not be much more help as we missed each other by phone.

It is odd that they did not request for more submissions or make the consultation more obvious.

Do share the link with us.

Cheers

t

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Michael Mulley <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi list,

I spoke to the House committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics today. I know several people on here are interested in how it went; here's my report.

The witnesses were myself and, by video from Edmonton, Chris Moore. (This was a recent invitation, and I learned it was just going to be me and Chris only the day before. I'd describe myself as, uh, apprehensive, especially as I wasn't able to set aside much time to prepare. With more time, I'd have loved to have more discussions beforehand and see if I could involve list members & others interested in the subject.)

I've pasted a copy of my opening statement below. I found it surprising that I--a coder with no policy background and not particularly much policy knowledge--was essentially the first person seen by the committee after the Information Commissioner. I saw my role as more or less a pitchman's: to introduce the basic concept of open data; try to ensure that people knew what data was and what, more or less, "open" means in this context; and to communicate as best I could a sense of excitement, that this wasn't another debate about access to information or disclosure but that it represented a real potential for researchers and citizens and was something lots of Canadians felt strongly about.

Chris spoke largely about Edmonton's experience and successes, and about the international jurisdictions he's been able to work with around data issues.

I'd anticipated and tried to prepare for questions around how and why open data would be valuable, and spent my time beforehand looking for examples and arguments around this. There were no such questions, and I used none of the examples. (My inner optimist says this is because the committee members were convinced. My inner optimist, however, has been known to be wrong.) The bulk of questions went, rightly, to Chris. Here's what my extravagantly sleep-deprived brain can recall at the moment in terms of questions:

- Next steps for the committee, and how open data applies to different branches of government

- Whether the existence of community sites like mine represented a failing on the part of the state

- Licensing -- what an "open" versus a "Creative Commons" license meant

- A couple of questions (from the Conservative side) around possibilities of fraud or misrepresentation when republishing data, and whether there were risks of people tampering with data's "integrity"

- A question about whether I thought data about disease incidence -- an offhand example of mine -- should be available to everyone.

- A series of questions about dealing with a glut of information, and whether too much data leads to a focus on the instantaneous over the historical

- Questions about international models, Australia in particular

- How Edmonton approached commercial users of its data

- What "open government" meant to us

- How to approach official languages in the context of an open data policy

- What specific changes to Access and privacy legislation might be required

No exchanges ever got in the slightest bit contentious; I don't recall anything Chris or I said ever being challenged. If I had to gauge the feeling of the session, it was one of sometimes mildly bemused interest, with no particular hurry but also no particular sense of opposition to the ideas being discussed. (But this is the assessment of a shoddy intuition faced with a situation--Parliamentary committee--it's never encountered before.)

Carolyn Bennett noted that the committee would be engaging in public online consultations on this study. A letter from David Eaves with advice to the committee was circulated to all members.

And that's your open-data eyewitness report. Below is what I said at the beginning of the session.

----------------

Hi. Thank you for inviting me; I'm very happy that Parliament is conducting this study, and I'm honoured to be able to contribute.

I'm here because, about six months ago, I launched a site called openparliament.ca. I know at least some of you have seen it and have said nice things about it, which I appreciate very much. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it's a site that republishes the Hansards of the House and tries to make them more engaging and useful. You all have pages on the site, which show anything you've said recently on the House floor, along with media coverage, votes, any legislation you've introduced, and so on. It's all searchable; you can sign up for e-mails or updates when a given MP speaks, a bill is discussed, or a particular keyword is mentioned. I made it as a volunteer, spare-time project, and I'm hugely pleased that people have found it useful, and that it's used by tens of thousands of Canadians each month.

Now I should say that I've never worked for, in, or even really with government. So if I'm going to talk about open government, the subject of this study, it'll be very much from an outsider's perspective.

“Open government” is a fairly vague term that's meant many things over many years. But the current usage—you'll also hear “Government 2.0” as a synonym—means, to me, the idea that recent advances in technology can enable a government that is collaborative, cooperative, and able to both spark innovation and capitalize on it. Now, this is certainly an appealing notion, but it's also a bunch of vague, happy words that would be difficult to disagree with. So to talk about something more concrete, in an area where I have at least a little knowledge, I'll focus on one particular idea: that of open data. Let me quote Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce, whose excellent report I'd really recommend you look at: “Public sector information is a national resource, and releasing as much of it as possible on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social value and reinforce its contribution to a healthy democracy.”

So: data. Now, many people, when they hear the word “data”, their eyelids start to grow heavier, their shoulders start to slump. I think that's a pity. When I hear “data”, I get excited. To me, data means possibility. It means opportunity. It means discovery. And I really hope I can share with you at least some sense of that excitement.

Let's take care of definitions. When I say “data”, I mean big piles of information, structured so that computers can make sense of them. Like Hansard. Like pollutant inventories and industrial safety reports. Like bus schedules. Like satellite imagery. Like the list of registered charities and their public filings. Like government-funded scientific papers. Like digital maps and details on the postal-code system. Like records of prescribed drugs and disease occurrence. There are endless examples. 

And if you ask anyone working in technology how great the value of data can be, the answer you'll get is: immense. Increasingly, the Internet economy is driven by companies working to figure out how to extract value from data. Ray Ozzie is a computer legend, currently a leader at Microsoft. Let me quote him: “Data is the flint for the next 25 years.” And a corollary to that is that the value of data is often not apparent at first. Less than a decade ago, many people didn't think that web search data—the terms people type in to the little search box on their computers—was all that valuable. Companies offered web search, of course, but often as a sort of loss leader. Then Google came along, and realized that, in fact, this web search data was worth many billions of dollars a year. Several studies have attempt to measure the value of government data. A European study put the market size for the EU's public-sector information at 27 billion euro, and other reports have come up with similarly staggering numbers. It's tremendously valuable, and to lots of different groups: to those interested in public policy, whether researchers or just engaged citizens. To businesses in all manner of industries. To civic-minded Canadians, who have a new way of engaging with government. And to government, which of course uses this data for planning and program delivery, but can also benefit from much of this external innovation.

If we recognize the value of government data, it's the “open” in “open data” that allows that value to be unlocked. That word means many things, and I think it's worth the time for me to try and unpack those. The first is—and there's a piece of jargon coming up, but I promise it's important—machine-readable. Let me use my site to explain what I mean by that. I republish Hansard, which I get from the Web site of Parliament. But because of the way it's made available, getting the data out so I can republish it is difficult, and took quite a bit of time and trickery on my part. The methods I use are fragile—if Parliament changes the look or format of its site, mine breaks. And because getting the data out is difficult, it's much harder to do all sorts of useful things, like making my site fully bilingual or reporting on committees. In my case, this isn't the end of the world—the hurdles have caused plenty of frustration, but the site nonetheless exists. But often data that isn't machine-readable is simply too difficult to make productive use of. To make data available in a machine-readable way which is more conducive to exploration is, for the most part, not difficult from the point of view of technology. The roadblocks here are matters of will and of culture.

“Open” in the context of open data also means “free”. Now, in English that's one word but means two very important things. They should be free of cost because that's how they will most efficiently create economic value and support innovation, and because sharing information that already exists costs government next to nothing. They should also be free as in speech, by which I mean available under terms that allow repurposing and redistribution, which is exactly where the greatest value lies. And I want to stress that repurposing isn't an addendum, a blue-sky wishlist item. Openparliament is an example, of course, but there are others, even if I restrict myself to my own life. I lived in NY for a while, where there's a wonderful site called Everyblock, which takes the mundane details of municipal government—business permits, building permits, restaurant inspections, crime reports, hearings—and repurposes them to publish a sort of newspaper for your own block. What's dull in aggregate becomes interesting when it's filtered for what's relevant and nearby, and that makes participating in local government that much more likely. Another personal example: I studied public health briefly, where one often tries to take disparate datasets – cancer incidence, say, and pollutant release—and try, in combining and repurposing them, to generate hypotheses to make Canadians healthier.

That's why it's crucial that the default posture of government be sharing, not a closed door, and why the default terms for government information should be an open license, like Creative Commons, and not the current innovation-killing restrictions of Crown Copyright.

And anyone who's tried to work with government data has come up against that default posture of secrecy. Some personal examples: under Speaker's Permission, I am able to republish House Hansards, but that's not true of the Seante—republishing that is illegal. Your official photographs are under Crown Copyright, and I was unable to get permission to use them. On the municipal level, in Montreal, I've tried to get digital maps of the political districts and I've tried to get bus schedules, and I've been rebuffed, despite knowing that it would take literally five minutes to send me the latter. 

A friend in Halifax tried a few years back to get the same information there and was denied, but he went farther – an Access to Information request, denied, and a court challenge, denied, with one of the grounds for denial being that a digital map was not a document but a mechanism for producing documents. Now, needless to say I disagree with the decision, but there's something in that phrase that catches my interest: a mechanism for producing information. Yeah. In an information economy, that's kind of the point.

A means of creating information—well, just last Saturday, thousands of people across the world, and hundreds in Canada, got together for an Open Data Day, an event spearheaded by David Eaves in Vancouver and a great team from right here in Ottawa. I participated with the group in Montreal, where about twenty people met and worked on a dozen projects on the municipal level, among them a site to discover which of the city's skating rinks are open and when they've been cleaned, and a system to warn drivers when there's new construction along their daily route.

Digital maps as a means of creating information—that's borne out by the experience of NRCan, the only federal department with a thriving open data culture, whose geographic datasets are used by a huge community of researchers, who'll tell you just how valuable they are. They're used heavily by industry—mining and forestry, of course, but also real-estate developers and burger joints. And even by me—I used data from NRCan's GeoGratis for a recent project related to finding polling places in municipal elections.

There are many points of view from which to argue for open data, and then for the broader concept of open government. I've given you only one—for example, I haven't really mentioned accountability and transparency—but I hope I've been able to communicate some of the excitement that I and increasing numbers of Canadians feel about this, and that Canada will join what is growing worldwide movement.

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

--
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805

[David Eaves]

Michael - thank you so much for this update. First, it is really helpful to see what others testifying before the committee are saying so that we dive deeper into the subject with each new testimony. Also, your message was fantastic and exactly what I think the committee needed to hear.

Great work!


On 10-12-07 4:27 PM, Michael Mulley wrote:

Hi list,

I spoke to the House committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics today. I know several people on here are interested in how it went; here's my report.

The witnesses were myself and, by video from Edmonton, Chris Moore. (This was a recent invitation, and I learned it was just going to be me and Chris only the day before. I'd describe myself as, uh, apprehensive, especially as I wasn't able to set aside much time to prepare. With more time, I'd have loved to have more discussions beforehand and see if I could involve list members & others interested in the subject.)

I've pasted a copy of my opening statement below. I found it surprising that I--a coder with no policy background and not particularly much policy knowledge--was essentially the first person seen by the committee after the Information Commissioner. I saw my role as more or less a pitchman's: to introduce the basic concept of open data; try to ensure that people knew what data was and what, more or less, "open" means in this context; and to communicate as best I could a sense of excitement, that this wasn't another debate about access to information or disclosure but that it represented a real potential for researchers and citizens and was something lots of Canadians felt strongly about.

Chris spoke largely about Edmonton's experience and successes, and about the international jurisdictions he's been able to work with around data issues.

I'd anticipated and tried to prepare for questions around how and why open data would be valuable, and spent my time beforehand looking for examples and arguments around this. There were no such questions, and I used none of the examples. (My inner optimist says this is because the committee members were convinced. My inner optimist, however, has been known to be wrong.) The bulk of questions went, rightly, to Chris. Here's what my extravagantly sleep-deprived brain can recall at the moment in terms of questions:

- Next steps for the committee, and how open data applies to different branches of government

- Whether the existence of community sites like mine represented a failing on the part of the state

- Licensing -- what an "open" versus a "Creative Commons" license meant

- A couple of questions (from the Conservative side) around possibilities of fraud or misrepresentation when republishing data, and whether there were risks of people tampering with data's "integrity"

- A question about whether I thought data about disease incidence -- an offhand example of mine -- should be available to everyone.

- A series of questions about dealing with a glut of information, and whether too much data leads to a focus on the instantaneous over the historical

- Questions about international models, Australia in particular

- How Edmonton approached commercial users of its data

- What "open government" meant to us

- How to approach official languages in the context of an open data policy

- What specific changes to Access and privacy legislation might be required

No exchanges ever got in the slightest bit contentious; I don't recall anything Chris or I said ever being challenged. If I had to gauge the feeling of the session, it was one of sometimes mildly bemused interest, with no particular hurry but also no particular sense of opposition to the ideas being discussed. (But this is the assessment of a shoddy intuition faced with a situation--Parliamentary committee--it's never encountered before.)

Carolyn Bennett noted that the committee would be engaging in public online consultations on this study. A letter from David Eaves with advice to the committee was circulated to all members.

And that's your open-data eyewitness report. Below is what I said at the beginning of the session.

----------------

Hi. Thank you for inviting me; I'm very happy that Parliament is conducting this study, and I'm honoured to be able to contribute.

I'm here because, about six months ago, I launched a site called openparliament.ca. I know at least some of you have seen it and have said nice things about it, which I appreciate very much. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it's a site that republishes the Hansards of the House and tries to make them more engaging and useful. You all have pages on the site, which show anything you've said recently on the House floor, along with media coverage, votes, any legislation you've introduced, and so on. It's all searchable; you can sign up for e-mails or updates when a given MP speaks, a bill is discussed, or a particular keyword is mentioned. I made it as a volunteer, spare-time project, and I'm hugely pleased that people have found it useful, and that it's used by tens of thousands of Canadians each month.

Now I should say that I've never worked for, in, or even really with government. So if I'm going to talk about open government, the subject of this study, it'll be very much from an outsider's perspective.

“Open government” is a fairly vague term that's meant many things over many years. But the current usage—you'll also hear “Government 2.0” as a synonym—means, to me, the idea that recent advances in technology can enable a government that is collaborative, cooperative, and able to both spark innovation and capitalize on it. Now, this is certainly an appealing notion, but it's also a bunch of vague, happy words that would be difficult to disagree with. So to talk about something more concrete, in an area where I have at least a little knowledge, I'll focus on one particular idea: that of open data. Let me quote Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce, whose excellent report I'd really recommend you look at: “Public sector information is a national resource, and releasing as much of it as possible on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social value and reinforce its contribution to a healthy democracy.”

So: data. Now, many people, when they hear the word “data”, their eyelids start to grow heavier, their shoulders start to slump. I think that's a pity. When I hear “data”, I get excited. To me, data means possibility. It means opportunity. It means discovery. And I really hope I can share with you at least some sense of that excitement.

Let's take care of definitions. When I say “data”, I mean big piles of information, structured so that computers can make sense of them. Like Hansard. Like pollutant inventories and industrial safety reports. Like bus schedules. Like satellite imagery. Like the list of registered charities and their public filings. Like government-funded scientific papers. Like digital maps and details on the postal-code system. Like records of prescribed drugs and disease occurrence. There are endless examples. 

And if you ask anyone working in technology how great the value of data can be, the answer you'll get is: immense. Increasingly, the Internet economy is driven by companies working to figure out how to extract value from data. Ray Ozzie is a computer legend, currently a leader at Microsoft. Let me quote him: “Data is the flint for the next 25 years.” And a corollary to that is that the value of data is often not apparent at first. Less than a decade ago, many people didn't think that web search data—the terms people type in to the little search box on their computers—was all that valuable. Companies offered web search, of course, but often as a sort of loss leader. Then Google came along, and realized that, in fact, this web search data was worth many billions of dollars a year. Several studies have attempt to measure the value of government data. A European study put the market size for the EU's public-sector information at 27 billion euro, and other reports have come up with similarly staggering numbers. It's tremendously valuable, and to lots of different groups: to those interested in public policy, whether researchers or just engaged citizens. To businesses in all manner of industries. To civic-minded Canadians, who have a new way of engaging with government. And to government, which of course uses this data for planning and program delivery, but can also benefit from much of this external innovation.

If we recognize the value of government data, it's the “open” in “open data” that allows that value to be unlocked. That word means many things, and I think it's worth the time for me to try and unpack those. The first is—and there's a piece of jargon coming up, but I promise it's important—machine-readable. Let me use my site to explain what I mean by that. I republish Hansard, which I get from the Web site of Parliament. But because of the way it's made available, getting the data out so I can republish it is difficult, and took quite a bit of time and trickery on my part. The methods I use are fragile—if Parliament changes the look or format of its site, mine breaks. And because getting the data out is difficult, it's much harder to do all sorts of useful things, like making my site fully bilingual or reporting on committees. In my case, this isn't the end of the world—the hurdles have caused plenty of frustration, but the site nonetheless exists. But often data that isn't machine-readable is simply too difficult to make productive use of. To make data available in a machine-readable way which is more conducive to exploration is, for the most part, not difficult from the point of view of technology. The roadblocks here are matters of will and of culture.

“Open” in the context of open data also means “free”. Now, in English that's one word but means two very important things. They should be free of cost because that's how they will most efficiently create economic value and support innovation, and because sharing information that already exists costs government next to nothing. They should also be free as in speech, by which I mean available under terms that allow repurposing and redistribution, which is exactly where the greatest value lies. And I want to stress that repurposing isn't an addendum, a blue-sky wishlist item. Openparliament is an example, of course, but there are others, even if I restrict myself to my own life. I lived in NY for a while, where there's a wonderful site called Everyblock, which takes the mundane details of municipal government—business permits, building permits, restaurant inspections, crime reports, hearings—and repurposes them to publish a sort of newspaper for your own block. What's dull in aggregate becomes interesting when it's filtered for what's relevant and nearby, and that makes participating in local government that much more likely. Another personal example: I studied public health briefly, where one often tries to take disparate datasets – cancer incidence, say, and pollutant release—and try, in combining and repurposing them, to generate hypotheses to make Canadians healthier.

That's why it's crucial that the default posture of government be sharing, not a closed door, and why the default terms for government information should be an open license, like Creative Commons, and not the current innovation-killing restrictions of Crown Copyright.

And anyone who's tried to work with government data has come up against that default posture of secrecy. Some personal examples: under Speaker's Permission, I am able to republish House Hansards, but that's not true of the Seante—republishing that is illegal. Your official photographs are under Crown Copyright, and I was unable to get permission to use them. On the municipal level, in Montreal, I've tried to get digital maps of the political districts and I've tried to get bus schedules, and I've been rebuffed, despite knowing that it would take literally five minutes to send me the latter. 

A friend in Halifax tried a few years back to get the same information there and was denied, but he went farther – an Access to Information request, denied, and a court challenge, denied, with one of the grounds for denial being that a digital map was not a document but a mechanism for producing documents. Now, needless to say I disagree with the decision, but there's something in that phrase that catches my interest: a mechanism for producing information. Yeah. In an information economy, that's kind of the point.

A means of creating information—well, just last Saturday, thousands of people across the world, and hundreds in Canada, got together for an Open Data Day, an event spearheaded by David Eaves in Vancouver and a great team from right here in Ottawa. I participated with the group in Montreal, where about twenty people met and worked on a dozen projects on the municipal level, among them a site to discover which of the city's skating rinks are open and when they've been cleaned, and a system to warn drivers when there's new construction along their daily route.

Digital maps as a means of creating information—that's borne out by the experience of NRCan, the only federal department with a thriving open data culture, whose geographic datasets are used by a huge community of researchers, who'll tell you just how valuable they are. They're used heavily by industry—mining and forestry, of course, but also real-estate developers and burger joints. And even by me—I used data from NRCan's GeoGratis for a recent project related to finding polling places in municipal elections.

There are many points of view from which to argue for open data, and then for the broader concept of open government. I've given you only one—for example, I haven't really mentioned accountability and transparency—but I hope I've been able to communicate some of the excitement that I and increasing numbers of Canadians feel about this, and that Canada will join what is growing worldwide movement.

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

[Michael Mulley]

I should specify that it's not a consultation yet, just the beginnings of a committee study. (I felt like I was there for a sort of introduction more than anything else.) My understanding -- by which I mean, Carolyn Bennett said so yesterday -- is that there will be a broad online call for comment coming up.

(By the way, Parliamentary committees accept briefs from any interested party.)

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:

Awesome!

Sorry I could not be much more help as we missed each other by phone.

It is odd that they did not request for more submissions or make the consultation more obvious.

Do share the link with us.

Cheers

t

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Michael Mulley <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi list,

I spoke to the House committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics today. I know several people on here are interested in how it went; here's my report.

The witnesses were myself and, by video from Edmonton, Chris Moore. (This was a recent invitation, and I learned it was just going to be me and Chris only the day before. I'd describe myself as, uh, apprehensive, especially as I wasn't able to set aside much time to prepare. With more time, I'd have loved to have more discussions beforehand and see if I could involve list members & others interested in the subject.)

I've pasted a copy of my opening statement below. I found it surprising that I--a coder with no policy background and not particularly much policy knowledge--was essentially the first person seen by the committee after the Information Commissioner. I saw my role as more or less a pitchman's: to introduce the basic concept of open data; try to ensure that people knew what data was and what, more or less, "open" means in this context; and to communicate as best I could a sense of excitement, that this wasn't another debate about access to information or disclosure but that it represented a real potential for researchers and citizens and was something lots of Canadians felt strongly about.

Chris spoke largely about Edmonton's experience and successes, and about the international jurisdictions he's been able to work with around data issues.

I'd anticipated and tried to prepare for questions around how and why open data would be valuable, and spent my time beforehand looking for examples and arguments around this. There were no such questions, and I used none of the examples. (My inner optimist says this is because the committee members were convinced. My inner optimist, however, has been known to be wrong.) The bulk of questions went, rightly, to Chris. Here's what my extravagantly sleep-deprived brain can recall at the moment in terms of questions:

- Next steps for the committee, and how open data applies to different branches of government

- Whether the existence of community sites like mine represented a failing on the part of the state

- Licensing -- what an "open" versus a "Creative Commons" license meant

- A couple of questions (from the Conservative side) around possibilities of fraud or misrepresentation when republishing data, and whether there were risks of people tampering with data's "integrity"

- A question about whether I thought data about disease incidence -- an offhand example of mine -- should be available to everyone.

- A series of questions about dealing with a glut of information, and whether too much data leads to a focus on the instantaneous over the historical

- Questions about international models, Australia in particular

- How Edmonton approached commercial users of its data

- What "open government" meant to us

- How to approach official languages in the context of an open data policy

- What specific changes to Access and privacy legislation might be required

No exchanges ever got in the slightest bit contentious; I don't recall anything Chris or I said ever being challenged. If I had to gauge the feeling of the session, it was one of sometimes mildly bemused interest, with no particular hurry but also no particular sense of opposition to the ideas being discussed. (But this is the assessment of a shoddy intuition faced with a situation--Parliamentary committee--it's never encountered before.)

Carolyn Bennett noted that the committee would be engaging in public online consultations on this study. A letter from David Eaves with advice to the committee was circulated to all members.

And that's your open-data eyewitness report. Below is what I said at the beginning of the session.

----------------

Hi. Thank you for inviting me; I'm very happy that Parliament is conducting this study, and I'm honoured to be able to contribute.

I'm here because, about six months ago, I launched a site called openparliament.ca. I know at least some of you have seen it and have said nice things about it, which I appreciate very much. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it's a site that republishes the Hansards of the House and tries to make them more engaging and useful. You all have pages on the site, which show anything you've said recently on the House floor, along with media coverage, votes, any legislation you've introduced, and so on. It's all searchable; you can sign up for e-mails or updates when a given MP speaks, a bill is discussed, or a particular keyword is mentioned. I made it as a volunteer, spare-time project, and I'm hugely pleased that people have found it useful, and that it's used by tens of thousands of Canadians each month.

Now I should say that I've never worked for, in, or even really with government. So if I'm going to talk about open government, the subject of this study, it'll be very much from an outsider's perspective.

“Open government” is a fairly vague term that's meant many things over many years. But the current usage—you'll also hear “Government 2.0” as a synonym—means, to me, the idea that recent advances in technology can enable a government that is collaborative, cooperative, and able to both spark innovation and capitalize on it. Now, this is certainly an appealing notion, but it's also a bunch of vague, happy words that would be difficult to disagree with. So to talk about something more concrete, in an area where I have at least a little knowledge, I'll focus on one particular idea: that of open data. Let me quote Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce, whose excellent report I'd really recommend you look at: “Public sector information is a national resource, and releasing as much of it as possible on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social value and reinforce its contribution to a healthy democracy.”

So: data. Now, many people, when they hear the word “data”, their eyelids start to grow heavier, their shoulders start to slump. I think that's a pity. When I hear “data”, I get excited. To me, data means possibility. It means opportunity. It means discovery. And I really hope I can share with you at least some sense of that excitement.

Let's take care of definitions. When I say “data”, I mean big piles of information, structured so that computers can make sense of them. Like Hansard. Like pollutant inventories and industrial safety reports. Like bus schedules. Like satellite imagery. Like the list of registered charities and their public filings. Like government-funded scientific papers. Like digital maps and details on the postal-code system. Like records of prescribed drugs and disease occurrence. There are endless examples. 

And if you ask anyone working in technology how great the value of data can be, the answer you'll get is: immense. Increasingly, the Internet economy is driven by companies working to figure out how to extract value from data. Ray Ozzie is a computer legend, currently a leader at Microsoft. Let me quote him: “Data is the flint for the next 25 years.” And a corollary to that is that the value of data is often not apparent at first. Less than a decade ago, many people didn't think that web search data—the terms people type in to the little search box on their computers—was all that valuable. Companies offered web search, of course, but often as a sort of loss leader. Then Google came along, and realized that, in fact, this web search data was worth many billions of dollars a year. Several studies have attempt to measure the value of government data. A European study put the market size for the EU's public-sector information at 27 billion euro, and other reports have come up with similarly staggering numbers. It's tremendously valuable, and to lots of different groups: to those interested in public policy, whether researchers or just engaged citizens. To businesses in all manner of industries. To civic-minded Canadians, who have a new way of engaging with government. And to government, which of course uses this data for planning and program delivery, but can also benefit from much of this external innovation.

If we recognize the value of government data, it's the “open” in “open data” that allows that value to be unlocked. That word means many things, and I think it's worth the time for me to try and unpack those. The first is—and there's a piece of jargon coming up, but I promise it's important—machine-readable. Let me use my site to explain what I mean by that. I republish Hansard, which I get from the Web site of Parliament. But because of the way it's made available, getting the data out so I can republish it is difficult, and took quite a bit of time and trickery on my part. The methods I use are fragile—if Parliament changes the look or format of its site, mine breaks. And because getting the data out is difficult, it's much harder to do all sorts of useful things, like making my site fully bilingual or reporting on committees. In my case, this isn't the end of the world—the hurdles have caused plenty of frustration, but the site nonetheless exists. But often data that isn't machine-readable is simply too difficult to make productive use of. To make data available in a machine-readable way which is more conducive to exploration is, for the most part, not difficult from the point of view of technology. The roadblocks here are matters of will and of culture.

“Open” in the context of open data also means “free”. Now, in English that's one word but means two very important things. They should be free of cost because that's how they will most efficiently create economic value and support innovation, and because sharing information that already exists costs government next to nothing. They should also be free as in speech, by which I mean available under terms that allow repurposing and redistribution, which is exactly where the greatest value lies. And I want to stress that repurposing isn't an addendum, a blue-sky wishlist item. Openparliament is an example, of course, but there are others, even if I restrict myself to my own life. I lived in NY for a while, where there's a wonderful site called Everyblock, which takes the mundane details of municipal government—business permits, building permits, restaurant inspections, crime reports, hearings—and repurposes them to publish a sort of newspaper for your own block. What's dull in aggregate becomes interesting when it's filtered for what's relevant and nearby, and that makes participating in local government that much more likely. Another personal example: I studied public health briefly, where one often tries to take disparate datasets – cancer incidence, say, and pollutant release—and try, in combining and repurposing them, to generate hypotheses to make Canadians healthier.

That's why it's crucial that the default posture of government be sharing, not a closed door, and why the default terms for government information should be an open license, like Creative Commons, and not the current innovation-killing restrictions of Crown Copyright.

And anyone who's tried to work with government data has come up against that default posture of secrecy. Some personal examples: under Speaker's Permission, I am able to republish House Hansards, but that's not true of the Seante—republishing that is illegal. Your official photographs are under Crown Copyright, and I was unable to get permission to use them. On the municipal level, in Montreal, I've tried to get digital maps of the political districts and I've tried to get bus schedules, and I've been rebuffed, despite knowing that it would take literally five minutes to send me the latter. 

A friend in Halifax tried a few years back to get the same information there and was denied, but he went farther – an Access to Information request, denied, and a court challenge, denied, with one of the grounds for denial being that a digital map was not a document but a mechanism for producing documents. Now, needless to say I disagree with the decision, but there's something in that phrase that catches my interest: a mechanism for producing information. Yeah. In an information economy, that's kind of the point.

A means of creating information—well, just last Saturday, thousands of people across the world, and hundreds in Canada, got together for an Open Data Day, an event spearheaded by David Eaves in Vancouver and a great team from right here in Ottawa. I participated with the group in Montreal, where about twenty people met and worked on a dozen projects on the municipal level, among them a site to discover which of the city's skating rinks are open and when they've been cleaned, and a system to warn drivers when there's new construction along their daily route.

Digital maps as a means of creating information—that's borne out by the experience of NRCan, the only federal department with a thriving open data culture, whose geographic datasets are used by a huge community of researchers, who'll tell you just how valuable they are. They're used heavily by industry—mining and forestry, of course, but also real-estate developers and burger joints. And even by me—I used data from NRCan's GeoGratis for a recent project related to finding polling places in municipal elections.

There are many points of view from which to argue for open data, and then for the broader concept of open government. I've given you only one—for example, I haven't really mentioned accountability and transparency—but I hope I've been able to communicate some of the excitement that I and increasing numbers of Canadians feel about this, and that Canada will join what is growing worldwide movement.

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

--
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss