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Open Data Census Canada

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Tracey P. Lauriault
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Open Data Census Canada

Tracey P. Lauriault
Hey Gang;

I kept you in the loop of correspondence on this topic.  I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?  How to address the fed/prov/terr issue here?

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Diane, what are your thoughts?  Did anyone from Canada attend the WG sessions on the Census in Geneva? 

I used the notes liberally to explain nuances, but find it still a bit clunky for a federated country.  I imagine Australia, New Zealand, India other colonized Westminster places would have similar issues.

Cheers
Tracey

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Re: Open Data Census Canada

Tracey P. Lauriault
sorry gang!  Here is the URL http://2013.census.okfn.org/contribute/

On Wednesday, September 25, 2013, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
Hey Gang;

I kept you in the loop of correspondence on this topic.  I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?  How to address the fed/prov/terr issue here?

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Diane, what are your thoughts?  Did anyone from Canada attend the WG sessions on the Census in Geneva? 

I used the notes liberally to explain nuances, but find it still a bit clunky for a federated country.  I imagine Australia, New Zealand, India other colonized Westminster places would have similar issues.

Cheers
Tracey


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James McKinney-2
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Re: Open Data Census Canada

James McKinney-2
In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
I think we should just be filling this in with respect to the federal level. So, for example, the answers to the election results questions should be with respect to federal elections only - each question should not attempt to answer for all elections at all levels of government in Canada. If the OKF is interested in the subnational level, we should have a separate entry in the Census for each province and territory (and each city if we really want to go all out). I've answered below in keeping with this understanding.

I can't edit most of these because they are "pending review." Who reviews? Can I be a reviewer?

I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

I can't edit national map, but it should be "Yes" to all. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm

Eaves would be familiar re: pollution as he was on the team behind http://www.emitter.ca/


Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?

Michael Mulley: I can do the federal legislation question, but I think you know better than I do.

I've proposed revisions for company register. I actually don't know much about the budget and spending. The datasets available require expertise that I do not have.

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

I can't edit, but my answers would be:

Data exists: Yes
Digital form: Yes
Publicly available: No
Free of charge: No
Online: No
Machine readable: Yes
In bulk: Yes
Openly licensed: No
Up-to-date: Yes (it follows an update schedule that is frequent enough - I can get you the actual rate if needed)


Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

I can't edit elections, but I would say "Yes" to all. Here's a machine-readable, properly licensed source for the link in the comment (which I had requested via data.gc.ca and they responded!): http://data.gc.ca/data/en/dataset/ea8f2c37-90b6-4fee-857e-984d3060184e


Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Is the question just asking about VIA Rail in the Canadian context? The description of this dataset specifically asks about national public transport.

James


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Tracey P. Lauriault
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Re: Open Data Census Canada

Tracey P. Lauriault
I sorta agree with you James, but then the results are false, for example, health data, wel that aint the feds, demograhic data are the feds and the provinces, transport is only the municipalties, pollution is multi jurisdictional as well, so we can, but then that is not our country is it.

Furthermore, one of the arguments I have about the OGP is this national approach and the lack of subnational.  In canada it is really the subnational doing the heavy lifting, and they do not get a seat at the table.

There really needs to be some serious thought, the OECD, WB, UN and others, EU, work really hard at the creation of indicators that make sense across jurisdictions, and that is the hard work that is not being done here.  My issue, is, if we are to do evidence based planning and decision making with data, then the methodology we apply has to be sound, otherwise, we are telling an erroneous story and misleading policy makers. 

I hope open data is also about sound methodology and not just about apis or open formats, it is in my mind about data for deliberation and evening out the analytical and debate playing field, and we as 'citizen' social scientists, will need to be a bit more rigorous, as with time, what we say will not stand.

Anyway, I will be editing this weekend, I have not really heard from my co-editors much, i wanted to collaborate with them on this as it would make more sense if we could discuss things a bit more.

I hope you all can re-look at what I edit one more time before we consider it final.

Cheers
t


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 7:26 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
I think we should just be filling this in with respect to the federal level. So, for example, the answers to the election results questions should be with respect to federal elections only - each question should not attempt to answer for all elections at all levels of government in Canada. If the OKF is interested in the subnational level, we should have a separate entry in the Census for each province and territory (and each city if we really want to go all out). I've answered below in keeping with this understanding.

I can't edit most of these because they are "pending review." Who reviews? Can I be a reviewer?

I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

I can't edit national map, but it should be "Yes" to all. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm

Eaves would be familiar re: pollution as he was on the team behind http://www.emitter.ca/


Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?

Michael Mulley: I can do the federal legislation question, but I think you know better than I do.

I've proposed revisions for company register. I actually don't know much about the budget and spending. The datasets available require expertise that I do not have.

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

I can't edit, but my answers would be:

Data exists: Yes
Digital form: Yes
Publicly available: No
Free of charge: No
Online: No
Machine readable: Yes
In bulk: Yes
Openly licensed: No
Up-to-date: Yes (it follows an update schedule that is frequent enough - I can get you the actual rate if needed)


Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

I can't edit elections, but I would say "Yes" to all. Here's a machine-readable, properly licensed source for the link in the comment (which I had requested via data.gc.ca and they responded!): http://data.gc.ca/data/en/dataset/ea8f2c37-90b6-4fee-857e-984d3060184e


Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Is the question just asking about VIA Rail in the Canadian context? The description of this dataset specifically asks about national public transport.

James


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Re: Open Data Census Canada

James McKinney-2
The results will only be false if we are unclear about what the results are about. If we make it clear that the results are about the Canadian federal government, then the results at least have a chance of being correct.

If we try to make it about more than the Canadian federal government, then I think we should just give up now, because the answer to each question would have to be "Yes" AND "No" since there is not one answer that is true for all jurisdictions in Canada.

I think the solution, as I've said before, is to (eventually) add the subnational levels to the Census. You cannot smash all of Canada's jurisdictions together and produce a coherent answer to any of the Census' questions. You need one answer per question per jurisdiction.

It is not sound methodology to try to smash all the jurisdictions together. My proposal is to be clear about what we're measuring (the Canadian federal government) and to then measure it alone.

James

On 2013-10-04, at 4:48 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

I sorta agree with you James, but then the results are false, for example, health data, wel that aint the feds, demograhic data are the feds and the provinces, transport is only the municipalties, pollution is multi jurisdictional as well, so we can, but then that is not our country is it.

Furthermore, one of the arguments I have about the OGP is this national approach and the lack of subnational.  In canada it is really the subnational doing the heavy lifting, and they do not get a seat at the table.

There really needs to be some serious thought, the OECD, WB, UN and others, EU, work really hard at the creation of indicators that make sense across jurisdictions, and that is the hard work that is not being done here.  My issue, is, if we are to do evidence based planning and decision making with data, then the methodology we apply has to be sound, otherwise, we are telling an erroneous story and misleading policy makers. 

I hope open data is also about sound methodology and not just about apis or open formats, it is in my mind about data for deliberation and evening out the analytical and debate playing field, and we as 'citizen' social scientists, will need to be a bit more rigorous, as with time, what we say will not stand.

Anyway, I will be editing this weekend, I have not really heard from my co-editors much, i wanted to collaborate with them on this as it would make more sense if we could discuss things a bit more.

I hope you all can re-look at what I edit one more time before we consider it final.

Cheers
t


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 7:26 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
I think we should just be filling this in with respect to the federal level. So, for example, the answers to the election results questions should be with respect to federal elections only - each question should not attempt to answer for all elections at all levels of government in Canada. If the OKF is interested in the subnational level, we should have a separate entry in the Census for each province and territory (and each city if we really want to go all out). I've answered below in keeping with this understanding.

I can't edit most of these because they are "pending review." Who reviews? Can I be a reviewer?

I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

I can't edit national map, but it should be "Yes" to all. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm

Eaves would be familiar re: pollution as he was on the team behind http://www.emitter.ca/


Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?

Michael Mulley: I can do the federal legislation question, but I think you know better than I do.

I've proposed revisions for company register. I actually don't know much about the budget and spending. The datasets available require expertise that I do not have.

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

I can't edit, but my answers would be:

Data exists: Yes
Digital form: Yes
Publicly available: No
Free of charge: No
Online: No
Machine readable: Yes
In bulk: Yes
Openly licensed: No
Up-to-date: Yes (it follows an update schedule that is frequent enough - I can get you the actual rate if needed)


Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

I can't edit elections, but I would say "Yes" to all. Here's a machine-readable, properly licensed source for the link in the comment (which I had requested via data.gc.ca and they responded!): http://data.gc.ca/data/en/dataset/ea8f2c37-90b6-4fee-857e-984d3060184e


Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Is the question just asking about VIA Rail in the Canadian context? The description of this dataset specifically asks about national public transport.

James


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Re: Open Data Census Canada

Tracey P. Lauriault
I am not James, I am annotating and qualifying the answers.  However, when it comes to transport we will have to say no, when it comes to stats we have to say some, when it comes to elections we have to say yes but qualify that we do not know about ....

And so on.


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 10:19 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
The results will only be false if we are unclear about what the results are about. If we make it clear that the results are about the Canadian federal government, then the results at least have a chance of being correct.

If we try to make it about more than the Canadian federal government, then I think we should just give up now, because the answer to each question would have to be "Yes" AND "No" since there is not one answer that is true for all jurisdictions in Canada.

I think the solution, as I've said before, is to (eventually) add the subnational levels to the Census. You cannot smash all of Canada's jurisdictions together and produce a coherent answer to any of the Census' questions. You need one answer per question per jurisdiction.

It is not sound methodology to try to smash all the jurisdictions together. My proposal is to be clear about what we're measuring (the Canadian federal government) and to then measure it alone.

James

On 2013-10-04, at 4:48 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

I sorta agree with you James, but then the results are false, for example, health data, wel that aint the feds, demograhic data are the feds and the provinces, transport is only the municipalties, pollution is multi jurisdictional as well, so we can, but then that is not our country is it.

Furthermore, one of the arguments I have about the OGP is this national approach and the lack of subnational.  In canada it is really the subnational doing the heavy lifting, and they do not get a seat at the table.

There really needs to be some serious thought, the OECD, WB, UN and others, EU, work really hard at the creation of indicators that make sense across jurisdictions, and that is the hard work that is not being done here.  My issue, is, if we are to do evidence based planning and decision making with data, then the methodology we apply has to be sound, otherwise, we are telling an erroneous story and misleading policy makers. 

I hope open data is also about sound methodology and not just about apis or open formats, it is in my mind about data for deliberation and evening out the analytical and debate playing field, and we as 'citizen' social scientists, will need to be a bit more rigorous, as with time, what we say will not stand.

Anyway, I will be editing this weekend, I have not really heard from my co-editors much, i wanted to collaborate with them on this as it would make more sense if we could discuss things a bit more.

I hope you all can re-look at what I edit one more time before we consider it final.

Cheers
t


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 7:26 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
I think we should just be filling this in with respect to the federal level. So, for example, the answers to the election results questions should be with respect to federal elections only - each question should not attempt to answer for all elections at all levels of government in Canada. If the OKF is interested in the subnational level, we should have a separate entry in the Census for each province and territory (and each city if we really want to go all out). I've answered below in keeping with this understanding.

I can't edit most of these because they are "pending review." Who reviews? Can I be a reviewer?

I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

I can't edit national map, but it should be "Yes" to all. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm

Eaves would be familiar re: pollution as he was on the team behind http://www.emitter.ca/


Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?

Michael Mulley: I can do the federal legislation question, but I think you know better than I do.

I've proposed revisions for company register. I actually don't know much about the budget and spending. The datasets available require expertise that I do not have.

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

I can't edit, but my answers would be:

Data exists: Yes
Digital form: Yes
Publicly available: No
Free of charge: No
Online: No
Machine readable: Yes
In bulk: Yes
Openly licensed: No
Up-to-date: Yes (it follows an update schedule that is frequent enough - I can get you the actual rate if needed)


Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

I can't edit elections, but I would say "Yes" to all. Here's a machine-readable, properly licensed source for the link in the comment (which I had requested via data.gc.ca and they responded!): http://data.gc.ca/data/en/dataset/ea8f2c37-90b6-4fee-857e-984d3060184e


Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Is the question just asking about VIA Rail in the Canadian context? The description of this dataset specifically asks about national public transport.

James


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Re: Open Data Census Canada

David Eaves
I just want to echo James comments, in part because from advocacy perspective it will be much easier if we restrict to just the federal government. Part of this stems - I believe - from some confusion about the purpose of the Open Data Census.

The goal - as far as I've been informed - of the open data census is not to create a comprehensive list of open data sets around the world for data users. The goal is to create a mechanism by which people can pressure on various governments by either shaming their performance on the list or by pointing to performance of other governments.

If we conflate Federal and provincial and municipal data we will essentially make the census useless as such a tool. Each jurisdiction will be able to claim that the "bad performance" on the census is a result of the failure of either another level of government (e.g. a high or lower level of gov), or by the poor performance of a peer. In addition, the census methodology does not support, or make clear, about what to do when say BC has the data open but Ontario does not. Such a census will be easily ignored by the Feds as well as the province.

I'd rather have something we can explicit beat the feds up with and, because there are big "N/A" blocks that will be clear that it is not their fault (so we won't get into distracting methodology conversations) - but these N/A will still will make us look like poorer performers against some other countries - this will make it easier to enlist the feds support to convene and engage the provinces and, if we are lucky, cities, to make these data sets open. 

So, in sum, the point of the census is not to figure out what a "pure" methodology should be. It is to think strategically about how it maximizes our impact as open data advocates by facilitating an influence strategy. 







On 2013-10-04, at 5:54 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:

I am not James, I am annotating and qualifying the answers.  However, when it comes to transport we will have to say no, when it comes to stats we have to say some, when it comes to elections we have to say yes but qualify that we do not know about ....

And so on.


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 10:19 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
The results will only be false if we are unclear about what the results are about. If we make it clear that the results are about the Canadian federal government, then the results at least have a chance of being correct.

If we try to make it about more than the Canadian federal government, then I think we should just give up now, because the answer to each question would have to be "Yes" AND "No" since there is not one answer that is true for all jurisdictions in Canada.

I think the solution, as I've said before, is to (eventually) add the subnational levels to the Census. You cannot smash all of Canada's jurisdictions together and produce a coherent answer to any of the Census' questions. You need one answer per question per jurisdiction.

It is not sound methodology to try to smash all the jurisdictions together. My proposal is to be clear about what we're measuring (the Canadian federal government) and to then measure it alone.

James

On 2013-10-04, at 4:48 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

I sorta agree with you James, but then the results are false, for example, health data, wel that aint the feds, demograhic data are the feds and the provinces, transport is only the municipalties, pollution is multi jurisdictional as well, so we can, but then that is not our country is it.

Furthermore, one of the arguments I have about the OGP is this national approach and the lack of subnational.  In canada it is really the subnational doing the heavy lifting, and they do not get a seat at the table.

There really needs to be some serious thought, the OECD, WB, UN and others, EU, work really hard at the creation of indicators that make sense across jurisdictions, and that is the hard work that is not being done here.  My issue, is, if we are to do evidence based planning and decision making with data, then the methodology we apply has to be sound, otherwise, we are telling an erroneous story and misleading policy makers. 

I hope open data is also about sound methodology and not just about apis or open formats, it is in my mind about data for deliberation and evening out the analytical and debate playing field, and we as 'citizen' social scientists, will need to be a bit more rigorous, as with time, what we say will not stand.

Anyway, I will be editing this weekend, I have not really heard from my co-editors much, i wanted to collaborate with them on this as it would make more sense if we could discuss things a bit more.

I hope you all can re-look at what I edit one more time before we consider it final.

Cheers
t


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 7:26 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
I think we should just be filling this in with respect to the federal level. So, for example, the answers to the election results questions should be with respect to federal elections only - each question should not attempt to answer for all elections at all levels of government in Canada. If the OKF is interested in the subnational level, we should have a separate entry in the Census for each province and territory (and each city if we really want to go all out). I've answered below in keeping with this understanding.

I can't edit most of these because they are "pending review." Who reviews? Can I be a reviewer?

I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elections. I am thinking about how to fill it in for statistical.

I can't edit national map, but it should be "Yes" to all. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm

Eaves would be familiar re: pollution as he was on the team behind http://www.emitter.ca/


Open North & Michael, would you be able to lend your expertise on budget, spending, company register and legislation?  I know you have expertise here?

Michael Mulley: I can do the federal legislation question, but I think you know better than I do.

I've proposed revisions for company register. I actually don't know much about the budget and spending. The datasets available require expertise that I do not have.

Russel McOrmond, can you look at what I did for Postal Code & Elections?

I can't edit, but my answers would be:

Data exists: Yes
Digital form: Yes
Publicly available: No
Free of charge: No
Online: No
Machine readable: Yes
In bulk: Yes
Openly licensed: No
Up-to-date: Yes (it follows an update schedule that is frequent enough - I can get you the actual rate if needed)


Cory & Michael Mulley can you also look at elections, as I did not do provinces & territories nor municipal, you would know more cuz of the great apps you built?

I can't edit elections, but I would say "Yes" to all. Here's a machine-readable, properly licensed source for the link in the comment (which I had requested via data.gc.ca and they responded!): http://data.gc.ca/data/en/dataset/ea8f2c37-90b6-4fee-857e-984d3060184e


Stephane, can you look at transport?  It is a hard one.

Is the question just asking about VIA Rail in the Canadian context? The description of this dataset specifically asks about national public transport.

James


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Re: Open Data Census Canada

Tracey P. Lauriault
I echo your sentiments, concurrently, best not to mislead with numbers and paint an erroneous picture. We ask that our politicians and journalists not do this, and best we too stick to some higher standards. Again, as stated in earlier streams, the responses to the questions need to be qualified to reflect the Canadian data reality. Many other jurisdictions have also discussed these issues and have stated that they too are having difficulty.

The oknf folks, understand this and are continuously improving the tool.  It is only by continuously communicating will we improve the method, and better reflect local realities.

In addition, others in Canada who are statisticians and indicator developers agree with the difficulty of a federated system and the nature of these indicators. Also, we as open data advocates also need to develop interprovincial and territorial collaborations, as our open data map has some blank spots. And the Feds are not the sole arbiters of knowledge in Canada.

We are all making progress, but I cannot in good conscious report without qualifications, and readers of the results should be able to compare apples and apples, and if that is not possible then they need some footnotes to the results. That is what I and other editors are working on. We need to trust the numbers and also, be able to advance an issue.

cheers
T

On Saturday, October 5, 2013, David Eaves wrote:
I just want to echo James comments, in part because from advocacy perspective it will be much easier if we restrict to just the federal government. Part of this stems - I believe - from some confusion about the purpose of the Open Data Census.

The goal - as far as I've been informed - of the open data census is not to create a comprehensive list of open data sets around the world for data users. The goal is to create a mechanism by which people can pressure on various governments by either shaming their performance on the list or by pointing to performance of other governments.

If we conflate Federal and provincial and municipal data we will essentially make the census useless as such a tool. Each jurisdiction will be able to claim that the "bad performance" on the census is a result of the failure of either another level of government (e.g. a high or lower level of gov), or by the poor performance of a peer. In addition, the census methodology does not support, or make clear, about what to do when say BC has the data open but Ontario does not. Such a census will be easily ignored by the Feds as well as the province.

I'd rather have something we can explicit beat the feds up with and, because there are big "N/A" blocks that will be clear that it is not their fault (so we won't get into distracting methodology conversations) - but these N/A will still will make us look like poorer performers against some other countries - this will make it easier to enlist the feds support to convene and engage the provinces and, if we are lucky, cities, to make these data sets open. 

So, in sum, the point of the census is not to figure out what a "pure" methodology should be. It is to think strategically about how it maximizes our impact as open data advocates by facilitating an influence strategy. 







On 2013-10-04, at 5:54 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:

I am not James, I am annotating and qualifying the answers.  However, when it comes to transport we will have to say no, when it comes to stats we have to say some, when it comes to elections we have to say yes but qualify that we do not know about ....

And so on.


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 10:19 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
The results will only be false if we are unclear about what the results are about. If we make it clear that the results are about the Canadian federal government, then the results at least have a chance of being correct.

If we try to make it about more than the Canadian federal government, then I think we should just give up now, because the answer to each question would have to be "Yes" AND "No" since there is not one answer that is true for all jurisdictions in Canada.

I think the solution, as I've said before, is to (eventually) add the subnational levels to the Census. You cannot smash all of Canada's jurisdictions together and produce a coherent answer to any of the Census' questions. You need one answer per question per jurisdiction.

It is not sound methodology to try to smash all the jurisdictions together. My proposal is to be clear about what we're measuring (the Canadian federal government) and to then measure it alone.

James

On 2013-10-04, at 4:48 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

I sorta agree with you James, but then the results are false, for example, health data, wel that aint the feds, demograhic data are the feds and the provinces, transport is only the municipalties, pollution is multi jurisdictional as well, so we can, but then that is not our country is it.

Furthermore, one of the arguments I have about the OGP is this national approach and the lack of subnational.  In canada it is really the subnational doing the heavy lifting, and they do not get a seat at the table.

There really needs to be some serious thought, the OECD, WB, UN and others, EU, work really hard at the creation of indicators that make sense across jurisdictions, and that is the hard work that is not being done here.  My issue, is, if we are to do evidence based planning and decision making with data, then the methodology we apply has to be sound, otherwise, we are telling an erroneous story and misleading policy makers. 

I hope open data is also about sound methodology and not just about apis or open formats, it is in my mind about data for deliberation and evening out the analytical and debate playing field, and we as 'citizen' social scientists, will need to be a bit more rigorous, as with time, what we say will not stand.

Anyway, I will be editing this weekend, I have not really heard from my co-editors much, i wanted to collaborate with them on this as it would make more sense if we could discuss things a bit more.

I hope you all can re-look at what I edit one more time before we consider it final.

Cheers
t


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 7:26 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
I think we should just be filling this in with respect to the federal level. So, for example, the answers to the election results questions should be with respect to federal elections only - each question should not attempt to answer for all elections at all levels of government in Canada. If the OKF is interested in the subnational level, we should have a separate entry in the Census for each province and territory (and each city if we really want to go all out). I've answered below in keeping with this understanding.

I can't edit most of these because they are "pending review." Who reviews? Can I be a reviewer?

I filled in the Census for National map, pollution, postal code and Elect


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Russell McOrmond-4
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Re: Open Data Census Canada

Russell McOrmond-4
In reply to this post by David Eaves


On Oct 5, 2013 11:50 AM, "David Eaves" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> The goal - as far as I've been informed - of the open data census is not to create a comprehensive list of open data sets around the world for data users. The goal is to create a mechanism by which people can pressure on various governments by either shaming their performance on the list or by pointing to performance of other governments.

  I'm wondering if someone could talk to the open data census folks to have them break things down a bit more such that clear data will exist at the federal and provincial/state level.   I may be wrong, but I suspect that in Canada that other Canadian jurisdictions may be more effective in putting pressure on other provinces and the feds than non-canadian jurisdictions.


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Re: Open Data Census Canada

Tracey P. Lauriault
Russel!

I totally agree.


On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote:


On Oct 5, 2013 11:50 AM, "David Eaves" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> The goal - as far as I've been informed - of the open data census is not to create a comprehensive list of open data sets around the world for data users. The goal is to create a mechanism by which people can pressure on various governments by either shaming their performance on the list or by pointing to performance of other governments.

  I'm wondering if someone could talk to the open data census folks to have them break things down a bit more such that clear data will exist at the federal and provincial/state level.   I may be wrong, but I suspect that in Canada that other Canadian jurisdictions may be more effective in putting pressure on other provinces and the feds than non-canadian jurisdictions.


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