Open Data Census Methodology - how to compare federations with centralized Gov. systems?
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Open Data Census Methodology - how to compare federations with centralized Gov. systems?
 
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Greetings all;
First, the initiative should be lauded for its efforts. It is a great initiative. However, I do think that if we are working with data, and we wish to do evidence based decision making based on the results of the census, census methodology and data comparison issues need to be made obvious to ensure accuracy and comperability.
For example, the Canadian census results are problematic, not because the information submitted is inaccurate, but because it is grossly incomplete. Canada is a federation, with explicit divisions of power (http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/aia/index.asp?lang=eng&page=federal&sub=legis&doc=legis-eng.htm) whereby jurisdictional responsibilities between the Federal government, provinces and territories and cities are constitutionally set. Jurisdictional divisions therefore dictate divided responsibilities which translates in different things being administered resulting in many kinds of administrative data residing in multiple governments under different rules.
Natural resources for instance are managed by both the federal and provincial and territorial governments, and the data associated with pollution will differ depending on the resources in question and where they are located. Data reside in 14 jurisdictions & innumerable departments and access to these data and how they are collected will be determined by each of these. A citizen would have to contact each jurisdictional or department separately to access these. This is not an insignificant task.
In addition, cities are governed by provinces and territories and there is no real incentive for cross jurisdictional collaboration across provinces and territories, although it does happen. Canada is a big place and what happens on the west coast is not the same as the east, the prairies, or Quebec, Nunavut or Ottawa. Cities do not have jurisdiction over some of the items listed in your census, and even though, they are the innovators in Canada on the Open Data front, they would score low on the census as they just do not produce the data sought after in the census.
Also, even though Canada has a federal Open Data Program, there are other assaults on knowledge, the Census of Canada was cancelled, Library and Archives has been decimated, there is muzzling and control of government scientists, access to information requests are slow and contentious, scientific monitoring stations are being closed, think tanks lost their funding, surveys on vulnerable peoples cancelled and data releases carefully controlled, databases like the gun registry being destroyed. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Federal gov. may have open data, but if knowledge and data producing institutions are being decimated, does it really matter?
Of the 13 provinces and territories, only 3 have open data programs, the data produced by these are the juicy ones however, this is health, population health, education, social welfare, resources, roads, etc. These are the institutions that deliver services to Canadians, and these are the ones we want to have data from, but these are the late bloomers in terms of data sharing, transparency, disclosure, access to information and so on. It is nice to have federal data, but we really want admin data from provinces and territories. Also, business registries are federal, and there are also provincial and territorial ones. The open data census does not capture this nuance. The results from Canada would be much lower if this nuance was taken into consideration.
There are thousands of cities and municipalities in Canada, currently we have 36 with open data pilots or catalogs (<a href="http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/#Open Data Cities">http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/#Open Data Cities). The data they contain are cute, it is generally parks, recreation, monuments, and so on. There are a few with restaurant health inspections and so on. This is the jurisdiction that manages city infrastructure, where we live, and they do not have demographic data and so on. I would love to know more about brown fields, dump sites, waste management, boil water advisories and smog alert days, but these are not in the open data city portals.
Thus, when the question of public transportation comes up under the Open Data Census, it is problematic as the national/federal government does not have jurisdiction over transit unless a system crosses provinces and territories, but that is not transit per say, it is airlines, the national rail lines or Greyhound buses. Transit is administered at the level of the municipality, and that picture differs in each city. There is no way to give an overall mark, and then of course, there is the issues that Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, are big cities (for Canada), they have larger transit systems, smaller cities would not have the resources necessarily to release their transit data if in fact they even had gps on their buses and so on. So how to compare these?
In other words, the picture is complex, and we may get good marks for one jurisdiction, but that mask the reality of the others. Which brings us to the open government partnership, I know not a Census topic, but it only allows for national government representation, in Canada, this is very problematic for the reasons discussed above.
My question then, is how will the Open Data Census capture the differing governance issues between the nation states compared? How will a user of the results be advised of the comparative caveats? Can countries really be compared? Is there recognition that this first census may in fact be the first to understand the differences and that this one will find out the methodological issues and the next one will aim to address these? Sincerely Tracey
Tracey P. Lauriault Post Doctoral Fellow Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
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