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[slightly OT] Free snail mail to your MP (well you need to buy an envelope)

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Patrick Dinnen

[slightly OT] Free snail mail to your MP (well you need to buy an envelope)

First, I'd like to say I'm really pleased to see this mailing list get
started. There seems to be a lot going on in the sphere of civic data
access in Canada and I'm really excited to see where this goes.

Here's the (not exactly on topic bit). I was looking for something
unrelated on the Canada Post site and came across the fact that you can
send letters to your MP without needing to attach a stamp, which seems
cool to me. Maybe everyone in the world but me knew that already.
(http://tinyurl.com/car9p).

Could be quite relevant in terms of being able to get your voice heard.
I've heard that letters tend to have more weight with MPs than emails
so, I suppose because of the perception of the extra effort needed
writing a letter, finding an envelope and actually remembering to drop
it in the mail.

Patrick Dinnen

Hugh McGuire

Re: [slightly OT] Free snail mail to your MP (well you need to buy an envelope)

MPs are required by law to answer letters & phone calls. not so with
email, so letters are much more important.

though perhaps we should try to get a law passed to force them to answer
emails too.

Patrick Dinnen wrote:

> First, I'd like to say I'm really pleased to see this mailing list get
> started. There seems to be a lot going on in the sphere of civic data
> access in Canada and I'm really excited to see where this goes.
>
> Here's the (not exactly on topic bit). I was looking for something
> unrelated on the Canada Post site and came across the fact that you can
> send letters to your MP without needing to attach a stamp, which seems
> cool to me. Maybe everyone in the world but me knew that already.
> (http://tinyurl.com/car9p).
>
> Could be quite relevant in terms of being able to get your voice heard.
> I've heard that letters tend to have more weight with MPs than emails
> so, I suppose because of the perception of the extra effort needed
> writing a letter, finding an envelope and actually remembering to drop
> it in the mail.
>
> Patrick Dinnen
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>

Tracey P. Lauriault-2

Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access

In reply to this post by Patrick Dinnen

Patrick! A nice sagueway for me to go on about Postal Code Data,
Geomatics and Access! My favorite!

**************
Canada Post also manages and SELLS important datasets that
geodemographers, researchers, and companies use to manage mailing lists.

These are unfortunately FOR SALE on a 12 month subscription basis and
priced for internal end-user and those who resell value added products
to a third party!
(http://www.canadapost.ca/business/offerings/address_management/can/other_data-e.asp).
There is also a cute little find a postal code tool -
http://www.canadapost.ca/business/tools/pcl/bin/quick-e.asp.

Statistics Canada Geography Division in cooperation with Canada Post
also produce 3 digit (K1R) and 6 digit (K1R 7J4) postal code framework
data files (base maps)
(http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0153U). Each postal
code is represented on the base map as a point, and you can georeference
(link) other data sets to those points and map them (e.g. see where my
natural gas customers in Ottawa are). These data sets are also
aggregated into areas (polygons) called Forward Sortation Areas (FSA).
The area is defined by the geographic area of the first three digits of
a postal code and these can be mapped with census data and work with the
3 and 6 digit point files (e.g. i know where my customers are, and I
overlay that (points) onto an average income or language spoken at home
map (polygons/ares) to glean more information about who my customers are
and the nature of the neighbourhoods they live in). These data sets are
also aligned with road network, hydrography (rivers, lakes, etc.),
electoral boundaries to name a few.

So when you buy something and you are asked you for your postal code -
guess what they are doing with that info! Then again, you can also map
the distance traveled by the customers of an organic food store, the
characteristics of their hoods and then decide the best place to build
another! Conduct spatial location analysis.

These Base Map data sets are also FOR SALE, by Data resellers such as
DMTI or directly from Statistics Canada with all kinds of special data
licensing agreements . These data are only available for free if you
are a professor or a student conducting research for non-for-profit
purposes through the Data Liberation Initiative
(http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/dli.htm)

These data sets are very powerful as you can, with the right GIS
software & knowledge & financial resources, map these to other data
sets such as Census of Population, Census of Agriculture or other
Statistics Canada, federal ridings results or private sector data and
conduct some excellent analysis. Much important analysis such as
demographics, profiling, risk assessment, spatial location analysis,
territory management, target market, delivery routes etc. can be done
with these.

Few NGOs, neighbourhood associations or individual citizen have access
to these data as they are too costly.

Patrick Dinnen wrote:

>First, I'd like to say I'm really pleased to see this mailing list get
>started. There seems to be a lot going on in the sphere of civic data
>access in Canada and I'm really excited to see where this goes.
>
>Here's the (not exactly on topic bit). I was looking for something
>unrelated on the Canada Post site and came across the fact that you can
>send letters to your MP without needing to attach a stamp, which seems
>cool to me. Maybe everyone in the world but me knew that already.
>(http://tinyurl.com/car9p).
>
>Could be quite relevant in terms of being able to get your voice heard.
>I've heard that letters tend to have more weight with MPs than emails
>so, I suppose because of the perception of the extra effort needed
>writing a letter, finding an envelope and actually remembering to drop
>it in the mail.
>
>Patrick Dinnen
>
>_______________________________________________
>CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>
>
>

Hugh McGuire

Re: Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access

wow.

Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

> Patrick! A nice sagueway for me to go on about Postal Code Data,
> Geomatics and Access! My favorite!
>
> **************
> Canada Post also manages and SELLS important datasets that
> geodemographers, researchers, and companies use to manage mailing lists.
>
> These are unfortunately FOR SALE on a 12 month subscription basis and
> priced for internal end-user and those who resell value added products
> to a third party!
> (http://www.canadapost.ca/business/offerings/address_management/can/other_data-e.asp).
> There is also a cute little find a postal code tool -
> http://www.canadapost.ca/business/tools/pcl/bin/quick-e.asp.
>
> Statistics Canada Geography Division in cooperation with Canada Post
> also produce 3 digit (K1R) and 6 digit (K1R 7J4) postal code framework
> data files (base maps)
> (http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0153U). Each postal
> code is represented on the base map as a point, and you can georeference
> (link) other data sets to those points and map them (e.g. see where my
> natural gas customers in Ottawa are). These data sets are also
> aggregated into areas (polygons) called Forward Sortation Areas (FSA).
> The area is defined by the geographic area of the first three digits of
> a postal code and these can be mapped with census data and work with the
> 3 and 6 digit point files (e.g. i know where my customers are, and I
> overlay that (points) onto an average income or language spoken at home
> map (polygons/ares) to glean more information about who my customers are
> and the nature of the neighbourhoods they live in). These data sets are
> also aligned with road network, hydrography (rivers, lakes, etc.),
> electoral boundaries to name a few.
>
> So when you buy something and you are asked you for your postal code -
> guess what they are doing with that info! Then again, you can also map
> the distance traveled by the customers of an organic food store, the
> characteristics of their hoods and then decide the best place to build
> another! Conduct spatial location analysis.
>
> These Base Map data sets are also FOR SALE, by Data resellers such as
> DMTI or directly from Statistics Canada with all kinds of special data
> licensing agreements . These data are only available for free if you
> are a professor or a student conducting research for non-for-profit
> purposes through the Data Liberation Initiative
> (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/dli.htm)
>
> These data sets are very powerful as you can, with the right GIS
> software & knowledge & financial resources, map these to other data
> sets such as Census of Population, Census of Agriculture or other
> Statistics Canada, federal ridings results or private sector data and
> conduct some excellent analysis. Much important analysis such as
> demographics, profiling, risk assessment, spatial location analysis,
> territory management, target market, delivery routes etc. can be done
> with these.
>
> Few NGOs, neighbourhood associations or individual citizen have access
> to these data as they are too costly.
>
>
>
> Patrick Dinnen wrote:
>
>
>>First, I'd like to say I'm really pleased to see this mailing list get
>>started. There seems to be a lot going on in the sphere of civic data
>>access in Canada and I'm really excited to see where this goes.
>>
>>Here's the (not exactly on topic bit). I was looking for something
>>unrelated on the Canada Post site and came across the fact that you can
>>send letters to your MP without needing to attach a stamp, which seems
>>cool to me. Maybe everyone in the world but me knew that already.
>>(http://tinyurl.com/car9p).
>>
>>Could be quite relevant in terms of being able to get your voice heard.
>>I've heard that letters tend to have more weight with MPs than emails
>>so, I suppose because of the perception of the extra effort needed
>>writing a letter, finding an envelope and actually remembering to drop
>>it in the mail.
>>
>>Patrick Dinnen
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>>[hidden email]
>>http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>

Daniel Haran

Re: Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access

In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault-2

Hi Tracey, list-members,

I was waiting to introduce myself before jumping into this conversation.

Postal codes are pretty handy for a lot of applications. The longitude
and latitude for zip codes in the US is free, so many programmers have
used them for store locators. Because of their cost in Canada, this
has not been used as widely. The results: we have worse locators, and
our programmers didn't have the same opportunity to create projects
for local customers that could then be re-sold.

As I was researching the topic, I found the following:
http://www.geoconnections.org/CGDI.cfm/fuseaction/developersCorner.details/id/1845/gcs.cfm

The .doc linked from that page mentions support for complex geometry
for postal codes, so I emailed Patrick King, the contact listed about
this and license terms. This was over a week ago, and he responded
very promptly that he was trying to get the information and would get
back to me soon. I'm pretty sure some higher-up bureaucrat is having
fits over the implications of this demand. Some of my requests to
other departments have taken months to get answers. Seeing how the
government has made more and more things freely available (such as
road network information), this would be a plausible development.

The data you liked to that is sold by Canada Post is mainly useful for
writing address validation and correction. The license terms cover
re-distribution, but not web-services- I checked with the contact at
CPC about this. This still leaves open the issue of 'derivative
works'. That is, what if I had a web service that returned a postal
code for an address- and you were to systematically query it with all
the addresses in Canada? It would take some 10 million requests. You
would not be able to reconstruct my data set- that is, you could not
validate or correct addresses, as you would still be missing
alternative spellings for locales. What you *would* be able to do is
construct shapefiles and determine centre-points for each postal code.

That data is currently sold by large vendors for $5,000 for a single
license. This same data could be re-constructed for $3,000 and a lot
of code. I am not a lawyer... anyone know the legal implications of
this? It would be neat to put this in the public domain if Canada Post
didn't/couldn't stop it.

Once the postal code shapefiles are out, these could be
cross-referenced with the federal riding information to re-create
another product that is currently being sold by Statscan - the Postal
Codes by Federal Riding that used to sell for $2,900 (I can't find any
updated information or free sources in the public domain).

Cheers,

Daniel.

On 1/15/06, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:

Tracey P. Lauriault-2

Re: Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access

Great work Daniel!
I love all the requests you are making.

The StatCan FSA files are .shp as are the 3 and 6 digit point files. I
had purchased the 1996 and 2001 Census for the Social Planning Council
of Ottawa from DMTI when I worked there. Nathalie (she is on the list!)
any updates on this? We however purchased MapInfo files and not .shp
files since we were not a ESRI GIS shop and did not have the capacity to
do web mapping, mostly we had no programmers and the web technology at
the time was suitable for viewing map and not analysis. And yes there
were many very particular licenses associated with these datasets.

It would be superb to get the Canada Post files on Geobase
(http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/data/index.html) or on as part of
GeoGratis (http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/clf/en).

It would be great to get StatCan and the Crown Corporation to release
that data! We did already pay for it. As for recreating it, well, as a
one off is would be sorta easy but maintaining and updating that data is
a big job.

Tracey

Daniel Haran wrote:

>Hi Tracey, list-members,
>
>I was waiting to introduce myself before jumping into this conversation.
>
>Postal codes are pretty handy for a lot of applications. The longitude
>and latitude for zip codes in the US is free, so many programmers have
>used them for store locators. Because of their cost in Canada, this
>has not been used as widely. The results: we have worse locators, and
>our programmers didn't have the same opportunity to create projects
>for local customers that could then be re-sold.
>
>As I was researching the topic, I found the following:
>http://www.geoconnections.org/CGDI.cfm/fuseaction/developersCorner.details/id/1845/gcs.cfm
>
>The .doc linked from that page mentions support for complex geometry
>for postal codes, so I emailed Patrick King, the contact listed about
>this and license terms. This was over a week ago, and he responded
>very promptly that he was trying to get the information and would get
>back to me soon. I'm pretty sure some higher-up bureaucrat is having
>fits over the implications of this demand. Some of my requests to
>other departments have taken months to get answers. Seeing how the
>government has made more and more things freely available (such as
>road network information), this would be a plausible development.
>
>The data you liked to that is sold by Canada Post is mainly useful for
>writing address validation and correction. The license terms cover
>re-distribution, but not web-services- I checked with the contact at
>CPC about this. This still leaves open the issue of 'derivative
>works'. That is, what if I had a web service that returned a postal
>code for an address- and you were to systematically query it with all
>the addresses in Canada? It would take some 10 million requests. You
>would not be able to reconstruct my data set- that is, you could not
>validate or correct addresses, as you would still be missing
>alternative spellings for locales. What you *would* be able to do is
>construct shapefiles and determine centre-points for each postal code.
>
>That data is currently sold by large vendors for $5,000 for a single
>license. This same data could be re-constructed for $3,000 and a lot
>of code. I am not a lawyer... anyone know the legal implications of
>this? It would be neat to put this in the public domain if Canada Post
>didn't/couldn't stop it.
>
>Once the postal code shapefiles are out, these could be
>cross-referenced with the federal riding information to re-create
>another product that is currently being sold by Statscan - the Postal
>Codes by Federal Riding that used to sell for $2,900 (I can't find any
>updated information or free sources in the public domain).
>
>Cheers,
>
>Daniel.
>
>On 1/15/06, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>
>>Patrick! A nice sagueway for me to go on about Postal Code Data,
>>Geomatics and Access! My favorite!
>>
>>**************
>>Canada Post also manages and SELLS important datasets that
>>geodemographers, researchers, and companies use to manage mailing lists.
>>
>>These are unfortunately FOR SALE on a 12 month subscription basis and
>>priced for internal end-user and those who resell value added products
>>to a third party!
>>(http://www.canadapost.ca/business/offerings/address_management/can/other_data-e.asp).
>>There is also a cute little find a postal code tool -
>>http://www.canadapost.ca/business/tools/pcl/bin/quick-e.asp.
>>
>>Statistics Canada Geography Division in cooperation with Canada Post
>>also produce 3 digit (K1R) and 6 digit (K1R 7J4) postal code framework
>>data files (base maps)
>>(http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0153U). Each postal
>>code is represented on the base map as a point, and you can georeference
>>(link) other data sets to those points and map them (e.g. see where my
>>natural gas customers in Ottawa are). These data sets are also
>>aggregated into areas (polygons) called Forward Sortation Areas (FSA).
>>The area is defined by the geographic area of the first three digits of
>>a postal code and these can be mapped with census data and work with the
>>3 and 6 digit point files (e.g. i know where my customers are, and I
>>overlay that (points) onto an average income or language spoken at home
>>map (polygons/ares) to glean more information about who my customers are
>>and the nature of the neighbourhoods they live in). These data sets are
>>also aligned with road network, hydrography (rivers, lakes, etc.),
>>electoral boundaries to name a few.
>>
>>So when you buy something and you are asked you for your postal code -
>>guess what they are doing with that info! Then again, you can also map
>>the distance traveled by the customers of an organic food store, the
>>characteristics of their hoods and then decide the best place to build
>>another! Conduct spatial location analysis.
>>
>>These Base Map data sets are also FOR SALE, by Data resellers such as
>>DMTI or directly from Statistics Canada with all kinds of special data
>>licensing agreements . These data are only available for free if you
>>are a professor or a student conducting research for non-for-profit
>>purposes through the Data Liberation Initiative
>>(http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/dli.htm)
>>
>>These data sets are very powerful as you can, with the right GIS
>>software & knowledge & financial resources, map these to other data
>>sets such as Census of Population, Census of Agriculture or other
>>Statistics Canada, federal ridings results or private sector data and
>>conduct some excellent analysis. Much important analysis such as
>>demographics, profiling, risk assessment, spatial location analysis,
>>territory management, target market, delivery routes etc. can be done
>>with these.
>>
>>Few NGOs, neighbourhood associations or individual citizen have access
>>to these data as they are too costly.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>
>
>

Nathalie Leclerc

Re: Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access

In reply to this post by Patrick Dinnen

Hi
The Social Planning Council of Ottawa has purchased through the Social
Planning Network of Ontario 2001 Census Consortium the shapefile of the
6-digit postal codes point file for Canada. Unfortunately, we don't have the
polygons so we can't create thematic (choropleth) maps but we can still do
decent things with the data.

As for presentation I am program coordinator at the Social Planning Council.
We use GIS to map mostly census variables and service data. We make data
available to community-based organizations and we also have some data
available on our website www.spcottawa.on.ca where we have lots of maps for
the 1996 census or on the bank of knowledge www.spcottawa.on.ca/bok for the
2001 census.

Nathalie Leclerc

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email]
[mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
[hidden email]
Sent: January 17, 2006 7:45 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: CivicAccess-discuss Digest, Vol 3, Issue 12

Today's Topics:

1. introduction + municipal FOI (Daniel Haran)
2. Re: introduction + municipal FOI (Tracey P. Lauriault)
3. Re: introduction + municipal FOI (Michael Lenczner)
4. Re: introduction + municipal FOI (Daniel Haran)
5. Re: Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access (Daniel Haran)
6. Re: Postal Code Data, Geomatics and Access (Tracey P. Lauriault)

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

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

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 07:44:58 -0500
From: "Tracey P. Lauriault" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] Postal Code Data, Geomatics and
Access
To: civicaccess discuss <[hidden email]>
Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Great work Daniel!
I love all the requests you are making.

The StatCan FSA files are .shp as are the 3 and 6 digit point files. I
had purchased the 1996 and 2001 Census for the Social Planning Council
of Ottawa from DMTI when I worked there. Nathalie (she is on the list!)
any updates on this? We however purchased MapInfo files and not .shp
files since we were not a ESRI GIS shop and did not have the capacity to
do web mapping, mostly we had no programmers and the web technology at
the time was suitable for viewing map and not analysis. And yes there
were many very particular licenses associated with these datasets.

It would be superb to get the Canada Post files on Geobase
(http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/data/index.html) or on as part of
GeoGratis (http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/clf/en).

It would be great to get StatCan and the Crown Corporation to release
that data! We did already pay for it. As for recreating it, well, as a
one off is would be sorta easy but maintaining and updating that data is
a big job.

Tracey

************************************************

Tracey P. Lauriault-2

Elections Map

Thought you might all like to take a peak at this!
http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/elections/election2006

Patrick Dinnen

Re: Elections Map

That's an interesting map, shows some of the geographic political
differences pretty starkly.

Now where are the folks doing cool stuff like this
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ for the Canada data?

Patrick

Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

> Thought you might all like to take a peak at this!
> http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/elections/election2006
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>

Tracey P. Lauriault-2

Re: Elections Map

I love those maps Patrick!

I speculate that we see less of that kinda research in Canada because
of $s!

US universities are really rich. I visited UCLA, U of Arizona,
Middlebury College in Vermont, and chatted with friends from San Diego
Super Computing, Georgia Tech & Dartmouth and I was amazed. I informally
collected the following observations/data from a pretty small sample
size in an informal way, but I think they are indicators of
institutional wealth - the quality and newness of the machines in their
student computer labs, campus WIFI, incredible libraries, the really
good food in their cafeterias, the pervasiveness of students with
laptops, sports scholarships, incredibly groomed grounds, liberal social
spending for invited guest lecturers, the really nice cars in the lots,
and the presence of excellent art and new funky architecture, and the
size of their student population. Resources in the US come from alumni
& fraternity & philanthropic & big business dollars & gov, and student
fees from more students, which i think provides the necessary resources
to purchase time, space, gadgets, and student support for some cool non
mandate driven but not free research.

Canadian research centres rely on SSHRC, CFI, and NSERC along with some
private sector dollars (medical research + engineering is a bit
different!) so they are less well resourced overall, research has to be
product based (NSERC) or very focused under a social science research
program (SSHRC), with fewer and smaller alumni donations, and a much
smaller student population. Also, note the research centre that
produced those maps was physics not geography. So I speculate that
fewer monetary resources, the declining population of students in
geography, and a smaller population density in Canada, leads to less non
mandate driven research, it has led to some really good quality and
robust focused research & products but much less free style research
like the one you pointed to!

I would be willing however to put my 5bucks towards research to produce
cool Canadian cartograms!

and i would welcome a challenge to my observations, cuz, i am only guessing.

Tracey

Patrick Dinnen wrote:

>That's an interesting map, shows some of the geographic political
>differences pretty starkly.
>
>Now where are the folks doing cool stuff like this
>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ for the Canada data?
>
>Patrick
>
>Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
>
>
>>Thought you might all like to take a peak at this!
>>http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/elections/election2006
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>>[hidden email]
>>http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>
>
>