Re: simple project idea

Posted by Gordon Campbell on
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/datalibre-ca-v2-tp1107p1114.html

This could be a great section on the wiki, Hugh. What departments have been contacted, responses, etc.

Cheers,
....G

Hugh McGuire wrote:

good idea.

part of this comes from my ignorance as a citizen... it seems every  
agency, ministry etc deals with data differently, and i have no idea  
what is or is not available, free, good format etc.

perhaps we could identify, say, 5 interesting datasets (i have no  
idea what they might be, but perhaps we could spread across some  
areas: health, environment, natural resources, etc)... and then send  
letters to the responsible agencies, and publish the responses.

this seems to be what http://freeourdata.org.uk is doing.

a long-term goal might be a database of canadian govt datasets, and  
their availability to citizens.

hugh.


On Jun 28, 2007, at 1:36 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:

  

I like this idea!

However access to data is huge, perhaps we could focus on a few key  
data
sets we would like access to and focus on those?  Statistics Canada  
Data
and Electoral boundaries and postal codes come to mind.  Any others?

With focus we could find others who have worked on those issues and
build on what they have done and go from there!

Cheers
t

Hugh McGuire wrote:
    

we discussed this previously, and i can't remember where we got ...
but here is an idea:

a simple, straight-forward form letter to government agencies,
requesting info on:
1. whether their data is available to the public
2. what the costs are
3. what the license is
4. what the format is

then a simple statement: "we believe all levels of Canadian
governments should make civic information and data accessible at no
cost in open formats to their citizens."

then send this to all relevant agencies (we would need to make a
list), and cc to the relevant minister (also in the list).

i have done this in a very ad-hoc manner, by email on various issues,
but have not really recorded or processed the responses...and  
actually
there are a number of agencies who DO give data away in nice formats
for free - and these are important in our efforts to convince other
government groups.

thoughts?


On Jun 27, 2007, at 4:45 PM, Gabe Sawhney wrote:

      

For the record, I've transferred all the pages from the civicaccess
wiki to a new wiki at civicaccess.pwd.ca... hopefully this will
eliminate the spam issue.  The full switchover will happen as  
soon as
we can ensure that the mailing list will survive the domain
transition safely.

Feel free to begin adding/modifying pages on
http://civicaccess.pwd.ca -- these will be preserved when the domain
change happens.  *Don't* make any changes to the "old" wiki at
http://civicaccess.ca for the moment, because any new changes will
not be reflected on the new wiki.

The new wiki software is DokuWiki -- the formatting is a little
different than MoinMoin, and I apologize that there's a bit of a
learning curve.  DokuWiki is a great, light-weight wiki which I use
for several projects, and with which I haven't (yet?) had a problem
with spam.  If ever anyone does see spam on the new wiki, please let
me know so that it can be dealt with before it becomes a problem.

Gabe


On 6/26/07, *Hugh McGuire* <[hidden email]
[hidden email]> wrote:

    Hi all,

    Mike Lenczner suggests that it's not clear whether datalibre.ca
    <http://datalibre.ca> is
    *my* project or a group project.

    datalibre.ca <http://datalibre.ca> came about because it seemed
    that people did not wish to
    have blog.civicaccess.ca <http://blog.civicaccess.ca>, but  
rather
    something parallel, but open to
    anyone who wishes to participate. the first idea was to just  
have a
    place to put discussions/info from this list out in the public,
    as it
    seems a shame to have it all stuck behind the walls of this
    discussion group.

    anyway, datalibre.ca <http://datalibre.ca> is meant to be a  
place
    to put that info to the
    public ... and whatever else people wish to do with it.

    In any case, I do hope others interested in this data will  
consider
    posting at datalibre.ca <http://datalibre.ca>. Let me know if  
you
    are interested, and I'll
    give you a login and add you to the about page etc.

    And for the record, whatever happens on there is up to those  
who wish
    to participate.

    so please let me know if you do have interest in contributing,
    however you might want to do so. As mentioned, I wanted to  
catch and
    post some info pages with stuff from civicaccess.ca
    <http://civicaccess.ca>, but most of the
    good stuff seems to be gone now.

    cheers,

    Hugh.



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