Posted by
Tracey P. Lauriault-2 on
May 17, 2006; 4:20am
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Re-Census-2006-statistics-tp583p599.html
Hi Michael;
I am sorry you are disappointed, however, as many have pointed out we
are trying to make social, economic, political, environmental, health
etc. data & information available to Canadians. At the moment
there is no other group doing this. There are however numerous groups
working on open source issues, and Russel quite rightly pointed you to
GOSLING and others have pointed you to FACIL and as you are well aware
in any city you go to in Canada you will find groups of open source
advocates doing exactly what it is you are looking for.
As Stephane pointed out earlier, focusing on data and information is
quite a large and broad activity and there needs to be a group in
Canada to do that.
Also see comments in-line.
Sincerely
Tracey
Michael Boyle wrote:
This whole discussion has been extremely disappointing for a list
that I still hope will have some promise
1. The Census form is a tiny part of all government online
endeavours. No one here has presented any evidence that it is any way
representative of anything - especially nothing "further than we
target".
The government of Canada has 12 Federal departments, numerous research
institutes, data collecting agencies and Statistics Canada conducts
hundreds of surveys and in fact manages the national accounts. The
Census is but one part.
2. No one has made the case that a (certainly) quite ridiculous
browser requirement has anything to do with data accessibility later
on. Furthermore, there is no evidence that what happens on one side
of the census bears any relationship, online, to what comes out the
other end.
3. So before we get out the pitchforks and torches and storm the
castle, it might be worthwhile to try to understand what government
policy is related to open standards and how policies such as these
are made.
See -
GOSLING - http://GOSLINGcommunity.org
FACIL - http://facil.qc.ca/PageAccueil
4. I read the pages on the Stats Can website closely and I don't see
that the information on the site has changed one bit. I don't
understand how this is a "victory"? The site always said that the JVM
was the issue.
5. A petition has to be presented TO someone. There is no single body
that makes this decision for the government. And if there were, it
would certainly not be in any position to ENFORCE the decision.
That's just not how government policy works.
6. The actual evidence of what the Canadian government IS doing that
is a GREAT deal more optimistic than the census. If there were a
central agency who decided this stuff for everyone, the Treasury
Board Secretariat would be it. Here's their take on this kind of
thing: "http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/ig-gi/index_e.asp". Note that they
can only recommend, not decide. Also note that there are at least 8
different laws and policies that have to be adhered to by every
government website. So though the census site decision might very
well have been faulty, that doesn't really mean that much.
So, please, can we move on to something more significant? Tracey has
been making great points about an important issue - data
accessibility later on - which seems much closer to the intent of
this list and the overall effort. And Michael has been trying to do
some interesting organizing of meetings and such.
We are starting up and people get a feel for things on a complex topic.
And I like the energy that is coming together on the Census, and we
have 2 conference presentations lined up, and we have been featured by
one of our members at a conference in Paris. So I believe we are
moving on with things and getting to know each other at the same time.
Cheers
T
Thanks.
Michael
On 16-May-06, at 4:04 PM, Stephane Guidoin wrote:
Hi Richard,
What about making the petition for "a policy for open standers for
Government of Canada websites and web delivered information"? We
could
site the census2006 as an example.
Just a thought. I think that this serve the greater propose and
fits into
the CivicAccess mandate does it not.
It's true and it's even an element that goes further than what we
target. Our
target (for the census for example), is more to have access to the
data. I
think some other groups focus more on the "open standard" question and
obivously we should agree with them. But our task (to get public
data... public
!) is already vast not to take the risk to lose our focus.
_____________________________________________________________________
Michael Boyle www.mikel.org
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