Posted by
Hugh McGuire on
Feb 06, 2007; 11:12pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/elections-canada-tp814p862.html
from the start it seemed to me that civicaccess.ca needed some very
specific, small projects to work on. This one (postal codes and
electoral districts) seems very interesting for many reasons:
1. simple: everyone understands what this data is, and why it might
be useful to citizens
2. crazy: everyone in the world will think it crazy that this data is
not freely available to citizens
3. press: it is so simple and crazy that I bet there could be a good
tizzy of press created about this - certainly on the web: no doubt
boing boing will be interested, but others as well, hopefully some
papers in canada
4. given 1,2,3 it is an ideal test-case for why civic access to data
is important, and why canada needs to update its stupid policies
I have sent out a number of emails to various Canadian agencies in
the last few days, with some answers I'll share with you guys soon. I
got a call back from Elections Canada, and I will ask about
liberating financial data - and I will ask too about the postal code
data. I'll keep y'all posted.
Longer-term, one thing civicaccess.ca could do is try to start these
little discrete data liberation projects, and then get them all
linked together through one aggregating site (ie. a revamped
civicaccess.ca).
cheers,
Hugh.
On Feb 6, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Daniel Haran wrote:
> On 2/6/07, Russell McOrmond <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Note: I believe we would have to purchase data from Canada Post to do
>> this, but given we wouldn't be redistributing this data it would be a
>> fixed fee and not something that would impact on us freely
>> distributing
>> the results of our work.
>
> When I asked Canada Post about it, they said they wouldn't allow the
> creation of such a derivative data-set.
>
> If that's not a good legal interpretation (any lawyers here?), we
> would be able to buy Canada Post's data, and if there's someone with
> GIS knowledge that can process that data against the parliamentary
> district boundaries, we could put the postal code to electoral
> district database in the public domain.
>
> Sadly, postal codes change quite often- but that solution would still
> be cheaper than buying a single license for makepovertyhistory.
>
> d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>
[hidden email]
>
http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-
> discuss_civicaccess.ca