Canadian Open Government Action Plan

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement announced Canada's Open Government Action Plan in Regina (April 11, 2012).

@TonyclementCPC Announces Open Gov Action Plan for Canada and applauds @CityofRegina for #opendata launch. #yqr

— Alyssa Daku (@AlyssaDaku) April 11, 2012

The plan can be found on the Canadian Open Government site open.gc.ca: Canada's Action Plan on Open Government.  It outlines three years of progressive commitments to improving and strengthening Canada's three pillars: open information, open data and open dialogue.  Delivering the action plan now was part of the requirements for Canada's membership in the Open Government Partnership (and should eventually be posted at http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/canada ).  Minister Clement will be at the OGP meeting in Brasilia this month.

The plan has two foundational committments: an Open Government Directive and and Open Government License.

Open Government Directive

In Year 1 of our Action Plan, we will confirm our policy direction for Open Government by issuing a new Directive on Open Government. The Directive will provide guidance to 106 federal departments and agencies on what they must do to maximize the availability of online information and data, identify the nature of information to be published, as well as the timing, formats, and standards that departments will be required to adopt. ...

The clear goal of this Directive is to make Open Government and open information the 'default' approach.

Open Government License

... we will issue a new universal Open Government License in Year 1 of our Action Plan with the goal of removing restrictions on the reuse of published Government of Canada information (data, info, websites, publications) and aligning with international best practices. ...

The purpose of the new Open Government License will be to promote the re-use of federal information as widely as possible.

These are two clear actions that have great potential.

I won't list all the other details, just a bit from the open data activity stream, which indicates an updated portal in years 2-3 of the Action Plan:

During Year 1 of our Action Plan, we will continue to expand on the number of datasets made available through the existing portal, and we will complete our requirements for the next generation platform. In Years 2 and 3, we will design and initiate implementation of the new data.gc.ca portal, as well as further improve the level of standardization of data published by departments. The Government will make use of crowdsourcing, particularly among Canada's open data community, to make sure that this new open data portal meets the needs and expectations of those who will use it most

I think the government would be wise to look at the agile iterative approach demonstrated by the UK Government Digital Service as an model for revising the portal to meet user needs.

On Twitter

• Tony Clement - @TonyClementCPC
• Treasury Board Secretariat - @TBS_Canada
• Open Government Partnership - @opengovpart
  Brasilia conference hashtag now changed to #ogp2012
• UK Government Digital Service - @govuk
• UK Open Public Data - @datagovuk

Open Government Partnership Canadian contact

The contact for all matters related to Canada's participation in the Open Government Partnership is

Stephen Walker,

Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat

stephen.walker@tbs-sct.gc.ca

UPDATE 2012-04-18: TBS Press Releases - Minister Clement Releases Open Government Action Plan and Minister Clement Attends International Open Government Partnership. Minister Clement's speech announcing the Action Plan - Speech by Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board of Canada, to Regina and District Chamber of Commerce.  Minister Clement announces Canada's official membership - Canada Joins International Open Government Partnership.

At the time of this writing the Open Government Partnership conference is underway in Brasilia, there is a webcast available.  Minister Clement @TonyClementCPC and Erik Waddell @ErikWaddell are attending, along with others from the government and civil society (see list at bottom of blog post Canadian Open Government Consultation Final Report).

ENDUPDATE

Previously

You can see previous items related to this topic in category opengovca