Science Library Pad

Government of Quebec open data and open government - the Gautrin Report

The government of the province of Quebec today released the Gautrin Report, which covers Web 2.0 and government transformation related to technology.  It includes ideas such as a provincial open data site and improved internal collaboration for government employees.  In the press conference I also heard mention of a dashboard for government IT projects (with reference to the dashboard created by the US CIO).

The report (in French) is available: Gouverner ensemble : Comment le Web 2.0 améliorera-t-il les services aux citoyens? (PDF, 207 pages, 3,55 Mo)

You can also find two appendices and the complete text of responses to the government's online consultation about the topic at http://www.mce.gouv.qc.ca/publications/publications.htm

There was a brief press conference introducing the major elements of the report.

Also launched was a new Twitter account @GouvOuvertQc ("Open Government Quebec") and the open data site is live, albeit as a placeholder (I gather the real site will go live next month, June 2012): http://donnees.gouv.qc.ca/

There is a website for the entire initiative (also a placeholder at the moment): http://ouvert.gouv.qc.ca/

And a short press release: M. Henri-François Gautrin dévoile les principales recommandations de son rapport : Gouverner ensemble.

UPDATE 2012-05-03: The placeholder sites have been updated with more information, including a longer press release - Le gouvernement du Québec s'engage sur la voie du gouvernement ouvert.  It lists two actions for June: the open data portal and the IT projects dashboard

Le portail www.données.gouv.qc.ca sera mis en place dès juin et les données y seront publiées progressivement.

En juin, un tableau de bord sur l'état de santé des projets informatiques sera diffusé dans le portail des données ouvertes.

A mockup of what the IT projects dashbard will look like is available (PDF).  (And yes, both the accented and unaccented version of the open data portal URL will work.)

It also lists 14 actions that will be completed by December 2012.  (I am not going to translate them all.)  They include planning, governance, and website launches.

There will be a website specifically for public feedback.

La mise en ligne d'un site Web www.défis.gouv.qc.ca qui permettra de solliciter les réactions du public et de renforcer sa participation à l'élaboration, au suivi et à l'évaluation des services publics;

For the moment, you can provide your feedback to the report on the consultation site.

ENDUPDATE

The report's recommendations are (my translations):

1. Essentially this recommendation is a call for an open data site, with machine-readable datasets.
2. Encourage citizen participation in the evaluation of the government's actions and policies.
3. This is an interesting, internal and external facing recommendation
   "Que le gouvernement s’engage à utiliser le potentiel du Web 2.0 pour stimuler et faciliter la collaboration des employés au sein et entre les différents ministères et organismes gouvernementaux."
   The government should take advantage of the potential of Web 2.0 to enable employee collaboration within departments and between different departments and government organisations.
4. The Premier of Quebec should declare he will follow the path of Web 2.0 and have an open government.
5. Basically says the Government 2.0 project should put in place step-by-step and be well managed.
6. Basically just restates the need for an open data portal and says it should start with data that is already covered for release under existing laws.
7. Says that the l’Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ) should be the depository for all government statistical data.
8. That all non-statistical data should be held by the National Library & Archives of Quebec (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) and that the library should be responsible for verifying the quality of the data.
9. Basically says the data should be machine-readable and discoverable by search engines, and that a specific data search engine should be developed.
10. Says data put on the open data portal should be under an open license (specifically one like the Open Government License).
11. Along with the open data site there should be a site where citizens and companies can provide feedback.
12. Says that the use of the open data should be encouraged (there should be incentives to encourage its use).  "Que soient développés des incitatifs pour encourager une utilisation innovatrice et créatrice des données gouvernementales."
13. In all communication plans, social media should be included as a means to gather citizen feedback and stimulate dialogue.
14. The government should do social media monitoring in order to respond to feedback provided in those channels.
15. Departments should use social media to create discussion spaces for citizens to provide feedback about big projects.
16. Have a way to measure citizen feedback and demonstrate that it is being used.
17. Have a citizen forum (online) for discussions.
18. LA COLLABORATION
    Un réseau social interne
    "Que soit amélioré l’intranet gouvernemental pour y inclure un outil de collaboration du type réseau social, qui permet des fonctionnalités comme le partage de documents, la stimulation du brassage d’idées, la bonification de l’information et les interactions entre les employés de la fonction publique."
    The government intranet should be improved to include a social network for collaboration and document sharing.
19. Develop a vision of how to use Web 2.0 for improving service quality.
20. Change the government's organisational culture to encourage the sharing of information, co-creation of new knowledge, and greater responsibilities for employees.
21. The government should provide the support necessary to help its employees maximise their use of Web 2.0, while respecting their ethical responsibilities.
22. Trust government employees, give them the ability to be innovative in using Web 2.0.
23. The governance of this open government project should be under the direct authority of the Premier.
24. There should be a governance committee (with various specific members listed).
25. Basically the purpose of the governance committee is to monitor and guide the various phases of the project.
26. More details about the governance committee.
27. Take security measures, try to ensure only correct information is sent over social media.
28. Take particular care with the security around private information.
29. Broadband Internet for all Quebec.
30. Accessible websites.
31. Keep the cost of Internet access and technology tools reasonable.
32. Provide training to citizens to help them use new technologies.

NOTE: I am not a professional translator.  This is just my best quick effort at translating these.  Feel free to correct my interpretations.  Apologies for anything that's incorrect.

Twitter:

• The account for the consultation (which presumably will now go silent) is @GautrinWeb2 and the accompanying hashtag is #GautrinWeb2
• The @GouvOuvertQc account has been using the hashtag #gouvouvert as opposed to the Government of Canada consultation which used #gouvert (well more specifically #parlonsgouvert)

Previously

August 5, 2011  Québec - Consultation publique Web 2.0

Canada and US at Open Government Partnership Brasilia Conference

Minister Tony Clement @TonyClementCPC and Erik Waddell @ErikWaddell of Treasury Board Secretariat are part of the Canadian delegation for the Open Government Partnership Conference.

The US delegation is headed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her remarks at the conference opening are available (text and video).

UPDATE: Minister Clement's speech text is available - Speech by Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board and Minister Responsible for FedNor, Presenting the Government of Canada's Action Plan on Open Government.  ENDUPDATE

Here's a brief Storify of Canadian-related #ogp2012 tweets for April 17, 2012 (I will update it if there are more):

Previously:

See previous posts in category opengovca

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

Canadian Open Government Consultation Final Report

The Final Report of the Canadian Open Government Consultation has been posted

http://open.gc.ca/consult/results-resultatstb-eng.asp

It's a straightforward summary of the input provided.

There were over 260 submissions to the online consultation.

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement states

These consultations were also instrumental in developing our Open Government Action Plan which I will present in April 2012 at the Open Government Partnership in Brazil. Each element of the Action Plan is supported by what we heard during the consultation process.

The key messages reported are

• Make information and data easier to find by improving the search function on government websites.
• Improve the organization of government websites, in general, by creating centralized portal(s) to provide catalogues of Government of Canada information and data in one place.
• Make more information and data available in standardized open formats with improved metadata, tagging and indexing.
• Promote the availability of open data through better communications and marketing.
• Improve consultation tools and websites by making them more user-friendly (e.g., plain language, no acronyms, etc.) and more interactive through the use of social media.
• Ensure that Canadians know that consultations are taking place and demonstrate that something is being done with consultation results.
• Be more open with Canadians by improving policies and rules so that government data and information is open by default.

The final report itself doesn't provide any specific information about what will be included in the Open Government Action Plan, however the January 2012 update to the Open Government Partnership described some initial possibilities.

UPDATE 2012-04-18: The Open Government Action Plan was released on April 11, 2012.  ENDUPDATE

Canada's Action Plan will be posted to is posted at the OGP website

http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/canada

The OGP meeting is in Brasilia, April 17-18, 2012. The OGP has posted a preliminary list of attendees (Excel format).

Canadian representitives listed are

• Stephen Walker - Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) - Stephen is the contact for all OGP related matters: stephen.walker@tbs-sct.gc.ca
• Tony Clement - President of the Treasury Board - @TonyClementCPC
• Erik Waddell - TBS - @ErikWaddell
• Michael Gurstein - Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training - @michaelgurstein
• Harvey Low - Representative - Canadian Council on Social Development, Community Data Program
• Fernando Perini - International Development Research Centre (IDRC) - @fperini
• David Eaves - @daeaves - David is also on the Canadian Government Advisory Panel on Open Government
• Pierre Boucher - Deputy CIO of Canada

The hashtag is for the event is #OGPBrasilia2012 #ogp2012 and the Twitter ID is @opengovpart

Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training

Rebooting the public square with open data and open source

there are myriad categories of raw data that are locked up inside the boundaries of government.  If governments were simply to publish this data, then private companies, civil society organisations, citizens and other government agencies will self-organise to use this data to create public value.  This holds the promise of better, cheaper government.

Don Tapscott - 03m43s to 4m06s

The fifth and final episode of CBC's ReCivilization was "Rebooting the Public Square".  Ignoring the apocalyptic "this is the end of everything we know" tone at the beginning, it looks at the infrastructure of open sharing online (through discussions with Google and Mozilla), open data (through a discussion with Sir Tim Berners-Lee), and the kinds of activities that are enabled in the government sphere (through a discussion with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy).

I think it's an ok starting point for understanding some of the pieces, although there is a lot more to open government than is covered in the segment.  I was disappointed that as a Canadian show there was no mention of Canadian open government initiatives, which include

• national - open.gc.ca and participation in the Open Government Partnership
• provincial - data.gov.bc.ca
• municipal - ottawa.ca/opendata

(More sites are listed on Wikipedia - Open Data in Canada.)

The audio is available as broadcast on the web, there are also extended interviews available.  For those interested specifically in open government, the extended interview with Thomas Kalil is the most informative.  The series is also available (for free) in iTunes.

Twitter:

• @recivilization
• @dtapscott
• @adw_tweets
• @WhiteHouseOSTP
• @ericschmidt
• @MitchellBaker
• @timberners_lee

Previously:
December 30, 2006  Tapscott: turn your organization inside-out
December 28, 2006  Tapscott on collaboration and Wikinomics in the Globe
June 6, 2005  SLA2005 - live, semi-awake blogging of opening session - Monday 9:30 AM (featuring Tapscott keynote)

UK Open Government and Transparency

Francis Maude is UK Minister for the Cabinet Office.  He spoke about the UK experience in January 2012 for the World Bank.

Governments are finding transparency risky, difficult and uncomfortable. But transparency sticks – it’s irreversible once you start. And I believe transparency will become the defining characteristic of future public policy.

...

putting out raw data in the public domain for entrepreneurs and businesses to work with. Creating an information marketplace. And this is where I believe the UK is leading the way today.

Data sharing is underpinning everything we do to improve public services and to drive new waves of growth.

...

Companies large and small are also using the data to create innovative, products and applications.

Already we’re aware of 47 independent app developers working in the UK giving information to rail passengers through their smartphones – in a market that has for the most part open up in only a few major cities.

London commuters can now use their phone apps to decide whether to rush for the train or get a cup of coffee thanks to greater transport data.

Francis Maude's speech to the World Bank – Transparency and Open Data

You can also watch the webcast recording (Windows Media format).

In addition to the UK open data site data.gov.uk there are two other initiatives of note: gov.uk from the Government Digital Service and G-Cloud.

gov.uk is a project to have a single homepage to access UK government services.  They have been using an agile methodology, and the gov.uk site is now in beta, following an alpha.   From a homepage that is a blog to an official Twitter feed at @govuk that retweets team members, it is a great example of innovation at the heart of government.

G-Cloud includes government use of the cloud as well as data centre consolidation.  They just launched the CloudStore, a list of approved services.  It includes the notion of trying to open up government procurement to a wider variety of players.  They announced CloudStore Open for Business on February 19, 2012 in their blog.  The CloudStore, which runs on MS Azure, will be available as open source.  You can follow them at @G_Cloud_UK

RT @cantwaitogo The full UK Gov #cloudstore will be released as #opensource. < great, thx #oss #govit #gov20

— Andrew Stott (@DirDigEng) February 19, 2012

open policy @ DFAIT - Storify of the tweets

A lightly-curated Storify of the ~500 tweets from the February 9, 2012 event at DFAIT.

More OC Transpo real-time open data news

UPDATE 2012-02-20: OC Transpo is now required by Transit Commission to release GPS open data by March 22, 2012 ENDUPDATE

Some great ongoing coverage of the reluctance of Ottawa's transit agency, OC Transpo, to release real-time bus position information despite city policy, strong demands from Councillors, and insistence from citizens.

Developers

"I think in general OC Transpo is going to underestimate the capacity of the developer community to work together and solve problems," said Jonathan Rudenberg, who wrote a bus-location app using OC Transpo data that won a "people's choice" award in the city's application contest last year.

Ottawa Citizen - Criticism of route apps disputed - by David Reevely (@davidreevely) - January 20, 2012

You can find Jonathan on Twitter @titanous and information about his app Where is my bus? is available on the Apps4Ottawa contest site.

Developer John Gill (@swfiua) is so frustrated that he now wants to develop an app that uses crowdsourced position data from GPS-enabled smartphones, without using OC Transpo data at all.

Councillors

OC Transpo should open its bus-location data to outside programmers the same day it launches its own application to tell riders when their buses are due, says Councillor Stephen Blais, and he intends to present a motion to the city’s transit commission at its next meeting ... to force the company to do it.

Ottawa Citizen - Councillor determined to have OC Transpo bus-location data opened to outside programmers - by David Reevely - January 23, 2012

Councillor Blais tweets @StephenBlais and his political page on Facebook is http://www.facebook.com/StephenBlaisOrleans

Blog coverage

• http://www.blackberrycool.com/2012/01/19/encourage-your-city-councillors-and-government-to-make-data-open/
• http://kevino.ca/content/heres-how-easy-oc-transpos-open-data-should-be
• http://trashysworld.ca/2012/01/21/oc-transpo-greediness/

History

We've been fighting this fight for over a year.  Here's David Reevely reporting February 14, 2011: The open-data battle continues with OC Transpo.

Previously
January 19, 2012  In the news: Fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data
January 18, 2012  OC Transpo would rather have ads than open data

In the news: Fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data

UPDATE 2012-02-20: OC Transpo is now required by Transit Commission to release GPS open data by March 22, 2012 ENDUPDATE

Extensive reporting on the January 18, 2012 Transit Committee meeting in Ottawa, where the transit agency OC Transpo's update on open data was that they didn't want to release it.

OC Transpo runs an entirely bus-based transit network.  The main issue at hand is getting the agency to release the realtime position data, from GPS systems already installed (or in some cases soon-to-be installed) on the buses.  OC Transpo does provide standard static transit schedule data in GTFS format, but the realities of road conditions (particularly in winter) mean that the official schedule often doesn't match the actual bus arrival times.

Of particular concern were OC Transpo's assertions that it was difficult and unwise to release the realtime data, an unusual position considering that Toronto and Winnipeg already provide this type of data.

Vehicle locations and next vehicle arrival predictions are in real-time.

toronto.ca/open - Data Catalogue » TTC Real-Time Next Vehicle Arrival (NVAS)

a real-time picture of what is currently happening on the streets, with information about our city-wide service status, which individual buses are delayed and by how much, the estimated arrival times of buses at stops, and more.

Winnipeg Transit's Open Data Web Service - API Overview

News Coverage

• Ottawa Citizen - Transpo opposes live data release on buses - by David Reevely (@davidreevely)
• Ottawa Citizen - Who's driving this bus? Not the public, apparently, as city cuts taxpayers off from right to information - by Joanne Chianello (@jchianello)
• Metro News Ottawa - OC Transpo recommends reneging on open data promise - by Jessica Smith
• 580 CFRA News - Councillors Grill Mercier over Open Data for OC Transpo GPS Info - by Stephanie Kinsella with Kristi Soble
• Open File Ottawa - Alain Mercier faces tough questions over OC Transpo data release - by Trevor Pritchard (Disclaimer: uses substantial amount of information from my previous blog post about the TC meeting)
• CBC News - OC Transpo bus data all about the money
• YourOttawaRegion.com - OC Transpo backtracks on bus GPS release - by Laura Mueller (@LauraEMueller)

It's important to understand the OC Transpo is... and isn't part of the city (that's part of what this battle is about).  The city itself has made great strides with open data, the short URL for the initiative is

ottawa.ca/opendata

and there is a dedicated open data lead on staff, Rob Giggey (@rob_giggey).

The council also has two strong defenders of the city's open data policy in Councillors Tim Tierney (@TimTierney) and Marianne Wilkinson (@Marianne4Kanata).  They really understand that open data brings new ways of working and new opportunities.

Ottawa's local open data advocacy group Open Data Ottawa (@opendataottawa & on Facebook at fb.com/opendataottawa ) has also been pushing hard on the realtime transit open data front.

If you're someone who is interested in this data (as a citizen and/or a developer) you can help by letting Councillors Tierney and Wilkinson know of your support (as well as telling Mayor Jim Watson @JimWatsonOttawa and your local councillor) and by letting Open Data Ottawa know how you would like to use the data and what we could do to help.  For what it's worth, you could also tell OC Transpo (@OC_Transpo) itself.  Good hashtags to use are #octranspo and #opendata

Although I've listed lots of Twitter contact IDs, you can of course use all the regular postal mail, email, telephone, and Facebook channels to let the city and OC Transpo know what you think.

Previously:
January 18, 2012  OC Transpo would rather have ads than open data

OC Transpo would rather have ads than open data

UPDATE 2012-02-20: OC Transpo is now required by Transit Commission to release GPS open data by March 22, 2012 ENDUPDATE

Ottawa Transit Commission just had its January 18, 2012 meeting and the OC Transpo representatives, including General Manager of Transit Services, Alain Mercier got a lot of questions when they came out with the assertion that Commission had to choose between completely in-house ad-supported applications from OC Transpo, and open data.

This is an absolutely classic bureaucratic organisation power play.  It's about control, not technology.  OC Transpo went as far as to assert that only they could "understand" the complexities of transit enough to produce "reliable" apps.  In other words, "this is a hard problem, so no one outside our organisation should bother us with trying to solve it".  This not only goes against the worldwide trend of opening up information and development in the understanding that "many eyes" are better, as well as the already demonstrated success of open data approaches in much larger jurisdictions, notably New York, Chicago and Boston.

OC Transpo is apparently saying "sure giant cities with millions of daily travelers on multiple modes of transit can trust developers with their open data, but our little bus-based system is way more difficult than that".

They are also making this strange argument that they "support" open data (as they have already publicly stated) but they don't "support" it so much that they actually want to do it, they'd rather have an exclusive ad contract.  A situation which, I might ad, puts the entire burden of internal IT, maintenance, and keeping up with ever-changing web and mobile trends on OC Transpo.  Do we really think being a software developer should be a core competency of our transit agency?

I've tried as best I could to capture and sort the discussion on Twitter.  Ottawa's media are skilled users of Twitter, I was fortunate to have so much to work with... but there was so much from so many fronts that I'm sure it is both confusing and missing tweets.

Thanks to

• @davidreevely
  and his livetweeting on @reevelylive
• @lauraemueller
• @jchianello
• @JonathanWilling

and thanks also to Councillors Wilkinson (@marianne4katana) & Tierney (@TimTierney) for defending Ottawa's open data policy and putting hard questions to OC Transpo.

Chicago has a Snow Portal - should Ottawa?

With a nice snowstorm underway in Ottawa on this Friday the 13th, it seems timely to have a look at the state of the art in online snow information.

Chicago got a pre-launch writeup of its "snow portal" in the Economist - Winter strikes Chicago: Shovel ready.  UPDATE 2012-01-14: And a launch writeup in the New York Times: Snow Site Lets Chicago See if Plows Are Really in a Rut.  ENDUPDATE

The site has now launched, with the simple URL http://chicagoshovels.org/

It includes realtime GPS positions for snowplows on a map, as well as the ability to "adopt" a sidewalk for shoveling (sharing your adoption over social media) and to volunteer to shovel snow.

I was unable, however, to find any plow-specific datasets in the Chicago Data Portal (there are datasets about snow route & winter parking restrictions, as well as snow alerts).

Ottawa is a pretty snowy city too, although so far we're not close to our near-record 432 cm of snow received in 2008.  (Yes, 4.32 metres of snow.)

Ottawa also has GPS-equipped plows.  What would you like to see in an Ottawa "snow portal"?  I'm not sure live positions of snowplows on a map is the most useful, although it's great as a demo.

Some ideas:

• Snow & accident & quality based directions.  "I want to get from X to Y, what routes are available for walking / driving / cycling that are cleared and safe, how recently were they cleared and when will they next be cleared?  What do conditions look like?  How busy / slow are they?"
  This could use e.g. data and images from Ottawa's existing sensors, traffic cameras & incidents reports, and crowdsourced condition reports from ottawabikingproblems.ca and ottawawalkingproblems.ca
• Since the snow & ice are not just problems, they're also recreational opportunities, you could expand this to include e.g. sledding hills, canal & outdoor rinks (including the Rink of Dreams) skating conditions, cross-country trails, ski hill conditions etc.

 A few resources that are already available:

• NCC - Rideau Canal skating conditions
• Ottawa Open Data Portal - Cycling network
• Ottawa Open Data Portal - Outdoor rinks (2009)
• Ottawa Open Data Portal - Sledding hills (2010)

I'd like to hear your ideas, or if you prefer Facebook, Open Data Ottawa has also asked this question.

Since snow is common across Canada and the northern US (as well as in northern Europe), is this something that the Civic Commons or the Canadian G4 group of cities could work on?

I also wonder about where we could get more data.  Now that we have "smart" parking meters with wireless payment capabilities, could every parking meter also be a local realtime weather sensor?

Twitter:

• Hashtag for Chicago snow portal is #chicagoshovels
• Chicago CTO: @ChicagoCTO
• Chicago Chief Data Officer (CDO): @ChicagoCDO
• Ottawa Open Data lead (city): @rob_giggey
• Ottawa Open Data (citizen advocacy): @opendataottawa
• I don't know if there is an equivalent Ottawa hashtag.  #ottsnow ?

Open Gov Partnership Brasilia meeting - who should represent Canadian civil society?

I don't know the answer to this, so I'm blogging my lack of knowledge in the hopes of feedback.  I had a brief discussion with Chris Moore about how to proceed.

In short, who should represent Canadian civil society at OGP Brasilia in April?

Canada is part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), and is developing its committments, with the country action plan indicated on the site as coming in March 2012 (the deadline for action plans is April 9, 2012).

http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/canada

The Canadian consultation about open government ends January 16, 2012.

The big OGP conference is in April 2012 in Brasilia.  42 new member countries will formally present their Action Plans at this meeting, with updates from the 8 founding members.

This Annual Conference will be April 16-18.  The page states

At this high-level OGP annual meeting, governments, civil society and the private sector will come together as new OGP participant countries deliver their final OGP action plans and formally endorse the OGP declaration of principles. The event will feature a series of high-level panels, small group sessions and an open government innovation exhibition focused on sharing best practices and continuing to drive innovation... 

In terms of civil society participation, the OGP announced that they could fund 1 civil society representative from each country, as well as offering 50-70 registration slots for self-funded civil society attendance.

OGP has resources to support the participation of up to one civil society representative from each of the 50 OGP participating countries. In addition, we have space for around 50-70 self-financed regional/international civil society representatives to participate.

The deadline to apply is February 6, 2012.  The OGP website has information on how to apply.

The OGP has said it wants local civil society to sort out who should go.

Wherever possible, OGP is seeking to have local civil society in each OGP country select their representative to the April 2012 conference themselves, rather than OGP picking the candidate. OGP will privilege applications from civil society representatives that can demonstrate an established track record of active engagement in the open government field, and the endorsement of fellow local civil society colleagues to attend the April 2012 [meeting]. 

In instances where local civil society cannot come to agreement on a common delegate to attend the April 2012 meeting, the OGP Support Unit will do its best to recommend the candidate from that country whose application demonstrates the most experience and strongest civil society networks in the open government field. 

I don't know of any national civil society organisations in Canada that speak about open government or e-government issues (there doesn't appear to be e.g. an Electronic Frontier Foundation equivalent - there is an Electronic Frontier Canada but its "Current Issues" are from 2004).

We are however rich in regional organisations, such as Montréal Ouvert and Open Data Ottawa.

So we as open government supporters have two challenges: who should go as the funded civil society representative, and who (if anyone) should represent Canada on a self-funded basis (along with possible fundraising).

As I stated at the outset, I don't know the answer to these questions.  I look forward to your ideas and feedback.

Twitter:

• @opengovpart - Open Government Partnership
• @_i_am_chris - Chris J Moore
• #OGP - general Open Government Partnership discussions (but noisy, many other topics on #OGP)
• #OGPBrasilia2012 - specifically about the upcoming conference
• I have been using #opengovca for Canadian-specific open government
• The Canadian Twitter consultation used #opengovchat and #parlonsgouvert

Previously:
December 18, 2011  open gov video - Minister Clement speaks at Public Sector Engage - Nov 22, 2011
December 15, 2011  Canadian #opengovchat - archives & hackfests

Wordclouds of open data responses to Canadian Open Government Consultation Week 2

Wordle wordclouds of the responses to Canadian Open Government Consultation question 1 "What could be done to make it easier for you to find and use government data provided online?"

I have made a Google Doc of the raw text itself.  All English answers up to 1356 Eastern on 2011-12-19 are included.

with the word "data" removed:

with the words "data" and "government" removed:

UPDATE 2011-12-20: The official Weekly Summary for Week 2 of the consultation is available.

Previously:
December 10, 2011  Wordclouds of open data responses to Canadian Open Government Consultation Week 1

open gov video - Minister Clement speaks at Public Sector Engage - Nov 22, 2011

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement gave a keynote address to open Public Sector Engage 2011.  He begins speaking at 03m15s in. The text of the speech is available, although he makes some asides that I believe are not in the text.

Opening remarks by the President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for FedNor, Tony Clement from PSEngage on Vimeo.

Key phrases:

• the importance of a collaborative approach
• technology as an important tool for change
• sometimes innovation means that you're going into areas that have not been gone through before
• Internet tools allow public sector employees to be more productive than ever before [my translation from the French]
• the public service must make sure it possesses the capacity and the expertise necessary to respond not only to today's demands, but also in 5, 10, 20 years [my translation from the French]
• competencies related to work, teams and collaboration will be necessary [my translation from the French]
• "I consider myself the Minister responsible for championing innovation in the government"
• the use of productivity-enhancing Internet-based tools & services that allow people to share information, engage in a dialogue, and collaborate
• open government in Canada: open data, open information, and open dialogue
• Canada has signaled its intent to join the international Open Government Partnership

Direct quote from Minister Clement:

Our government is encouraging the use of new Web 2.0 tools and technologies such as of course blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube... you name it. These tools help create a more modern, open and collaborative workplace and lead to more just-in-time communications with the public. I was recently before a Senate committee reviewing these issues and I said it makes no sense to have our employees--any employee--but certainly our new employees to have more access and more interaction in the coffee shop on their way to work than actually in their workplace. That is not a workplace of the future... I see a few heads nodding here so I think I've struck a little bit of a chord.

UPDATE 2011-12-19: You can watch his Senate committee testimony as well as read some of the quotes, linked from my posting Internet & social media - Official Languages examination - Senate Committee videos.

Previously:
November 23, 2011  Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government, social media [also from the PSE2011 event]

Wordclouds from English opengovchat - Dec 15, 2011

Wordle wordclouds from English #opengovchat on December 15, 2011 from the opening announcement to 18h45 (specifically from @Mod_TBS_SCT at 16:58:41 to @dlq 18:45:18).   Text extracted from a Twitter archive I made.  High-frequency words like opengovchat itself, as well as Canada and RT were removed.  In some wordclouds opengov was also removed.  It doesn't keep things with underscores together (e.g. @Mod_TBS_SCT or @TBS_Canada) which is why you get some partial Twitter user IDs.  Also in some Wordle removed the @ signs.

Previously:
December 15, 2011  Canadian #opengovchat - archives & hackfests

Canadian #opengovchat - archives & hackfests

Minister Clement's Twitter chat as part of the Canadian Open Government Consultation is complete.  It was first in French avec le mot-clic #parlonsgouvert and then in English with hashtag #opengovchat

I made an Archivist backup of the tweets in both languages, there are 1102 tweets in the archive, the snapshot was taken 18h45 Eastern on December 15, 2011.  Available in XML and Excel XLSX.

@kady did a CoverItLive liveblog that captured English tweets and Joseph @Thornley made a Storify of the English tweets.

The official archive will be up on December 16, 2011 at open.gc.ca

UPDATE 2011-12-16: Elizabeth Thompson of iPolitics did a very good Storify that sets out blocks of questions and responses.  Mark Blevis used some software to analyse the English chat.  And open.gc.ca published transcripts of the English and French discussions.  ENDUPDATE

UPDATE 2011-12-18: I made some wordclouds of the English-language discussion.  ENDUPDATE

I have done a short Storify below just on the Q&A about hackfests and contests (including one question from me).

learning about open data from our peers

We're only in the early days of national-scale open data across a broad spectrum of data sources.  Data.gov launched in May 2009.  (Historical sidebar: I created the Data.gov Wikipedia page in April 2009.)  Data.gov.uk had its big launch in January 2010.  So we're about two and a half years in.

Amazing things have happened.

Municipalities across Canada and around the world have open data sites.  The EC has announced a strategy for open data from the European Commission.  The World Bank has not only released open data at data.worldbank.org but is also providing support to emerging countries to help them in their open government and open data initiatives.

Communities are being formed.  The World Bank has launched an initiative called the Open Development Technology Alliance (OpenDTA) and organised an event "How Can Countries Start and Run Open Data Ecosystems?"

The three-hour event had a lot of great information, but I found one presentation in particular provided a great summary of the challenges of national open data.  Al Kags, the chair of the Kenya Open Data Taskforce, presented "6 [Building] Blocks of Open Data" (PowerPoint).

His list is

1. Leadership
2. Policy & Legal Framework
3. Technology & Apps
4. Capacity Building
5. Citizen Engagement
6. Innovation & Financing

In his deck, he has colour-coded these to ideas in his first slide, which is a mind map of the connections between the many pieces needed for a successful, sustainable open data initiative.

If I look at Canada, we are well positioned for the first two at a national level, but there is much work to be done on the other four building blocks.

One step would be developer and citizen outreach.  Data.gov has a /developers page which leads to discussion forums.  Data.gov.uk has a top-level item that links to their forum.  data.gouv.fr links to the Etalab group that created the site, where there is extensive explanatory information in the form of audio, video, documents, blog posts and presentations.  Data.worldbank.org has a /developers page and a pointer to their Google Groups discussion.  Kenya's open data site has a /developers page.  These all provide connection points that help build the ecosystem.

I also found it notable that not just this presentation but other speakers mentioned the value of different *Camps and Hackathons as ways of innovating and engaging with developers, citizens and civil society.

I encourage you to review Mr. Kags' presentation and think about how his lessons can apply to your municipal / provincial / national initiative.  This kind of thinking can also help when working on national Action Plans as part of the Open Government Partnership.  This kind of sharing also illustrates the tremendous opportunity we all have to learn from one another worldwide.  It was wonderful to see the energy, enthusiasm and insights from countries on different stages of this path towards more open and transparent government.

UPDATE 2011-12-16: I neglected  to mention that the meeting was ably chaired by Neil Fantom, and I have added his Twitter ID below.  ENDUPDATE

Many World Bank Links

Two things launched today:

1. Open Development Technology Alliance (OpenDTA.org)
2. Five discussion papers on Scribd, with commenting enabled

The speakers also pointed to the existing Open Data Innovations Group on LinkedIn (ODIN, Twitter hashtag #odin) as another place for discussion of these issues.

The video and liveblog coverage (which is available for replay using CoverItLive) are both up at live.worldbank.org

The video is in Windows Media format, it will play on a Mac using the free Flip4Mac components.

@WorldBankICT says the video will be up soon on the event webcast archives page (which is different from the live page): http://go.worldbank.org/77KTMO8B90

UPDATE 2011-12-15: Thanks to @livbarton in the comments and on Twitter for letting me know that the video is now up on the live page.  I have updated the text above accordingly.  ENDUPDATE

The event webpage itself, with some of the presentations, is http://go.worldbank.org/Y2PF8NAYM0 (I believe they will try to get more presentations up)

(I'm glad I have Twitter links otherwise I would probably never have found any of the above pages.)

I made an Archivist file of the #opendta tweets, in the archive I put together there are 611 tweets from the December 14, 2011 event and an additional 189 tweets related to the December 8, 2011 $35 Tablets event.  The archive is available in XML and Excel XLSX formats.

The World Bank has many organisation and individual Twitter accounts, some to follow related to this event are

• @worldbankdata
• @worldbankICT - the Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) sector at the World Bank
• @eDevelopment - the role of ICT in development
• @worldbankDM - World Bank Development Marketplace
• @worldbanklive and hashtag #wblive

• @tkb - Tariq Khokhar - Open Data Evangelist at the World Bank
• @alwalji - Aleem Walji - Practice Manager for Innovation and Technology at the World Bank Institute
• @neilfantom - Neil Fantom - Manager, Development Data Group, World Bank

And here are a couple of my tweets (@scilib, the QR Code), up on the World Bank's video stream for a moment (I was running it in a window in the corner of my screen, so it's a small grab that's not actually readable):

Wordclouds of open data responses to Canadian Open Government Consultation Week 1

Responses are available per-question, however unfortunately there is no text download; I had to scrape the responses from the site.  Here are wordclouds of the responses to the Open Data section, question 1 "What could be done to make it easier for you to find and use government data provided online?" as of the morning of December 10, 2011 (the first week of the consultation).  Note that the Open Information section has the same question for information rather than data "What could be done to make it easier for you to find government information online?"  It's not clear to me how many people will distinguish between finding data and finding information.

The raw text I scraped is available in a Google Doc.

The three images below (generated using wordle) are all the same text, just different arrangements.  I also did one with open data questions 1 & 3 combined, but the results weren't much different.  Since there's no tag/hashtag declared for the consultation, I just tagged them with the Twitter tag for the the upcoming discussion: opengovchat

Previously:
December 6, 2011  Public consultation on Canadian Open Government

Next:
December 19, 2011  Wordclouds of open data responses to Canadian Open Government Consultation Week 2

Public consultation on Canadian Open Government

Online consultation is up at http://www.open.gc.ca/consult/menu-eng.asp (en français http://www.ouvert.gc.ca/consult/menu-fra.asp ).

Deadline January 16, 2012.

Input to the online consultation can be by answering the questions and/or uploading a document.

Twitter chats will be hosted by President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement, but not on his account, on the new Treasury Board Secretariat accounts:

La discussion sur Twitter sur le gouvernement ouvert se déroulera le 15 décembre en français de 16 h à 16 h 45 (HNE) Compte: @SCT_Canada Mot-clic: #parlonsgouvert

The English tweet chat on Open Government will take place on December 15 from 5:00 to 5:45 p.m. EST.  Account: @TBS_Canada Hashtag: #opengovchat

The input will be used for both the government's internal planning as well as the action plan to be provided to the Open Government Partnership.

A final report on the findings from this consultation will be posted to this site in March 2012. Your input will help define areas of focus for the future of Canada’s Open Government initiative, including Canada’s Open Government action plan for the international Open Government Partnership.

from Open Government - open.gc.ca - Tell Us What You Think

UPDATE 2011-12-07: Comments from participants as well as weekly summaries will be posted to What We've Heard.  (If you have given Consent for Public Posting when you fill in the online consultation.)  In general each section allows up to 4000 characters for your response.  ENDUPDATE

There is also a press release about the consultation.

Canada's OGP Action Plan will be posted to http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/canada

The Open Government Partnership tweets at @opengovpart

UPDATE: The questions for the online consultation are available for you to preview before you answer.

Here are the Open Data questions:

Open Data - offers government data in more useful formats to enable citizens, the private sector and non-government organizations to leverage in innovative and value-added ways. This refers to Government of Canada data, which is information that is factual and usually statistical in nature, e.g. the number of people living in various regions of Canada. In this context, please respond to the following questions:

1. What could be done to make it easier for you to find and use government data provided online?

2. What types of open data sets would be of interest to you? Please pick up to three categories below and specify what data would be of interest to you.

   • Agriculture and Fisheries (e.g. farm operators’ income statistics, import/export data for dairy/meat/poultry)
   • Arts, Culture, and History (e.g. radio listening time, soldiers of First World War)
   • Demographics (e.g. consumer price index, university enrolment, Canada’s population)
   • Economics and Industry (e.g. gross domestic product, border wait times, home building starts)
   • Foreign Affairs and International assistance (e.g. immigration application statistics, permanent resident statistics)
   • Health and Safety (e.g. adverse reactions to health products, helmet use, immunization, number of police officers by province)
   • Labour (e.g. distribution of labour force, weekly earnings, hourly wages)
   • Nature and Environment (e.g. insecticide use, greenhouse gas emissions, Canadian tides)
   • Parks and Recreation (e.g. spectator sports, travel by Canadians
   • Public Finances and Expenditure (e.g. budgeted and in-year expenditures, government assets and liabilities, business prequalified to supply goods to government)
   • Science and Technology (e.g. domestic spending on science and technology, spills technology)
   • Other (please specify)
3. How would you use or manipulate this data?

Previously

November 23, 2011  Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government, social media
January 28, 2011  open government in Canada - submit your thoughts to Parliament

See Also

Digital Economy Strategy 2010 Public Consultation

• Consultation Paper
• What Was Said: Idea Forums
• What Was Said: Submissions

Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government, social media

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement spoke at PS Engage 2011, introducing new guidelines on social media and reiterating his enthusiasm for an innovative public service as part of an open government.

Collaboration

What does collaboration mean in the context of your work?

You can look at it any number of ways. But in order to have the greatest impact on an open and modern Public Service, collaboration must be about knowledge-sharing.

This means exchanging information, engaging in dialogue and working together. This is about enhancing our productivity which, in turn, makes Canada more competitive in the global economy.

Technology

Internet-based tools are allowing public servants to be more productive than ever, by sharing information and communicating with Canadians more effectively and efficiently than even a few years ago.

The potential for greater knowledge-sharing is there.

...

There is a tremendous opportunity now to take the tools of information technology and make government faster, more effective and more efficient. I believe the Public Service can enhance core government business such as program and service delivery, and even policy-making, with the right technology tools.

...

Let’s not underestimate technology’s profound effect on the workplace – in government and beyond.

Faster technology, a more connected world, wider networks and complex problems will make teamwork and collaboration required skills.  

Public servants will have to be savvy in their efforts to modernize their workplace. A modern workplace can have a tremendous positive impact on the overall performance of the Public Service and on a renewed organizational culture.

Innovation

As President of the Treasury Board, I consider myself the minister responsible for championing innovation within government. I want you to help me achieve the goal of a Public Service of the future.

Open Government and Open Data

In Canada, Open Government is being pursued through three main streams:

• Open Data, which is about offering government data in more useful and machine readable formats;
• Open Information, which is about proactively releasing information to Canadians on an ongoing basis; and
• Open Dialogue, which gives Canadians a greater chance to input into the work of government

As part of our leadership role in increasing transparency and accountability, Canada has signalled its intent to join the international Open Government Partnership. This important initiative was launched by the United States and Brazil and aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Social Media

The Government encourages the use of new Web 2.0 tools and technologies such as blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These tools help create a more modern, open and collaborative workplace and lead to more "just-in-time" communications with the public.

The [newly released] social media guidelines and policies will lead to improved interaction between Canadians and their government.

Web 2.0 tools and services provide additional means of interactive communications. They are the modern-day equivalents of "town halls" and are being used for various purposes including recruitment, emergency communications, service delivery, stakeholder outreach and as tools for collaboration and consultation.

Access to technology and the Internet

Clement also said, although it is not reflected in the online notes, that it makes no sense for employees to have more access to technology and the web at the coffeeshop than at work.  (My paraphrase was "makes no sense for employees to have more access to tech in the coffeshop than at work", @PSEngage paraphrased as "PS should not have better connectivity on their way to work than at the office".)

References & Further Info

Tony Clement tweets @TonyClementCPC

• PR for his announcement: Minister Clement highlights Open Government and new technology at PSEngage
• full text of his speech
• Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0
• Canada's open government site: http://open.gc.ca/
• Canada's commitment to the Open Government Partnership: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/canada

Thanks to @stourang for quickly tweeting links to newly-posted TBS pages.

The Minister was speaking at the Public Sector Engage (PS Engage) conference, hashtag #PSE2011.

UPDATE 2011-12-18: Video of the Minister speaking is now available.

Previously:

October 19, 2011  Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government at GTEC

Internet & social media - Official Languages examination - Senate Committee videos

The Senate Official Languages Committee is conducting an "Examination on the use of the Internet, new media and social media and the respect for Canadians’ language rights".

There have been two meetings so far and the next is scheduled for October 31, 2011.

The first meeting was on October 24, 2011.  Video and audio are available from ParlVU.  This meeting was with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

Video format is Window Media Video (WMV).  In order to view this video on a Mac you will need to install Flip4Mac WMV (free).

Transcripts have not been posted yet.

The second meeting was on October 27, 2011.  Video and audio are available from ParlVU.  This meeting was with Treasury Board Secretariat.  Notably, President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement.

The discussions included social media, the Digital Economy Strategy, and open data.

iPolitics.ca did an article based on the meeting and post-meeting interviews: Twitter, Facebook and social media ‘critical’ to government, Clement says.  Some quotes from the article:

"It would be quite bizarre if we’re trying to hire the best and the brightest young people with great vitality coming into the public service and they’re used to having tethered tablets and instant social media feedback and they can do half of their work at the coffee shop without any difficulty and then suddenly they are transformed into a public servant and none of that is available. That would be a bizarre situation." - Tony Clement

...

Corinne Charette, the government’s chief information officer, said 66 federal government institutions now have bilingual twitter accounts and official government communications are presented in both official languages.

It’s also popular with government employees, she said.

“Social media is an exciting development. It is widely requested by public servants..."

...

Clement told senators he is also pushing ahead with his open data initiative, to get more raw data out of institutions like Statistics Canada and make it public.
“The more data we can get out there, the more applications can be thought of by brilliant people, entrepreneurs.”

The next meeting will be on October 31, 2011.  Live video and audio will be available from ParlVU.  The meeting will again be with Treasury Board Secretariat.

Witnesses

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

- Corinne Charette, Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada

- Sue Lajoie, Senior Director, Community and Collaboration

- Ryan Androsoff, Senior Policy Advisor, Web 2.0, Community and Collaboration

- Marc Tremblay, Executive Director, Official Languages Centre of Excellence, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer

The Senate tweets at @SenateCA / @senatCA

Hashtags (as declared in the Senate video stream) are #senCA and #OLLO

Twitter accounts:

• Tony Clement @TonyClementCPC
• Ryan Androsoff @RyanAndrosoff
• iPolitics.ca @iPoliticsca
• Elizabeth Thompson @LizT1

Previously:
October 19, 2011 Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government at GTEC
January 28, 2011  open government in Canada [ETHI committee]

Here's a Storify of some of the Twitter traffic from October 27, 2011

Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government at GTEC

GTEC is a big annual IT tradeshow/conference for the federal government in Ottawa.

Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, did the opening keynote.

I like to tell people that when I was Industry minister, I was responsible for Canadian innovation. Now that I am President of the Treasury Board, I want to champion innovation in government.

...

a government that takes on the challenge to be a global leader in openness, transparency and security.  We have already taken some steps towards making that government a reality. But there is much more to do.

...

We can transform the way we do business by harnessing IT in new ways—including

• An understanding of the value of social media tools, as a way to bridge the distance between government and Canadians; and
• A further commitment to all three streams of Open Government—Open Data, Open Information and Open Dialogue.

Our Government is committed to offering Canadians greater opportunities to learn about and participate in government, in the economy, and in our democratic process. They will have greater access to data from federal departments and be able to find, download and use information they want more easily.

Our Open Government activities are detailed at www.open.gc.ca, where we describe actions to strengthen Open Data, Open Information and Open Dialogue. We will post information about new activities as they are undertaken.

As announced last March, starting in 2012, all departments and agencies subject to the Access to Information Act will be required to post summaries of completed information requests on their websites.

Canada will soon have the chance to step on the world stage as a leader in Open Government. We were one of the countries to signal our intent to participate in an international Open Government Partnership.

As part of our leadership role in increasing governmental transparency and accountability, Canada has joined the international Open Government Partnership. This important initiative was launched by the United States and Brazil and aims to secure concrete commitments from other governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Having joined the partnership, we will be delivering an Open Government plan informed by broad consultation by March 2012.

Being part of this partnership will offer Canada a means to connect internationally through its Open Government agenda. This will be an opportunity for Canadian companies to showcase their innovations.

In the long term, open governments and economies will pay dividends for our business sector. They also stand to have an impact on Canadian society in general: increasing transparency, accountability and citizen engagement.

from Notes for remarks by the President of the Treasury Board - Speech for GTEC 2011 Canada's Government Technology Event - October 18, 2011

Notable is his specific committment to an Open Government plan for Canada by March 2012.

This is a reiteration of our existing commitment to the Open Government Partnership - the country page for Canada has a letter of intent from Minister Baird and the text "Country Action Plan coming in March 2012".

Tony Clement tweets at @TonyClementCPC

The Open Government Partnership is @opengovpart

and GTEC is on Twitter @GTEC and hashtag #gtec

Here is a Storify (my tweets along with a couple from Tony Clement):

Previously:
June 3, 2011  open data in 2011 Canadian Speech from the Throne
June 1, 2011  open data statement in Canadian Digital Economy Strategy update
May 20, 2011  open data supported by Treasury President Clement

Québec - Consultation publique Web 2.0

The Province of Quebec has an online consultation about Web 2.0

Comment le gouvernement du Québec peut-il exploiter le Web 2.0 – réseautage social, sites wiki, applications composites (mashups), blogues – pour améliorer la qualité des services aux citoyens et son efficacité interne?

http://www.consultationgautrinweb2.gouv.qc.ca/

There's also tweeting from @GautrinWeb2 and use of the hashtag #GautrinWeb2

I encourage you to provide your opinions and votes in their ideas market (they're using the IdeaScale platform).

However, I think there are a lot of issues with these kind of broad-based open-ended ideas market public consultations.  In general the participation level is low and the ideas are all over the map. 

I am strongly in favour of government finding new ways to open up to citizens, I just think we have to be mindful about the types of consultations and technologies we use, and our expectations for them.

With low participation levels, it's easy to game the system (that is, for a particular interest group to get their ideas voted to the top).  You need to get into the thousands or tens of thousands of users for an open consultation before someone can sway the results just by reaching out to the members of their personal social network or broader professional networks.

These are the current response levels for the consultation, running since July 25, 2011:

51 idées soumises, 192 commentaires, 519 votes, 181 utilisateurs

UK gov consults public on open data

How should government become even more open? Consultations on #opendata and public data corporation http://bit.ly/oMqsfC #openuk

tweet from @cabinetofficeuk

Francis Maude said: 

"The UK Government is determined to have the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world. We demonstrated that ambition recently through the Prime Minister’s open letter.  But we want to embed this approach throughout the public service and we want to hear from people about how they think we should do this”.

Cabinet Office - How should Government become even more open?

The two consultations are

• Making Open Data Real: A Public Consultation - also see http://data.gov.uk/opendataconsultation
• Consultation on Data Policy for a Public Data Corporation

deadline is October 27, 2011

The open data consultation also has a paper covering the major issues

We are now taking the concept of 'Open Data' and exploring an approach that could make this the operating principle of our public services. In the modern age, accessibility of low cost Information and Communications Technology (ICT), including cloud computing and high levels of ICT literacy mean that it is relatively low cost for governments to share the 'by-products' of public services with everyone.

https://update.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/open-data-consultation.pdf

Previously:

July 7, 2011  update on open data in the United Kingdom

open data from the Province of British Columbia

site is live

http://data.gov.bc.ca/

Blog at http://blog.data.gov.bc.ca/ (under "Connect" on the main page).

Twitter account @Data_BC

Thoughts from David Eaves

the license is good. Obviously my preference would be for everything to be unlicensed and in the public domain as it is in the United States. Short of that however, the most progressive license out there is the UK Government’s Open Government License for Public Sector Information. Happily the BC government has essentially copied it.

eaves.ca - Province of BC launches Open Data Catalog: What works - July 19, 2011

Vancouver Sun data journalist Chad Skelton has asked for the public to help him find datasets of interest

@chadskelton Looking for juicy datasets on new B.C. #OpenData site. If you find one, please let me know
http://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/93356790091223040

BC Premier Christy Clark did a video about the site and about open government in general.