Science Library Pad

Human Library at Ottawa Public Library

On January 28, 2012 the Ottawa Public Library will provide a range of people that can be "checked out" of the library for 20 minutes.  Different branches have different people.  There is also a partnership with the CBC and the War Museum.  A few examples:

At the War Museum

No. 2 Special Wireless –Second World War

Born in Lachine, Québec and of Russian descent, Hyman Yanofsky joined the Canadian army to fight Hitler. His job was to intercept messages from the enemy as he travelled through Europe.

At the Stittsville branch

UPDATE

OC Transpo driver

When Jim Smith started out with OC Transpo, he drove the early morning shift. After more than three decades on the job, as he prepares for retirement, he's back picking up passengers on those first runs of the day.

ENDUPDATE

At the Nepean Centrepointe Branch

Blind Octogenarian

A doctor diagnosed Theresa Dupuis with acute glaucoma just before Christmas 1990. He told her she'd go blind within 10 years. Theresa now considers her vision loss as a gift and swears she wouldn't take her sight back if offered to her. The octogenarian loves cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing, kayaking, yoga and meditation.

CBC TV News Anchor

Adrian Harewood is the co-host of CBC News Ottawa Monday to Friday starting at 5 p.m, and host of the late night news each weeknight at 10:55 p.m. He grew up in Ottawa. Adrian first got the broadcasting bug when he volunteered at campus stations CHUO and CKCU here. He has filled in as host on such well-known programs as As It Happens and Sounds Like Canada.

Ottawa Public Library - Human Library

Saturday, January 28, 2012 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Registration opens at 10:45 a.m.

The library tweets at @opl_bpo  The War Museum is on Twitter @CanWarMuseum

The hashtag is #HLott

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