data.gc.ca - consultation on next version of open data portal

Some thoughts from the Canadian public service about Canada's national open data, specifically as delivered through the data.gc.ca portal

... a gigantic level of excitement around the potential for pan-Canadian federated open data.  So the work that we do to drive interoperability between open data activities of British Columbia, or Edmonton, or the federal government, recognizing the fact that users and developers are going to want to combine and integrate data from multiple sources... that really gets us going.  All of the possibilities around the... re-thinking around how we make an open data portal that does a lot more than the original open data portal (which was largely experimental at the beginning and was always a pilot), moving that idea forward, specifically around user engagement.

Those of you who have used data.gc.ca to date will know that it doesn't come with a lot of tools for user engagement.  Our hope--coming out of events like this one today--is to help drive the design and delivery of that portal to maximize its functions in terms of engaging the users, or bringing users together with each other, in order to facilitate greater use, greater uptake of the open data.

And just from a third point... this idea that we are driven to deliver open data to developers to help with the development of apps--interesting, innovative ideas that will drive the kind of time efficiency that Ray mentioned earlier as well.  But we do have to remember to think about the citizens.  So the capacity for the platform or any government department or jurisdiction to ensure that the data serves the citizens (who may not be as technologically advanced) is also very important to us, and that gets us very excited about things like visualizations and interactive tools that will allow the citizens to see data in different ways that mean something to them.

Stephen Walker, CIO Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat

from video Innovating with Open Data.

You can reach Stephen, who is also the contact point for Canada's Open Government Partnership country committments, at

[email protected]

(613) 946-3052

You can see previous postings in category opengovca

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