Post Tagged with: "open data"

Open Government: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Ethics, Accountability & Privacy

Last week I had the opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Ethics, Accountability & Privacy to discuss open government. My comments – and many of the questions that followed – focused on crown copyright and access to information.  The committee hearing stream can be found here.  My opening statement is posted below.

Appearance before the Standing Committee on Ethics, Accountability & Privacy
December 9, 2010

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December 13, 2010 8 comments Committees, News

U.S. Government Has Posted 274,000 Data in 18 Months

The NY Times runs an interview with U.S. Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kunra, who notes that the open government effort to make data sets publicly available has grown from 47 data sets in May 2009 to 274,000 today.

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November 8, 2010 Comments are Disabled News

Enabling Access to Public Sector Information

Last week’s focus on open access, including the Liberal commitment to open government, brings to mind key issues involving access to public sector information.  My colleague Elizabeth Judge tackles the issue in her chapter in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright”: Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda. Judge provides a […]

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October 26, 2010 6 comments News

Liberals To Launch Major Open Government Policy Initiative

For months, Canadians have been pointing with envy to open data/open government initiatives in the U.S., U.K., and Australia as those countries push forward with strong commitments to open data and Canada sits quietly on the sidelines.  While the federal government has been very slow to move, sources say that the opposition Liberal Party will be unveiling its commitment to open government today. [update: policy posted]  The four part commitment will include:

  • A commitment to make as many government datasets as possible available to the public online free of charge at opendata.gc.ca in an open and searchable format, starting with Statistics Canada data, including data from the long-form census;
  • A commitment to post all Access to Information requests, responses, and response times online at accesstoinformation.gc.ca
  • A commitment to make information on all government grants, contributions and contracts available through a searchable, online database at accountablespending.gc.ca
  • A commitment to immediately restore the long-form census

The open government/open data commitment is particularly noteworthy since it will apparently include a direction to all federal departments and agencies to adopt an open government principle where the default position is to provide information to the public. The plans for access to information would also be enormously helpful, including restoring the CAIRS database and following the recent UK lead by making all documents released under ATI available online.

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October 21, 2010 15 comments News

NY Times on The Power of Open Data

The NY Times has an interesting article on the power of open data, noting progress on Alzheimer’s that is a function of scientists worldwide openly sharing data.

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August 16, 2010 2 comments News