Hi,
I'm a researcher at Selkirk College in BC and I am working on a SSHRC funded project entitled "Open Data for Open Government in Rural BC" Would you be willing to share the survey with me so that I can determine if it would be useful to use in our research? Thanks,
Terri
Open Data Across Canada – A Snapshot
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February 4, 2016
“Open data is data that can be freely used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose.” – Open Knowledge Foundation
The governments of Alberta, British Columbia and Canada conducted a survey on open data of all Canadian provinces and territories in 2015. Open data programs have become increasingly popular across the country, and we wanted to have a better picture of who is active in Canada, what open data programs look like, and what impact they’re having.
Check out this infographic for a snapshot of the results.
Who has open data?
As recently as five years ago, no one in Canada had an open data portal. Today:
- Half of Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial jurisdictions have open data portals and programs (7 out of 14 – including Canada, BC, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Yukon).
- Canada’s open data portals are small but mighty: They have 10 or fewer staff, budgets of $500,000 or less, and have been running for 5 years or less, but almost 250,000 datasets are available for download.
- Nova Scotia is developing its portal over the coming year.
- All six remaining jurisdictions are studying whether to create open data portals.
What are open data principles?
All of the active jurisdictions also agreed that open data portals should be built according to three key principles:
- Government data should be easy to reuse and available in open formats.
- Government data should be easily discoverable, and Canadians should be able to find all open data via any portal.
- Governments should engage with citizens, especially to prioritize data for release.
Six of the active jurisdictions use an open licence, which allows people to freely reuse any of the information.
Who’s using open data?
The survey found that there’s a strong market for open data. In all seven active jurisdictions, the number one type of feedback is a request for more data.
Open data is being requested by individuals, businesses, and governments equally. This shows that open data is useful for a broad range of groups.
What data are people looking for?
The key feature of any open data portal is the data itself.
A dataset is a collection of interrelated data records organized in a specific way in a computer-readable medium.
The most downloaded dataset types fall into three general categories:
Better services
- Baby names
- Education
- Public transit
- Scientific research data
- Health
Better transparency
- Budget/financial
- Procurement/contracts
- Elected official expenditures
- Crime and Justice
- Civil service expenditures
Innovative business
- Geographical/Geospatial
- Natural Resources
- Environment Employment/labour
- Demographics
- Socioeconomics statistics
How are people using the data?
Data is being used to create apps and services to solve problems, and to save time and money. Real-time transit info, career path tools, and healthy food locators are just some of the types of products that have resulted from reusing open data. Similar services developed through our Canadian Open Data Experience (CODE) appathon include:
- High School Down, Where Next? helps young Canadians make decisions about their career path based on geography, potential income, tuition cost and other factors.
- Farm Canada lets farmers look up commodity prices, buy and sell equipment, and receive market updates.
Here are a few other examples of apps being developed in Canada:
- RerouteMe helps commuters avoid construction, accidents and traffic congestion, using traffic and mapping data.
- MapYourProperty helps the land development and real estate industry use land planning data and determine property potential.
What’s next for open data in Canada?
Survey respondents also said they want to create common standards, explore how to make it easier for people to find data from multiple government sources, and study how best to implement open data programs. We’ll work through Open Data Canada, our federal-provincial-territorial-municipal forum, to make progress on these issues.
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Hi Terri, thank you for your comment.
We recommend you email us at open-ouvert@tbs-sct.gc.ca to have your request addressed more directly.
Momin, Open Government team.
thank you for share this snapshot
Thank you for prioritizing such an important initiative! Please continue on doing the hard work you do. Open Data Canada is an extremely useful resource for the betterment of our country.
I would like to access data to help me teach grade 8 Math. I am a teacher near Whitby Ontario.
Open Data and access to it has been around for decades (phone books, business directories, maps, libraries, census', forum, indexes, etc.)... One thing that has changed more recently, is the terminology "open data" (before it was called, information, records, directories, indexes, collections... sometimes they were digital, sometimes they were print - often in both), and more collaboration to make it available, and in easier formats to ingest.
It's very dangerous to insinuate that open data didn't exist prior to 2011 in Canada, at any level... Many many Canadians, especially those serving in public service have poured years of their lives collecting, and making available data of all sorts and kinds in many jurisdictions domestically, and internationally. Digitally, and in print.
It's fantastic that there appear to be more, and better portals for locating "open data", and I'm sure we all look forward to more of it, and greater access, and reach. What a blessing it is that more people are being vocal about wanting access to this data, new and historical. It's great! ... but come on... it's been around for way more than 5 years... - History Lesson
I was very interested in the Farm Canada open data portal, and used the link to access it. Unfortunately, at least two pages give a 101 File Not Found error. The rest of the pages appear to have placeholder content only, nothing that allows access to data. Is this still being developed, and if so, when will it have working functionality?
Kate - thanks for your comment. Farm Canada is not part of the open.canada.ca portal - I would suggest that you contact Adam Michaleski, one of the app developers, at adam3039@gmail.com. I'm sure he can provide answers to your questions.
Karin - the open-ouvert team
It's very disingenuous to say that "As recently as five years ago, no one in Canada had an open data portal". Perhaps our definitions of "open data" differ, but there have been Federal sites like Geogratis and GeoBase that have around much longer than 5 years. It is absolutely exciting to see the interest and development around making data freely available, but this is not a new and novel concept, it undermines the perseverance and determination of those that have gone before you.
Thank you Joe. We flagged that to add to our Open Government Across Canada page: http://open.canada.ca/en/maps/open-data-canada
Kent on behalf of the open government team
I think that open data portals should be easily discoverable, and Canadians should be able to find all open data via any portal. How to find data from multiple government sources?
Grace
Hi Grace,
We list all Canadian data portals we know about here: http://open.canada.ca/en/maps/open-data-canada
Multiple jurisdictions (including the Government of Canada) are working together to explore the possibility of federated data - that is, being able to search multiple data sources from one place. If you'd like updates, you can join our mailing list here: http://open.canada.ca/en/forms/receive-open-government-email-form
Thank you,
Kent on behalf of the open government team
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