The idea of open data has been around for a while. In government, it means that government would make information like census data, statistics, licensing information easily and freely available for anyone to use, free of charge and any restrictions. It’s a way of sparking creativity, crowd-sourcing new information, and
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eaves.ca: Canada’s Draft Open Government Plan — The Promise and Problems Reviewed
Backdrop On Friday the Canadian Government released its draft national action plan. Although not mentioned overtly in the document, these plans are mandated by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), in which member countries must draft National Action …
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canadians love for census Star Op-Ed
I’ve a small piece in the Toronto Star today about the census, Canadians reaction to it, and what it says about Canada. You can find it here: Canadians love for census says a lot about who we are.
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: We need open data to fight climate change
Apocalyptic floods. Historic droughts. Food insecurity and mass migration. This is the future that faces us all if world leaders fail to agree and enforce a strong and binding deal to tackle climate change this week in Paris.
The post We need open data…
eaves.ca: Canada’s Opaque Transparency – An Open Data Failure
Yesterday, at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) Canada Minister of Natural Resource, Joe Oliver, announced with great fanfare a new initiative to compel mining companies to disclose payments of over $100,000′s to foreign and domestic governments. On the surface this looks like a win for transparency, particularly for
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day 2014 – Five Fun Events Around the World
With over 110 Events happening world wide it is impossible to talk about every Open Data Day event. But looking almost every event on the wiki I’ve been deeply moved and inspired by the various efforts, goals and aspirations of the people who have organized these events. In order to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day in 110 cities Worldwide! Here’s 6 things to do
It is, as always, with a fair amount of wonder that I watch the open data day wiki grow each year. This year there are 100 self organized events taking place worldwide (at last count). It is an impressive number. This includes events in places like Buenos Aires (which is
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day in Vancouver – Registration is live
I’m happy to share that this February 22nd there will be an Open Data Day event in Vancouver. The details are as follows: The event will take place at Domain7 – who have kindly volunteered their space – on Saturday, February 22, from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM. We have
Continue readingeaves.ca: The dangerous mystique of the “open data” business
I’m frequently asked by people about how they can start an “open data business.” Let me first say that I love that the question gets asked. I love that people are interested in Open Data. I love that people want to learn more, they want to play, they want to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Advice for Librarian Coders
For the purposes of this post we will ignore how remarkably badass sounding the word librarian becomes when “coder” is added to the end of it. I recently had a librarian who had just picked up some coding skills email me and ask how they could get into Open Data
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day Google+ Hang Out
With just about a month to go until Open Data Day things are going well. There are quite a few cities that have been added to the open data day wiki. This year we thought we would try something new. On January 21st we are going to host a Get Ready For
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data for Development Challenge on Jan 27-28
This just came across my email via Michael Roberts who has been doing great work in this space. Open Data for Development Challenge January 27–28, 2014 — Montreal, Canada Do you want to share your creative ideas and cutting-edge expertise, and make a difference in the world? Do you want
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: Which data will be lost in Canada.ca consolidation?
TweetAnyone who has spent even a minimal amount of time searching for information on government websites will understand what complicated labyrinths they can sometimes be. So, news that the Government of Canada is attempting to improve Canadians’ online experience should be positive, right? Earlier this year, the British Columbia Freedom
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day 2014 is Coming Feb 22 – Time to Join the Fun!
So, with much help from various community members (who reminded me that we need to get this rolling – looking at you Heather Leson), I pleased to say we are starting to gear up for Open Data Day 2014 on February 22nd, 2014. From its humble beginnings of a conversation between
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Importance of Open Data Critiques – thoughts and context
Over at the Programmable City website Rob Kitchin has a thoughtful blog post on open data critiques. It is very much worth reading and wider discussion. Specifically, there are two competing things worth noting. First, it is important for the open data community – and advocates in particular – to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Mozillians: Announcing Community Metrics DashboardCon – January 21, 2014
Please read background below for more info. Here’s the skinny. What A one day mini-conference, held (tentatively) in Vancouver on January 14th San Francisco on January 21st and 22nd, 2014 (remote participating possible) for Mozillians about community metrics and dashboards. Update: Apologies for the change of date and location, this event
Continue readingopenalex: ecoHackMTL: Totally Awesome!
Almost 100 participants, 12 projects, 4 specially proposed challenges, 6 newly released data sets and lots of happy faces at the end of the day.
A huge thank-you to everyone who came out for the inaugural ecoHack in Montréal last weekend!
écoHackMTL set out to bring together programmers, community activists, and urban environmentalists to design digital tools that allow for deeper citizen engagement with urban spaces and urban sustainability.
It grew out of the fact that the amazing energy of the hackathon and opendata scenes had yet to be effectively applied to building greener cities. (Not just in Montreal, but anywhere.)
Last Saturday’s day long hackathon was a first attempt at bringing urban sustainability into the digital age. It was also the culmination of 6 months spent hosting little events around the city to build bridges between developers, environmentalists, planners, and anyone else who was interested in building a greener city.
It was fun, but time consuming work. Developers learned about urban sustainability. Environmental advocates and activists learned about programming and data. And everyone went away with enough of a shared language to collaborate on some amazing projects.
Check out ecohackmtl.sparkboard.com to see the prototypes that came out of the day. While you are there you can also vote for your favourites. If you are in Montreal, stay tuned for the details of our November 14 wrap-party where we will announce the winners of the “Participants Choice” and “Public Choice” awards.
I’d also like to send out a heartfelt thank-you to all to the volunteers and advisory committee members who made the event possible. The City of Montreal was supportive from very early on and released a dozen new datasets for the day of the event. And Siemens Canada our principal sponsor.
Continue readingopenalex: ecoHackMTL: Totally Awesome!
Almost 100 participants, 12 projects, 4 specially proposed challenges, 6 newly released data sets and lots of happy faces at the end of the day. A huge thank-you to everyone who came out for the inaugural ecoHack in Montréal last weekend! écoHackMTL set out to bring together programmers, community activists,
Continue readingopenalex: ecoHackMTL: Totally Awesome!
Almost 100 participants, 12 projects, 4 specially proposed challenges, 6 newly released data sets and lots of happy faces at the end of the day. A huge thank-you to everyone who came out for the inaugural ecoHack in Montréal last weekend! écoHackMTL set out to bring together programmers, community activists,
Continue readingeaves.ca: OGP Rules of the Game – Tactical Mistake or Strategic Necessity?
The other week Martin Tisne, the UK Policy Director at the Omidyar Network, as well as one of the key architects of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), posted a blog post expressing concern that Civil Society participants have misunderstood the OGP. Specifically Tisne is concerned that by focusing on entrance
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