A couple of weeks ago I was asked by one of the city’s near me to sit on an advisory board around the creation of their Digital Government strategy. For me the meeting was good since I felt that a cohort of us on the advisory board were really pushing the city into a place […]
Continue readingTag: open data
eaves.ca: On Being Misquoted – Access Info Europe and Freedominfo.org
I’ve just been alerted to a new post out on Freedominfo.org has quotes of mine that are used in way that is deeply disappointing. It’s never fund to see your ideas misused to make it appear that you are against something that you deeply support. The most disappointing misquote comes
Continue readingeaves.ca: Lies, Damned Lies, and Open Data
I have an article titles Lies, Damn Lies and Open Data in Slate Magazine as part of their Future Tense series. Here, for me, is the core point: On the surface, the open data movement was about who could access and use government data. It rested on the idea that
Continue readingeaves.ca: Lying with Maps: How Enbridge is Misleading the Public in its Ads
The Ottawa Citizen has a great story today about an advert by Enbridge (the company proposing to build a oil pipeline across British Columbia) that includes a “broadly representational” map that shows prospective supertankers steaming up an unobstructed Douglas Channel channel on their way to and from Kitimat – the
Continue readingeaves.ca: How Government should interact with Developers, Data Geeks and Analysts
Below is a screen shot from the Opendatabc google group from about two months ago. I meant to blog about this earlier but life has been in the way. For me, this is a prefect example of how many people in the data/developer/policy world probably would like to interact with
Continue readingeaves.ca: What do I think of the Canadian Senate?
Read Jennifer Ditchburn in the Globe and Mail – Senate stubborn on making information about chamber more accessible. It is laughable about how hard the Canadian Senate makes it to access information about it. The lower house – which has made good progress in the last few years on this
Continue readingeaves.ca: Is Civic Hacking Becoming ‘Our Pieces, Loosely Joined?’
I’ve got a piece up over on the WeGov blog at TechPresident – Is Civic Hacking Becoming ‘Our Pieces, Loosely Joined?‘ Juicy bit: There is however, a larger issue that this press release raises. So far, it appears that the spirit of re-use among the big players, like MySociety and
Continue readingeaves.ca: Reviewing Access to Information Legislation
Just got informed – via the CivicAccess mailing list – that Canada’s Access to Information Commissioner is planning to review Canada’s Access to Information legislation (full story here at the Vancouver Sun). This is great news. Canada has long trumpeted its Access to Information Legislation as world leading. This was
Continue readingeaves.ca: Unstructured Thinking on Open Data: A response to Tom Slee
apologies for any typos, I’d like to look this over more, but I’ve got to get to other work. Tom Slee has a very well written blog post with a critical perspective of open data. I encourage you to go and read it – but also to dive into the
Continue readingeaves.ca: Help OpenNorth Raise 10K to Improve Democracy and Engagement thru Tech
Some of you may know that I sit on the board of directors for OpenNorth – a cool little non-profit that is building tools for citizens, governments and journalists to improve participation and, sometimes, just make it a little bit easier to be a citizen. Here’s great example of a
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Postal Codes: A Public Response to Canada Post on how they undermine the public good
Earlier this week the Ottawa Citizen ran a story in which I’m quoted about a fight between Treasury Board and Canada Post officials over making postal code data open. Treasury Board officials would love to add it to data.gc.ca while Canada post officials are, to put it mildly, deeply opposed.
Continue readingeaves.ca: The US Government’s Digital Strategy: The New Benchmark and Some Lessons
Last week the White House launched its new roadmap for digital government. This included the publication of Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People (PDF version), the issuing of a Presidential directive and the announcement of White House Innovation Fellows. In other words, it
Continue readingeaves.ca: Real Estate as Platform: Canadian Real Estate Industry looking for developers
As some readers know, I’ve been asked from time to time by members of the real estate industry to comment on the future of their industry, how technology might impact it and how open data (both the government variety, and the trend by regulators to make the industry’s data more
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Movement is a Joke?
Yesterday, Tom Slee wrote a blog post called “Why the ‘Open Data Movement’ is a Joke,” which – and I say this as a Canadian who understands the context in which Slee is writing – is filled with valid complaints about our government, but which I feel paints a flawed
Continue readingeaves.ca: Public Policy: The Big Opportunity For Health Record Data
A few weeks ago Colin Hansen – a politician in the governing party in British Columbia (BC) – penned an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun entitled Unlocking our data to save lives. It’s a paper both the current government and opposition should read, as it is filled with some very
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canada Post’s War on the 21st Century, Innovation & Productivity
The other week Canada Post announced it was suing Geocoder.ca – an alternative provider of postal code data. It’s a depressing statement on the status of the digital economy in Canada for a variety of reasons. The three that stand out are: 1) The Canadian Government has launched an open
Continue readingeaves.ca: NASA space hackathon (in Vancouver) this weekend
So, many, many things I’d like to blog upon at the moment. I’m in Brasilia at the Open Government Partnership meeting, so obviously lots to talk about there, and, of course, Canada Post has completely lost it and is suing a company over postal code data but it’s been twenty
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government: A Review
The other day the Canadian Government published its Action Plan on Open Government, a high level document that both lays out the Government’s goals on this file as well as fulfill its pledge to create tangible goals as part of its participation in next week’s Open Government Partnership 2012 annual
Continue readingeaves.ca: Using BHAG’s to Change Organziations: A Management, Open Data & Government Mashup
I’m a big believer in the ancillary benefits of a single big goal. Set a goal that has one clear objective, but as a result a bunch of other things have to change as well. So one of my favourite Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG) for an organization is to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Next Generation Open Data: Personal Data Access
This post matters. If you’re involved in the healthcare sector or a energy utility, please read. Background This Monday I had the pleasure of being in Mexico City for the OECD’s High Level Meeting on e-Government. CIO’s from a number of countries were present – including Australia, Canada, the UK
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