I Stand for My Rights & Privacy: The Coming Online Police State
“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” This was Mr. Toews’s, the Minister of Justice, counterattack to a question in the house regarding concerns of letting…
David Eaves
The Exciting Launch of Represent.ca and What It Says About Open Data in Canada
Last week a group of volunteer programs from across Canada announced the launch of Represent.ca – a website that tries to map all of Canada’s boundaries. Confused? Don’t be. It’s…
Requests for Endorsements: My Application to Attend The Open Government Partnership
Dear friends, Below (first in english then in a rough french translation – my spoken is much better than my written so I’ve relied on Google translate) is my application…
Use The Economist’s Data to Find the Best City in the World
Yesterday The Economist Intelligence Unit and Buzzdata launched a $10,000 contest to help enhance The Economist’s “Best city in the world” index. Yes. It’s a data and visualization competition to…
Adapting KUALI financials for cities: Marin County is looking for Partners
Readers of my blog will be familiar Kuali – the coalition of universities that co-create a suite software core to their operations – as I’ve blogged about several times and…
Like me, Canadians prefer Patriots over Giants this sunday (or so says Google data)
After a rough bought of food poisoning… I’m back. For some random reasons I got a PR notice from the people at APEX communications in Toronto who Google insights to…
Algorithmic Regulation Spreading Across Government?
I was very, very excited to learn that the City of Vancouver is exploring implementing a program started in San Francisco in which “smart” parking meters adjust their price to…
Public Servants Self-Organizing for Efficiency (and sanity) – Collaborative Management Day
Most of the time, when I engage with or speak to federal public servants, they are among the most eager to find ways to work around the bureaucracy in which…
My Canadian Open Government Consultation Submission
Attached below is my submission to the Open Government Consultation conducted by Treasury Board over the last couple of weeks. There appear to be a remarkable number of submission that…
Open Data in BC – Good & Bad Examples from Bikes to Libraries
Some small examples of open data use and public servants who do and don’t understand open data from the Province of British Columbia to the City of Vancouver. Open Libraries?…
Oh, the hypocrisy… Oilsands, EthicalOil.org and Foreign Funding
Wow. Talk about the hypocrisy. So EthicalOil.org which has been leading the charge about how foreign money is influencing environmental groups and the regulatory process. But… apparently it refuses to…
Ethical Oil and the Northern Gateway Pipeline Process
This piece is cross-posted from the Toronto Star’s Op-Ed Page. This week the “ethical oil” argument adopted by the federal government took an interesting twist. While billions from China pour…
What I’m Digesting: Good Reads from the First Week of January
Government Procurement is Broken: Example #5,294,702 or “The Government’s $200,000 Useless Android Application” by Rich Jones This post is actually a few months old, but I stumbled on it again…
Solving the Common Standards problem in the Open Data Space
Last year during my Open Government Data Camp keynote speech on The State of Open Data 2011 I mentioned how I thought the central challenge for open data was shifting…
Open Government Advocacy: The Danger of Letting Narrative Trump Fact
So I loath making this the first post of the new year, but here we go. Today Canada.com published a story “Tony Clement vows innovative new open government, but critics…
When Social Media Experts Don’t Look Beyond Social Media: GoDaddy, Mashable and Kernel
This week, while enjoying a little down time, I’ve been peeking online from time to time to see what has been going on with the Go Daddy boycott. For those…
The Future of Academic Research
Yesterday, Nature – one of the worlds premier scientific journals recognized University of British Columbia scientist Rosie Redfield as one of the top 10 science newsmakers of 2011. The reason?…
Why is Finding a Post Box so Hard?
Sometimes it is the small things that show how government just gets it all so wrong. Last Thursday The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac has a little bit on the US…
Not Brain Candy: A Review of The Information Diet by Clay Johnson
My body no longer kills me when I come back from the gym. However, I had a moment of total humiliation today: theoretically my ideal body weight is 172 pounds…
Two Reasons I love blogging: Helping out great communities
Non profits and governments… this is how open source works: If someone is doing something that is of value to you, help make it better. There have been two great…