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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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?…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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?…
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…
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…
Earlier this week the Canadian Federal Government launched its consultation process on Open Government. This is an opportunity for citizens to comment and make suggestions around what data the federal…
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…