The Real News Story about the Relaunch of data.gc.ca
As many of my open data friends know, yesterday the government launched its new open data portal to great fanfare. While there is much to talk about there – something…
Commentary
Policy-Making in a Big Data World
For those interested I appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin the other week talking about Big Data and policy making. There was a good discussion with a cast of…
The Value of Open Data – Don’t Measure Growth, Measure Destruction
Alexander Howard – who, in my mind, is the best guy covering the Gov 2.0 space – pinged me the other night to ask “What’s the best evidence of open…
Canada Post and the War on Open Data, Innovation & Common Sense (continued, sadly)
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog post on Canada Post’s War on the 21st Century, Innovation & Productivity. In it I highlighted how Canada Post launched a…
How Car2Go ruins Car2Go
So let me start by saying, in theory, I LOVE Car2Go. The service has helped prevent me from buying a car and has been indispensable in opening up more of…
Open Data Day: Lessons for Hacktivists
This piece is cross-posted on TechPresident where I post articles on the intersection of politics, technology and transparency and serve as an editor. Three years ago, after a chance encounter…
How Hackers Will Blow Up The World: China, Cyber-Warfare and the Cuban Missile Crisis
I have a piece on TechPresident I really enjoyed writing about how certain technologies – as they become weaponized – can in turn become highly destabilizing to global stability. The…
International #OpenDataDay: Now at 90 Cities (and… the White House)
Okay. We are 10 days away from International Open Data Day this February 23rd, 2013. There is now so much going on, I’ve been excited to see the different projects…
#Idlenomore as an existential threat
Almost three years ago (although I only worked up the nerve to post it two years ago, so sensitive is the topic) I wrote a blog post about First Nations…
Til Debt Do Us Part: Reality Television and Poverty
I’m traveling for business and that means several things. Most predictably it means come the evening, I’m getting on a tread mill to exercise. I’m in Edmonton. It’s cold. Like…
The Journal News Gun Map: Open vs. Personal Data
As many readers are likely aware two weeks ago The Journal News, a newspaper just outside of New York city, published a map showing the addresses and names of handgun…
Teach to Do – Lessons from Louise Glück
Somewhere along the lines I remember learning the line “those who cannot do, teach.” I’m sure there are many instances where this is true, it’s just not what I remember…
The Beneficial Impact of Newspaper Paywalls on Users
There continues to be fierce debate about the cost/benefits of newspaper paywalls, a debate Mathew Ingram has been helping drive with a great deal of depth and with excellent links.…
Five Tips for Surviving Caregiving
A few weeks ago, I travelled to Vancouver to address a family association and also to give a talk about how we use Tyze Personal Networks to coordinate Nick's care.…
Re-Architecting the City by Changing the Timelines and Making it Disappear
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…
The Power of Weakness and the World’s Relationship with America
This past week, I had the enormous privilege of being invited to Washington, DC to attend the Academy of Achievement summit. This event – of which I knew nothing before…
Doing Government Websites Right
Today, I have a piece over on Tech President about how the new UK government website – Gov.uk – does a lot of things right. I’d love to see more…
Playing with Budget Cutbacks: On a Government 2.0 Response, Wikileaks & Analog Denial of Service Attacks
Reflecting on yesterday’s case study in broken government I had a couple of addition thoughts that I thought fun to explore and that simply did not make sense including in…
Rex Murphy on Standard of Conduct in Parliament
Once in a while Rex Murphy provides good commentary, as the following on the standard of conduct in Parliament – especially he talks about big-mouth Rob Andres. “Mr. Rob Anders,…
Some thoughts on the relaunched data.gc.ca
Yesterday, I talked about what I thought was the real story that got missed in the fanfare surrounding the relaunch of data.gc.ca. Today I’ll talk about the new data.gc.ca itself.…