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…
public policy
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…
Count me in for “OneCity”
By now you’ve probably heard about TTC Chair Karen Stintz (pictured) and Councilor Glenn DeBaeremaeker mega-plan for transity in Toronto- OneCity. Royson James has all the details over at the…
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…
The End of the World: The State vs. the Internet
Last weekend at FooCamp, I co-hosted a session titled “The End of the World: Will the Internet Destroy the State, or Will the State Destroy the Internet?” What follows are…
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…
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…
The Perfect Storm #nlpoli
“In the fishery of the very near future,” SRBP wrote in February, “fishing subsidies like federal employment insurance wage subsidies, state-sponsored marketing schemes and the stalinist political control of the…
My LRC Review of “When the Gods Changed” and other recommended weekend readings
This week, the Literary Review of Canada published my and Taylor Owen’s review of When the Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada by Peter C. Newman. For non-Canadians Peter…
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…
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…
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’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…
Here’s a prediction: A Canadian F-35 will be shot down by a drone in 2035
One of the problems with living in a country like Canada is that certain people become the default person on certain issues. It’s a small place and the opportunity for…
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…
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…
The Latest Idiocy from David Climenhaga
I would like to draw your attention to this strange piece that Mr. Climenhaga has written about Daveberta blogger, David Cournoyer. Mr. Climenhaga alleges that since Mr. Cournoyer has allegedly…
Citizen Surveillance and the Coming Challenge for Public Institutions
The other day I stumbled over this intriguing article which describes how a group of residents in Vancouver have started to surveille the police as they do their work in…
Data.gc.ca – Data Sets I found that are interesting, and some suggestions
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the Canadian federal government’s open data portal. Over the past year government officials have been continuously adding to the portal, but as it…
Containers, Facebook, Baseball & the Dark Matter around Open Data (#IOGDC keynote)
Below is a extended blog post that summarizes the keynote address I gave at the World Bank/Data.gov International Open Government Data Conference in Washington DC on Wednesday July 11th. Yesterday,…