Government Operations Committee on March 4th, 2014

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Martin asked a good question. He wanted to know who decides which data is included on this site. This site is of great value and I don't want us to forget that. It is truly wonderful to have this information, which is very relevant. For example, if one were to deny that climate change exists and thus decided not to put data on that on the site, we are stuck with that. There are no other links, but you have said that that will come.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Ms. Charette, you have the floor for the third part of your presentation.

[Corinne Charette]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With that we'll go on to the last part of the presentation. We'll jump to page 18 to just give you a wrap-up of the specific initiatives we're working on with our federal government colleagues.

There are three important international initiatives. We've talked a bit about the G-8, the Open Government Partnership, and the International Aid Transparency Initiative.

The Open Government Partnership was by far the first international initiative that we participated in with our signing of the charter and joining the partnership. Then in June there was the G-8. What's to note is that the U.K. was the co-chair of the Open Government Partnership in 2013 and was also, of course, the host for the G-8 summit. They are very strong open data enthusiasts, and we saw the work on the charter, which was quite fruitful.

On the IATI initiative, CIDA has been working with this international initiative, and we're very happy to showcase their work in this regard as part of the open data portal. These are the topics, on page 18, that internationally are of the greatest value, so in fact the sharing of scientific data is very important on an international front.

I'm very pleased to say that Canada is amongst the leaders on open data internationally. We are working on the open data working group. It's co-chaired by us. It was launched in October 2013 by the OGP to support open data work by all OGP member countries. I don't have the exact count of OGP member countries today, but there are over 60 of them. Not all of them are as advanced in their open data efforts as Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. are. Some of them are smaller developing economies and so on, so they benefit quite a bit from our work with them in this regard. The work is focused on the four themes.

As part of the G-8 open data action plan, we have a sub-action plan for the Open Data Charter that was published in February 2014. It commits us to the proactive release of high-value data sets identified by the G-8 countries. We're very pleased that most of those high-value data sets identified by the G-8 were already published by Canada, and we continue to work down the list of the high-value data sets identified by the G-8 to close that gap and work with civil society.

As a result of strong support and sponsorship by Minister Clement, we continue our work on open data. The Canadian Open Data Experience, we are hoping to repeat on an annual basis, and we will certainly also collaborate with our provincial and municipal colleagues whenever we can on their own appathons. We continue to make progress and achieve the commitments we stated in action plan number one and are currently working on the second version of our action plan on open government, which is a requirement of our membership in the OGP. That will be published towards the fall.

Open data in Canada is an important, ambitious commitment. As part of our work on action plan number one, we were asked to make an ambitious commitment for open data in Canada. What we proposed was that we work to get to common licensing terms across Canada in all provincial, territorial, and municipal jurisdictions on the use of open data. We already have four provinces and a number of municipalities. Quebec and its municipalities also announced their own initiatives, in February in fact, in the same form of licence as ours, so they're now in the same fold. We continue to work with the remaining provinces and territories and municipalities to make open data in Canada a reality, which will allow us to really mash up data with the same licensing terms across all jurisdictions in Canada.

The work of the Open Data Institute has not yet begun as it was just announced, but we are working with the founders and will be strong collaborators for their work to ensure that we, as the federal government, benefit and that all citizens benefit in this.

We will continue to chair the OGP open data working group, as well as continuing our work on the G-8.

I talked about CODE, so I will jump over that.

We are in the process of developing, with input from civil society, action plan number two for the Open Government Partnership. We are going to focus, in the second version of the action plan, on implementing our directive on open government during the upcoming fiscal year, certainly accelerating the release of other high-value data sets and more appathons.

If we're able, over the next fiscal year we will probably come to a third version of our portal. It is an open source portal. It is supported by work that is done internationally and with our partners in the U.S. and India. We're the source of the portal but we're also working internationally with the U.K., I think, on greater search capabilities and other features in the portal.

Of course we'll continue our work on international standards for data and metadata and the interoperability of the data sets between jurisdictions.

On page 23 there's just a bit more description of what our ambitious commitment to open data in Canada is all about. But again, it's about harmonizing our work across Canada, and it would be quite significant for us to achieve that. It would certainly be very useful to civil society to be able to tap data sets across Canada without any challenge to usability or licensing. We're certainly looking for a federated discovery approach that will allow a Canadian to perhaps enter through B.C.'s open data portal or Ontario's open data portal and find the right data, be it from Ontario, B.C., or the federal government, or any municipality, and work with that.

This movement has seen a very strong collaborative philosophy. It's really the basis of open data. It's all about collaboration among all levels of government and civil society and the private sector. It's really very exciting, and we're very pleased with our results.

We talked about the Open Data Institute, and we will look forward to its progress. It does have partners including OpenText, Communitech, and the University of Waterloo, so it certainly includes the private sector as well as the academic sector in developing our work, similar to what has been done in Britain and in the U.S.

On page 25 there is a little bit of work on our OGP open data working group. We've already shared our open data experience with a number of OECD countries. I think we shared it with Colombia, as I recall, and we're also sharing with Mexico. In fact Canada is quite determined to continue to collaborate in this regard. On page 26 I've mentioned this.

With that I think we've touched on all the key points about our work on open data. I certainly hope that we have advanced your understanding of the key concepts and the value of this, and of our efforts and our achievements from a federal government perspective.

With that, we're happy to answer any further questions you may have.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you. I will now turn the floor over to committee members. We will follow the usual speaking list for committee members. We will start with Mr. Martin. You have five minutes.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I didn't realize we were going to formal rounds, but I'm happy to perhaps pick up where I left off.

I'm still interested—and I don't think we've received a concrete answer—in what this is costing us. What is the total cost to date invested or associated with implementing the federal government's open government plan?

I've already cited how it compares—or how we're kind of shocked at the amount of money we're spending on spying. I would hope that we're spending a corresponding amount of money on the inverse, in openly and freely sharing information. The public has a right to know what their government is doing with their money.

So if we have 2,200 employees down at CSEC, with a building alone worth $1.2 billion; and you have 10 employees at Treasury Board Secretariat, what is the corresponding budget in this open government initiative?

[Corinne Charette]

Well, the reality is that it's a very small budget and a very efficient operation, but I'll explain why.

Open data and our open government work is really about leveraging the assets and the work of all government departments and agencies. For instance, Environment Canada has been publishing weather data for many years and has the infrastructure, the program, policy support, all the public servants who work at Environment on weather data, and so on. As does NRCan, with the geospatial survey, or the—

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

You're not doing the original research. You're just pulling it all together.

But I only have five minutes, so could you give me a dollar figure for what you've spent to date and what the project cost is to December 2015, when you expect to be completed?

[Corinne Charette]

We don't really measure it that way, because it's not a specific program. It's not an official program. What we have is a Treasury Board cost, which I would say has been, in this fiscal year, less than $1.5 million to cover employees and the other expenses we have. We foresee probably similar expense levels over the next five years from a Treasury Board Secretariat perspective.

Departments and agencies do not segregate their costs on open government because they're part of their program and policy costs, so we don't dissect them and we don't roll it up. It's not a formal program. It's really leveraging the assets, knowledge, and information that are available, but leveraging it smartly.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay. Thank you. It's about $1.5 million.

How much money have you allocated to advertising to promote open government and the open data portal, data.gc.ca? What's your advertising budget?

[Corinne Charette]

To my knowledge, we have not had any advertising. We promote it online. We promote it through consultations—

[A voice]

Search engines.

[Corinne Charette]

—and search engines, but certainly we're not aware of an advertising budget.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay.

On the international component, when you developed the Open Data Charter, that was just at the 2013 G-8 summit. Is that what I'm to understand? That's how recent it is.

The United States was on board. That was one of Obama's first announcements, I think, when he was elected, wasn't it? How do our efforts compare to those of the United States? How far along are they? Have they finished their program? Are they in full disclosure of all they're going to disclose, or are they still putting it together, the way we are?

[Stephen Walker]

Although the G-8 charter is from just 2013, we and U.S. both have been involved in developing open data for a bit longer than that. The G-8 charter had a couple of more specific commitments for G-8 members over the course of the next couple of years.

In general, the U.S. had an early start on us. They definitely had a head start. We've pretty much caught up now. In a system that is even more complex than ours, they have a lot of work to do in order to be able to dig the data out of individual departments and agencies. They have a lot more of them.

I would say that the early leaders were the U.K. and the U.S. Now we would be considered up among those leaders.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Do you expect Russia to be as compliant as the U.K., the United States, and Canada as far as full disclosure, etc., goes? What do you have to promise to be able to belong to this club?

[Stephen Walker]

It's difficult to say. They have just barely started. We've been at it for two or three years already. They have a ways to go to catch up.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Trottier, you now have the floor. You also have five minutes.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the things we're going to be doing with this study is summoning certain witnesses who have some information and insight to add to our study. Hopefully, we can then assist you with your planning.

I'm trying to get a sense of the various departments. You mentioned that they're doing certain things. The reason you're small is that other departments within the Government of Canada are doing some of the effort. Are there certain departments within the Government of Canada that are well advanced in providing open data? Is it worth bringing them in as witnesses for them to describe...?

I'll give you one example. There are certain data that I'm very interested in that have to do with immigration settlement patterns. In Toronto, those patterns are shifting over time, and when it comes to providing settlement services, it's useful to know where the immigrants are going. It's more frequent than every five years of a census. Every year or every few months, these patterns change.

For a department like Citizenship and Immigration, would it be worthwhile to bring them in as witnesses or are they just getting their feet wet right now with respect to this initiative?

[Stephen Walker]

No. They're well on their way. In fact, the CIC data sets are among the most popular metadata available on data.gc.ca. If you look at the list that I showed you before, the top 25, you see that eight or nine of the top 20 are CIC, and most of them are related to immigration statistics in one way or another.

There are certain departments that are way ahead because they've been doing it longer or because the demand has been greater and they've had to get their feet wet a lot faster. Statistics Canada is an expert. NRCan is an expert. Environment Canada has a lot of expertise as well, as does CIC. The other major actor and contributor would be Agriculture Canada. Although there are almost 40 departments contributing now, those five departments are probably the federal leaders.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Among other levels of government, you mentioned Alberta, B.C., Quebec, and Ontario. What about municipal governments? Are there witnesses that you would recommend that we talk to, to gain some insight?

[Stephen Walker]

Certainly. A group of five municipalities have been working together for longer than we've been working with the provincial government to share best practices on the delivery of open data: Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. They're all leaders in this area.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Those are all the questions I had. I know Mr. O'Connor had some questions.

[Gordon O'Connor]

Yes. What is clearly not open data?

[Stephen Walker]

We've developed specific standardized criteria that departments must apply to data sets before they can contribute them to the open data initiative, to be able to identify data sets that cannot be distributed because of personal information, security information, privacy, confidentiality. We must own the data. If it's third-party data then we don't make it available as open data.