Government Operations Committee on April 1st, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Would you like to specify who your question is for?

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

Mr. McKay.

[Colin McKay]

Okay.

I think the question is dedication of resources within the bureaucracy. By that I mean that, as I brought up in the example of the U.K. and the U.S., they've identified people with specific digital skills and an awareness of the importance of open data, and have encouraged them to work with departments to recognize which data sets are valuable to both citizens groups as well as businesses, and work with them to format the data sets in a way that's accessible and open to all.

There are maintenance costs involved in identifying the data sets, maybe translating them from the way they're stored right now, which frankly is often quite inaccessible to the outside world, and that's a recurring cost. But really it's about getting the focus of policy analysts and the people who own responsibility for that data within the departments and recognizing that they need to look outward when they are collecting the data, when they're preparing it, and when they decide how to make it available. They need to get into an open mindset where they realize they have two communities to serve with these data sets: internal departmental analysts, as well as the outside community.

The investment is not tremendous when you're talking about data sets that have already been created and that are available within departments. It's rather a change in mentality and it's a change in procedure for a lot of these departments. The Government of Canada has already put in the tool to distribute them through the open data portal and has already demonstrated they've had engagement from the community. The question is how to do this over the long term and how to do it in a way that both the community and businesses recognize as sustainable.

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

I have a question about economic development. Take Japan and its nuclear development, for example. Economic development encourages companies to establish themselves, but at the same time, there is cross-tabulated data. Certain events, such as earthquakes, can have an impact later.

Are cross-tabulated data taken into account when our system is being developed? I don't know which of you I should ask to answer the question.

[Ray Sharma]

Earthquake data is a good example because it's one of the few real-time data sources that exists within open data. One of the biggest challenges within the different government layers is the unification of standards and protocols. The federal government is taking the leadership role, and in the Ontario government report that we released last week we actually advocate following the federal government policies when it comes to this one regard. In terms of the reason why that's of importance, I'll give you the example of a developer in St. Catharines who was developing a municipal traffic application, but outside of the city of St. Catharines they could not provide continuity to adjacent townships like Welland. So having a unified standard is of importance so that people can string together the different jurisdictions.

You asked a question earlier about how much money will be required for the development of some of these companies. I think you were looking at it from a government perspective. I just wanted to state to you that the one company, Xtreme Labs, which has 400 of those 1,000 employees, which was acquired by that Facebook billionaire gentleman, was started up by us with $300,000 invested capital. The beauty of the investment required on the application side is that sometimes it's as low as in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop. In fact, of the 15—last Friday was when we announced the winners of the CODE hackathon—several had already been approached by venture capitalists for investment, and the dollar amount is literally in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to get these things going.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Your time is up, Ms. Day.

Mr. Aspin, you have five minutes.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thanks, Chair, and welcome, gentlemen, to our committee to help us with this interesting subject.

I'm going to try to work in a couple of questions for both of you. I'll begin with Mr. Sharma.

Could you tell me, Mr. Sharma, how your company has benefited from open data? How can other companies do the same?

[Ray Sharma]

We really got involved with CODE and this particular event to give back to the government community. Similar to how we felt we were the beneficiary of the academic community, which was the reason why we created GCA, we got involved with CODE because we're a huge beneficiary of programs like SR and ED, and the media tax credit program in Ontario. So the truth of the answer is that we have yet to benefit from open data as a company, XMG in particular. But what we're hoping is that through our leadership and through showing these application examples we could try to marry up the industry with the entrepreneurs, and they would take it from here and exploit the opportunities.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Along that line, how do you think we can get more companies to work with the federal government on open data?

[Ray Sharma]

That's exactly what I'm trying to accomplish by spending my time and effort and energy on this. I went to Vancouver and I met with about 20 venture capitalists there. The way I've been doing it is through the venture capitalists and the investment angle. My hope is that through them, they will work with the entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs, combined with the VCs, will be the ones who can exploit the opportunity within open data.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Very good.

To you, Mr. McKay, what are some of the specific and tangible benefits that industry has seen from the Government of Canada's open data initiative? I realize it's early in the game.

[Colin McKay]

As Ray was just discussing, we're at a transition point where open data for the past six to seven years has been the interest and obsession of people who have very specific policy challenges: they want to fix potholes; they want to get better transit apps; they want to track infrastructure investment. In some cases, the geospatial information and weather information that's been available to them has been translated into business apps for the agricultural community and for logistics companies.

But we're really in a transition where we need to find a mechanism through which people who have ideas based on the data sets they see available to them can translate that into nascent businesses and can see a viable growth pattern for themselves. That challenge is both based in finding venture capital and firms that are willing to invest in an idea and a team of three or four or five, but also being confident that the data sources upon which they rely that are being provided by the government, among other sources, are dependable, are consistent, and will be available to them in coming years. So they need to see maturity among the data sets and the data available.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Very good, and would you see the release of all this data as a step towards transparency and openness? How would you characterize it?

[Colin McKay]

From the point of view of a public policy wonk, I would say any release of data sets that have traditionally been held in cabinets, in government buildings, is a step towards transparency, and certainly in releasing data you provide essential nutrients for the growth of strong policy ideas in the public, which offers both a challenge and an inspiration for the government in identifying policy options that would benefit Canadians.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Mr. Martin, you have five minutes.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you, both, for your very helpful presentations as we get started in trying to get our minds around this expansive issue. I was just saying to my staff that I wish there were more people under 30 around the table because some of us who are my age, with all due respect, are struggling to even get our minds around some of the concepts that you're introducing to us.

You've been very good about pointing out some of the commercial opportunities, the business elements to this, but I start from a fundamental principle that the public has a right to know what their government is doing with their money. The public has a right to see research done by the government. It was their tax dollars that paid for it and it was their permission given to the government to create it, and therefore it shouldn't be hoarded. It shouldn't be like pulling teeth trying to get information out of the government, but that has been the experience, and not just with this government. That's been the pattern. Secrecy is an important default position of government and information is to be rationed out in a very selective way.

So my question to you is, when we do adopt the default position of openness rather than the default position of secrecy, who's going to make sure that everything is being released? Who's to say that government still doesn't hold back a research paper that they did that might be contrary to some of their policies, or embarrassing even? I'm not saying they should release cabinet confidences and private information, but there's a lot of research done and there have been accusations that a lot of scientists have been muzzled recently if the results of their research aren't quite what the government wanted to hear.

Should there be an independent third body somewhere that makes sure that it's truly open and that information is being released?

Ray, I see you're nodding with interest in that.

[Ray Sharma]

I think this is an excellent question. This is a question that we should keep in the back of our minds throughout this entire process. So the title of the Ontario government report is “Open by Default”, and I think the way we should look at the data sets is that first we should screen them for security and privacy concerns. There's server technology that exists. None of it is 100%, by the way. As long as you have a gateway and you have an interactive channel somewhere in the system, you have the opportunity for exploitation. It's just fundamental. But if you adopt these security and privacy scrubbing capabilities, outside of those two—call them screens—then data should be open by default. That's our position in the provincial report.

What's ironic is the number one user of this data, at least in my estimation, is going to be the government itself. When I was presenting to 51 different agencies not too long ago with the CIO of government, I was talking to them about how they could use open data, and I was using that as a way to get them to see how they could benefit from this phenomena. Initially, they were resistant to release this information. It puts them at risk of embarrassment. There's a possibility the data is inaccurate.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It goes against the best instincts of most bureaucrats, frankly.

[Ray Sharma]

Right. That's why it needed to be pointed out, so they could see how they could potentially benefit from this.

One thing I think Colin can speak to phenomenally, with his unique perspective—I'll pass it over to you, Colin—is that when you combine open data and the transparency that it represents, along with social network feedback, you could really change the way government governs, potentially. I don't mean to say anything outside of my expertise, but if you think about that combination of transparency and the feedback loop that social networks represent, it will create a circular connection of information and communication. It may sound a little bit cliché, but I think communication plus information equals revolution.

I'll pass it over to Colin to see if he could expand on that.

[Colin McKay]

You mentioned at the beginning of your remarks the age of the people in the room—and I'm probably in that demographic as well. I think it's a process of culture change, but it's not age based. It's about your approach and the way you conduct your work.

Within the government, we're slowly seeing a culture of innovation and openness develop among small segments of the population, people who are interested and compelled to use these tools in their everyday work.

As we move to a process whereby we abandon the traditions and the habits of the 20th century, where we believed there was a room where the six policy analysts who understood this issue the most held all the information and were the people most capable of determining the proper course of action for the country, to a model where those six highly skilled and highly informed people are charged and energized with guiding a much broader conversation, whether it's within Ottawa or across the country, and pulling in inputs externally and analyzing and presenting them within context for the government, we'll get to a place where that sort of oversight may not be necessary. We'll get to a mechanism and a habit whereby open government and the creation of truly open public policy options for deliberation by a larger community will help inform the government's decision-making.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Mr. Hillyer, you have five minutes.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Sharma, when you were giving your presentation, it seemed as though you had a little less time than you had hoped to cover it. Do you want to expand a bit on the last slide you were on, Ontario?

[Ray Sharma]

Thank you so much for that. I apologize for how fast I went through all that information.

This will also connect to the question Mr. Martin asked about how we can enable the maximum benefit of this whole initiative for the government and citizens.

One of the things I wanted to communicate by crowdsourcing, that whole concept of putting it out there to the crowd, is that as long as you can provide us the information and the data, the community will find a way to exploit and make use of this data. That's the power of crowdsourcing. That's the power of hackathons, because you do not know what they will come up with.

I want to tell you about some of the applications that came as a result of this CODE event.

One young woman from the University of Toronto created an application that measures all the air quality, carbon dioxide, etc., in every city across the country. Another person made an application targeted at immigrants. It allowed them to look at their education and their demographic, and decide where in Canada it would be optimal for them to immigrate. Another application I worked on looked at tuition costs across the country. You could see how much a psychology degree costs at the University of Calgary, how much it was at another university on the east coast, and the average salaries for a student coming from those programs, so that you could determine your return on tuition investment.

Colin touched on the opportunities with some examples. I was smiling during his presentation. Some of the things he said were quite profound, if he had the time to explain them further. The number of little ideas that can emerge from open data is way beyond the imagination of everyone in this room. I assure you of this. We need to do some things to help this happen.

Colin also mentioned that a bunch of the data sets are not that useful in a sense, and that is true. We went through thousands of the data sets to highlight 50 or 60 that would be useful. The more the data sets can be in real time, the more useful they will be for the users.

The government is already working toward other things like the unification of standards. These things are of critical importance.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

In terms of these hackathons and open-sourceathons, etc., I think you're right that we can trust people to make up stuff. We don't have to push them in any direction. We'll just present the data and ask them to think of something.

How can we get more non-techies like me to weigh in? I may not be able to look at data and say I know how to do this, that, and the other thing, but I may be able to say I would like.... It seems as though right now we're inviting mostly techies to be involved. How can we get other people involved who may have great ideas?