Government Operations Committee on April 10th, 2014

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

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome to our guests from near and far. Thank you for helping us with this study.

I have a couple of questions, first of all to Mr. Stirling.

From the information you've given us, Mr. Stirling, Canada, you say, ranks tenth or eighth, depending on the criteria and the method. I think you've given a little bit of a hint in this regard, but could you give us maybe two or three primary factors that could enable us to be maybe amongst the leaders like your own country?

[Richard Stirling]

Yes. The rankings that I showed put Canada eighth, and the biggest areas of difference between where you are and where the countries at the top are currently are around social impacts and also some of the core data sets, which haven't been released but I think were specified in the G-8 communiqué around land use, budget use, company identifiers, and legislation, although there are also some others around health, education, and crime. If you think about wanting to get the benefits flowing through into health, education, and crime, you need those sorts of core data sets to be available. Otherwise, the innovation can't flow.

Where the other countries are leading to is supporting the innovation and their economic and social impacts, taking things from an idea and supporting them through to the point where they're sustainable organizations.

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

Thank you.

The second question is to Ms. Bates.

Ms. Bates, I'm very interested in the commercial aspects of this. You know that I like my government focused on jobs and the economy. I'd like to ask the question: which databases have been proven to provide the best return on investments? Second, how can the new Canadian Open Data Institute help with start-ups in Canada?

[Dr. Joanne Bates]

Thank you.

I can't give you a specific answer on which data sets lead to the best return on investment. I'm afraid I don't have access to that information.

Perhaps, Richard, that might be something that you have.

The kinds of data that I've been looking at, looking at specific data sets where there is a commercial interest, have been around things such as prescriptions data and the pharmaceutical companies' interest in that data for marketing practices, the weather observations data that the financial markets are interested in, and there's some arms trade data as well that's not been opened but that is very valuable for the arms trade as well.

In terms of how to incentivize and help start-ups in this area, I think the Open Data Institute model is a great model. The shame is that it's in the middle of London. It would have been great to have an institute like that in the regions as well—like Manchester or somewhere else, maybe up in Scotland—rather than just incentivizing start-ups and growth in London. That would be my recommendation, that things like that need to be in the regions as well as in the capital.

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

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

You have one minute left, Mr. Aspin.

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

I'm fine.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Ravignat.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Ms. Ubaldi and Mr. Stirling.

When the decision was made to centralize access to data and to take the data away from various departments, we saw some concern being expressed, by the scientific community in Canada, in particular. Their concern was that this might be a move to make it easier to control which data would be open and which would not.

Could you give us your comments on the need for a healthy relationship between those in power, particularly those in cabinet, and those responsible for ensuring open data. If you have any examples of best practices in your political system, I think it would be very useful for us to hear about them.

Let's begin with Ms. Ubaldi.

[Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi]

If I understand the question correctly, it applies only to old data sets and not to data sets applicable today in the scientific domain. I think the answer is transparency, meaning that certainly there is a need for transparency in the actions taken, in the case of Canada, by the cabinet office in relation to which data sets to open and in which format to open them. So, there are two points.

First of all, open data requires an ecosystem of actors who work together. You have the organization that sets the policy but then you have the other parts of the administration that also produce the data sets and share the data sets that need to be brought on board.

Second, there is the need to be transparent. In order to overcome some of the resistance—and you mentioned some of the negative impressions—there is a need to be transparent about what is going to be done in terms of which data sets will be opened, in which format, at which point, and for use by whom. So there might be scaled-up approaches. Not all governments have taken the approach of getting data out there. For a couple of governments—in the Netherlands and in Denmark, for instance—the approach has been less adventurous, but there's been clarity and transparency about it.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Stirling, do you have anything to say about this?

[Richard Stirling]

I think this is one of the reasons that any such activity needs to be underpinned by strong principles around a presumption in favour of publication of the open data, because that helps build trust in the idea that nothing adverse is happening through the centralization.

The other thing I would just observe is that open data has actually been the underpinning of a shared research base for hundreds of years. This open research agenda is very much in the spirit that research has been going on for centuries, and I know that a number of countries are looking at this, including my own. But I think it's still an open discussion with no concrete conclusions yet as to how to make sure that publicly funded research is open by default.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Mr. Ravignat, you have 30 seconds left.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

I won't have enough time to ask my question.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Then we will go to Ms. Ablonczy, who has the floor for five minutes.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, all, for appearing.

I was struck by Ms. Bates' conclusion that research is beginning to show that just opening data is unlikely to generate the impact that a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed government is hoping for.

I guess, Richard, you've had the most experience in this area. What are the benefits? Open data just for the sake of open data obviously is a lot of work for very little payback. So, what's the payback? What's the goal? What's the objective?

[Richard Stirling]

Thank you.

I view open data as an enabler of things in the economy. The benefits of open data come from people being able to find out how to do things faster, cheaper, or better. The examples that I used in my introduction are, I think, examples that address the “so what?”. The £200 million cash savings found in one drug line in the NHS drugs budget is the basis for a sustainable business.

Proving the approach of taking a data-rich but regulation-light to a market, that's possibly the future of regulation. It gives the regulator better information, but at the same time doesn't increase the burden on business. Again, that has a sustainable model to it. I think at the moment we're just seeing the transition from thinking about getting the data out there through to thinking about the products, the services, the way they get created, and in some cases, the way you support these businesses coming through.

Just because I'm aware there's a regional thing here, we do now have bases in Leeds, Sheffield, and Manchester, as well as Brighton, so we're also thinking about how we take this, not just to the capital city, but around the U.K.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

To some degree, we're just tiptoeing through these tulips and we're not quite sure where it's heading, but Ms. Ubaldi, from the OECD's point of view, you put a lot of time and effort into persuading various member countries to move down this path. Why is that? Is it the flavour du jour that everyone's getting excited about? What are the hard benefits that the OECD has identified?

[Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi]

Thank you for your question.

We try to make governments do it in a way that is right, not just because it's the flavour of the moment. So I think your question is extremely important. We think there is value and a positive impact that still needs to be fully demonstrated; that is true. In some areas it cannot possibly be quantified, like in the social area that some of your colleagues mentioned before. Instead, it's an extremely important set of values that can be targeted.

For instance, in terms of social value, there is certainly an increasing number of examples showing how open data has increased the participation and the engagement of parts of society that otherwise would not be brought into the discussion and dialogue with governments in terms of service delivery and policy-making. However, that requires that the government focuses not only on the usual actors who are interlocutors in this area, for instance, the private sector, but there are other actors in the ecosystem like journalists, civil society organizations, citizens associations, librarians, and so on, who are non-typical groups of actors who need to be reached out to.

From the perspective of the OECD, the reason we are focusing so much on this is not because many governments have pushed it up on the agenda, but because this has an impact of changing the way the government conceives a number of actions, ranging from policy-making to service delivery. The challenge is big, so I cannot tell you that there are demonstrated values. There are important estimates that my colleagues mentioned. There's no clear data yet that demonstrates the value, but there are a number of examples from all levels of jurisdictions that demonstrate there are changes in the way the government interacts with society in creating economic and social value.

Last but not least, in terms of transparency and increased trust, there is a tendency showing that the higher transparency and openness of governments in releasing key data with information on the operation—

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I just have one more question, and I want to be able to get that in.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I'm sorry, but your time is already up.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I just got started.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

There will be another round of questions.

Ms. Day, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You have to wait your turn.

Mr. Stirling, my question is for you.

The Open Data Institute—ODI—is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan company. According to its website, the ODI has secured 10 million pounds sterling from the UK Government and $750,000US from Omidyar Network. The ODI is working towards long-term sustainability.

How much does this kind of free market for data cost? What costs might that entail for all of the G8 countries? And what structural safeguards have been put in place to ensure the non-partisan and transparent flow of data?

[Richard Stirling]

Thank you.

Yes, we are independent, non-partisan, and not for profit.

In terms of the firewall and keeping that status, despite being in receipt of public money in the U.K., our corporate structure is that we're a company limited by guarantee. We have no government representative on our board, although we do have conversations with the financial monitoring grant administration bits of government around our core metrics.

If you would like to look at the core metrics, then we have them published on the dashboard on our website. It's exactly the same metrics that I am held to account to on a weekly basis and that my board gets to see every six weeks.

On the cost of implementing a similar organization across the G-8, I don't know, which is my honest answer.

I know that in our organization we've been able to do nicely in the U.K., but we've also been very blessed by having Sir Tim and Sir Nigel as our founders and being able to attract a very good team as a result.

We also have a global network now that is operating in a number of G-8 countries, and it's possible that they will be able to address some of the same needs. It does depend on how much ambition there is, like how many start-ups you want to help, how fast you want to accelerate the economic benefits and those use cases.