Government Operations Committee on April 10th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Ms. Bates, for your answer.

Mr. Adler, you now have the floor for five minutes.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for lending your expertise here today.

I do want to pursue my line of questioning with Mr. Stirling, if I may.

We're really looking at a new frontier here aren't we, Mr. Stirling?

[Richard Stirling]

Yes, I think so.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

With a huge amount of potential and opportunity. You mentioned the McKinsey study, which looked at seven sectors and said there is the potential of adding $3 trillion annually in economic value. Wouldn't that also encourage—remember the Klondike days—a lot of unsavoury folks and draw them into the marketplace too? Does it have that potential?

[Richard Stirling]

I don't know about that. The $3 trillion figure comes from adding up all of the benefits across the world from being more efficient. The seven sectors that they looked at were things like education, health care, consumer credit, where the benefits were from the markets operating more efficiently and more effectively, and in the case of consumer credit then in a more fair fashion.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

We all know and realize that there's a tremendous amount of good that can come of this in terms of the delivery. I'm just looking at it from the public sector side initially. It's empowering citizens. It's changing, really, how government can work. It's propelling innovation, and what's most important is it can improve the delivery of public services.

Are we looking at a day when we can deliver public services that are tailored to the individual as opposed to broad, umbrella-like public services? Are we heading towards that kind of a regime in your view?

[Richard Stirling]

In my view we are heading towards that type of regime. I think it's quite a long way away, and it will require more than just open data. That's the whole digitization of public services. It requires you to solve the problem of identity, which is a thorny one, for getting identity in the public services context, and using data that shouldn't be made public in a consensual way to then personalize and tailor those services for the individual who's in front of you. You can see this happening a little way in a completely analogue fashion where a job seeker goes in and speaks to an adviser, and the adviser looks at them and gives them tailored advice. What the technology would enable you to do in a few years' time is start automating some of that advice and sending people towards specialists.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

You indicated earlier that the public sector is ahead of the private sector in the collection of data?

[Richard Stirling]

In the publication of data.... The private sector is, depending on the sector, slightly ahead of the public sector in collection. But the business case for the public sector in opening up its data is clear, and in the private sector—

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

The private sector realized the advantage of this way in advance of the public sector. Is that correct? Because they realized that the more data they can get on their customers the better they can serve them. Is that correct?

[Richard Stirling]

The private sector is ahead of the public sector in customization and profiling. I'd just draw the distinction between open data that tends to be information around a cohort or around a place, and the personal private data that shouldn't be made open in general.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

But there will be some public data that should remain proprietary, right? All public data should not be open data, correct? In your estimation....

[Richard Stirling]

There are good reasons why some public data wouldn't be made open, but I think the presumption should be that public sector data should be made open where possible.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Right.

How much time do I have left? Am I done?

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Your time is up. Thank you.

We will now go to Mr. Byrne, who has the floor for five minutes.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for taking the time to provide us with your expertise and knowledge. We particularly value the fact that we can get international participation in our own thoughts and deliberations.

One question I would have is surrounding the notion of behavioural modification within government institutions related to open data. It's a relatively known phenomenon that when circumstances change, legislation is passed, it requires more open.... Whatever may be the driving force, institutions will indeed to change and adapt to the evolving circumstance. With open data, is there a potential...?

There's an obvious potential for governments to modify their behaviour to allow the increased outflow of information, but there's also the potential that governments may retract. Knowing that there is a driving force, an impetus to collect data and to disseminate it, there may be a driving force to stop collecting it so that they do not have to disseminate it.

In any of your experiences—I'll start with Mr. Stirling and then lead to Ms. Da Sylva, and Ms. Bates—if you could then comment relatively briefly, do you have any experience that you could relate to that particular instance or example?

[Richard Stirling]

I would say that the culture change comes from people seeing benefits themselves in how they're using data. The NHS Information Centre is now much more gung-ho on the open data agenda because someone else has come in and provided them with a service and some analysis that was useful to them in doing their day-to-day job. That's the thing that really switches the culture change.

In terms of the behavioural response that you just highlighted, of some people not wanting to collect data because they're worried that they then have to publish it, I haven't seen that. That's partly because, as in the earlier questions we were talking about, the public sector is slightly behind in the collection of data so it tends to only collect data it needs for operational reasons. So you can't stop the collection of the data without also stopping the operations.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Ms. Da Sylva.

[Lyne Da Sylva]

I don't know whether I should answer in French or English.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

As you choose....

[Lyne Da Sylva]

I think because the discussion has been going on in English I will pursue this way.

If I understood correctly you want my opinion on whether organizations may stop collecting data so they won't have to disseminate it. They can't disseminate what they don't have.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

There have been some that would think—maybe in terms of the Canadian example, the elimination of the mandatory long-form census. There has been some criticism by civil society that the elimination of the long-form census prevents data from being used to apply public pressure to establish public policy priorities. That's a Canadian example, which may or may not be true, but I throw that out to help focus your thoughts or answers. If you like, maybe we could move to Ms. Bates and then Chiara Ubaldi to....

[Lyne Da Sylva]

I will try a tiny answer, however.

There's actually a link between increasing open data and the data-intensive research, referred to as big data. There'll be a point when there will be so much data, it won't be that we won't know what to do with it but we won't know how to handle it. There will have to be decisions made as to what is kept and how. I think that actually is linked to your question.

We may not necessarily stop gathering data or the data collection may end up being a little more focused if we get archivists into the equation, saying, “Well, think about what you want to collect and how you want to keep it and the reason why you want to keep it.” That may determine the policy.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I have to cut you off because your time is up. However, Mr. Byrne, you may get another turn a bit later.

We will now go to Mr. Aspin, who has the floor for five minutes.