Evidence of meeting #23 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was departments.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Do they get paid more money?
That was a joke. Sorry.
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
That might be beyond my scope. There is an ADM committee for the federal government that looks at all open data and open government issues. There are periodic open data workshops that bring together people from both the business side and the technical side. The consultation and communication with departments are continuous.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Is there anything that's going to be published or available to the committee about the kind of comments you're getting back in this process? We're interested. We understand that it's somewhat confidential, but at the same time we're interested in....
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
We could certainly provide a summary of feedback that we've received.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
That would be very helpful. Maybe the clerk could make sure that we receive that.
With respect to the database, instead of being made public, is there an inventory? Is there a place where someone can see that there's a list of databases that can be looked at?
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Absolutely. It's already made available from data.gc.ca. I'm not sure how many of the members have had a chance to actually visit it, but it's remarkably easy to use. You just show up on the front page and punch in a subject and it searches all the data sets. If—
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes.
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
It's alphabetized. It's by department, by subject, by licence, by format.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Okay. One of the witnesses said that this data should be in RDF format. I have no idea what that is, but talk to us about that, and about your perspective.
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
I heard that one. I think what they really were talking about was that we need to look at RDF going forward, just as they do, and everybody else does. None of the jurisdictions is currently making their data available in RDF. It is a developing standard that all jurisdictions are going to be encouraged to look at as we go forward.
We have very specific standards that we use for accessibility currently for all of our file formats, the same ones that are used by the U.S. and the U.K. and all of the other countries that we've been talking about.
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
We'll be doing that with the other jurisdictions collectively.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Okay. That's reassuring.
The U.S. has something called challenge.gov, which lets the public have input into solving problems of the government. Do we have anything like that? Are we looking at anything like that? Is there any merit in this kind of approach? It sounded interesting.
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, it's a bit more broad than open data. It's basically a crowd-sourcing challenge site. I think, like many jurisdictions that are interested in finding a cheaper, more efficient way to do things, maybe we'll start looking at that down the road as well.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
4:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
No, there is no crowd-sourcing platform for the Government of Canada.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you for your understanding.
Mr. Martin, you have the floor for five minutes.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I'm interested, witnesses, if any of you have heard of or are familiar with the open data index put forward by the Open Knowledge Foundation that I was quoting from. Are you familiar with that international organization?
4:50 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
I am, yes.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
How do you feel about the figures that I was reading to the minister of our progress and our place in relation to other developed nations? Was that a surprise to you, or do you track those things in the global—
4:50 p.m.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, there are two main indexes that are currently being used. One is called the open data index and the other one is called the open data barometer. I think another witness might have mentioned the other one as well along the way.
Both of these tools assess a certain number of jurisdictions against specific types of data. For example, we're not being assessed on whether or not we have the best licence or the best portal or the best policy, just what data we make available.
In many cases, Canada is disadvantaged because the federal government doesn't own the data that they're asking for. So when they say 10%, for example, on financial information, that information is way out of date. But we would never get to 100%, because they're talking about data that the provinces and the municipalities also have.
The U.K. doesn't have that problem. They have all the data for everybody at all levels and they can make it available, so they can get to 100% fairly easily. We just don't have that data.
Another tough area for us is health. Another tough one is education. These are provincial jurisdictions and we just don't own the data. I think going forward we're going to have to use the open data initiative, and there are other collaborative activities with the jurisdictions to find ways of partnering on how to get their data out as well.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Let me ask a simple straightforward question then. What are the total costs incurred to date in relation to the federal government's open data initiative to the best of your ability, all parts rounded up to the nearest $100 million if you need to?