Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2014

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Okay.

[Stephen Walker]

There's another one for extractive resources. There's another one for financing.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Do you get together with your counterparts in other areas and other jurisdictions on a regular basis to discuss these kinds of things?

[Stephen Walker]

Yes, continuously.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Where do you see this in five years or ten years? Not that we're going to hold you to it, but....

[Stephen Walker]

I think that if we continue to follow the road we're following now, the aspirations we have for federated open data will be met. We'll be talking about a world where you can go to any one of an unlimited number of portals, search data and be able to pick which jurisdictions you want the data from, and then have that come back to you in one common set of returns.

I think there are other areas where progress is still required, such as licensing. There's the fact that you need to be able to make the data available without restriction for any kind of reuse. That's a longer road going forward. We're doing well. I think Canada's doing well. There are other places where there's still a lot of work in front of them.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

You time is up.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today. This has been very instructive.

Can you tell us what means the government intends on using to decide whether information should be in the portal or if it is confidential?

[Stephen Walker]

That's a great question.

If we assume an open-by-default regime, then we're just accepting data that can't be published. All the rest of the data, by default, will be published. So what is the criteria that we will use to accept data? We have an operational checklist that we use currently and share with departments, and it's called the selection criteria for open data. Basically, it looks at whether or not the data has been tested for personal data concerns, such as confidentiality, security, and whether or not the Government of Canada owns the data. There are two or three other criteria factors that are listed.

Ultimately, the owner of the data is the individual department. We will hold the individual departments responsible for assessing their own criteria, but we will tell them or help them to define what that criteria is. Then we will have a quality assurance as the data is provided to be published on the portal.

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

Are those criteria currently public?

For example, if I wanted to put information about the Department of the Environment in the portal, would I be able to find out beforehand which criteria might prevent me from doing that?

[Sylvain Latour, Director, Open Government Secretariat, Treasury Board Secretariat]

The specific directive has not been published yet. We have a draft that departments can consult and comment on. However, we use existing legislation. When we need to determine what constitutes confidential data, the Privacy Act applies. The same applies for other situations.

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

Who decides what will be allowed or not? Does the department decide?

[Sylvain Latour]

Under the process we follow, the deputy ministers must designate a person who is responsible for information management within their department. It is that individual, who is appointed by the deputy minister, who is responsible for telling us that the criteria are being met and that the information can be published.

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

Last year, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada announced that 90% of federal scientists did not feel free to speak about their work to the media and that 25% of them had stated that they had to omit some of the information or modify it.

Who gives those criteria to the scientists?

[Sylvain Latour]

I apologize but I cannot answer that question.

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

Mr. Walker, can you respond?

How can one say that the government wants to implement open and transparent initiatives when information is controlled in this country?

What directives do you give the departments for the purposes of controlling information?

[Stephen Walker]

There are two points.

First, we have to allow individual departments to apply the criteria individually, because there are individual legislations and mandates within each department that may place restrictions on that data. Certain legislation doesn't allow for the data to be shared.

Second, you heard us talk about how the inventorying of data will be a requirement under the new directive. We plan to publish the inventory so the public will see what data existed within the department and what data had been published. If they have questions or queries about why data was not published, they'll be able to address those directly to the department responsible.

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

Is there not a discrepancy between the statement in the G8's Charter on open data, that is that there be transparency by providing free and universal access to data, and the fact that there is “a certain degree of control over information”? I am putting those words in quotation marks because I do not want to target any one individual.

The minister said earlier that it was not necessary to know those people for information to be in the portal. I am hoping he was joking.

[Sylvain Latour]

Before information is made available, we have to make sure that we are allowed to make it available. In some areas, information is circulated rather freely between various individuals with no consideration for who has rights, who is responsible and who is allowed to make the information available.

We have to make sure in all cases that we are not giving access to information that could be prejudicial to a sector other than our own. In the case of research, information belongs to a university or a researcher. We must do our due diligence and make sure that the information being published is Canada's, that we have the right to publish it and that it is not prejudicial to anyone.

The minister must implement processes for that purpose. The Treasury Board directive, which is currently in a draft form, will require that departments do this, but they have the control over their data.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Ms. Day, your time is up. Thank you.

Mr. Aspin, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Welcome to our committee this afternoon, gentlemen.

I'm going to focus on some internal questions to TBS with respect to open data, and three questions in particular.

Has the federal government established some kind of a dialogue with public servants to identify which data sets should be prioritized for release to improve efficiencies within the government?

Who would like to answer that, maybe Mr. Walker?

[Stephen Walker]

Sure.

Yes, we have. As we mentioned, we've identified a lead-specific open data coordinator in every department. We then charge the open data coordinators, let's say in Environment Canada, to be able to go out to the business areas of Environment Canada, find out what data should be prioritized for release. It goes back to the data coordinator, and the data coordinator comes back to us. That goes along with the ongoing development of the portal, the development of standards. This is in consultation with all the departments that are participating in open data.

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

Okay, because according to several witnesses we've heard, public servants represent a large segment of the open data users.

Has the government's open data portal transformed the way public servants work with one another? For example, has it fostered better decision-making internally or a more efficient utilization of public services?

[Stephen Walker]

I think the answer is yes. I'm not sure we can quantify the answer specifically, but certainly for a department to make a decision to share a data set with the world, they've shared it with the rest of the government by default. What we see happening is all kinds of increased collaboration on the development of data sets specifically that meet multiple mandates from different departments. We see efficiencies in the management of the data, because instead of the same data set being maintained and managed in multiple departments, it'll be managed in one place.

So I would say yes, we've seen both efficiencies and a larger tendency toward collaboration among different departments.

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

As Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for many government-wide initiatives, which particular data sets would be most useful to officials within the department in terms of open government data?

Could you make that assessment?