Government Operations Committee on May 13th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Adler.

Ms. Day, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is for Mr. Deslauriers.

I will use the expression "open data users". A data user can be a child, an adult citizen, an NGO, a government, an expert, a researcher or any other person on the site. Users use the site depending on their own research needs or individual needs. For example, if I was going on holiday, I would look for weather data. This is an area for which the federal government is responsible, but this information should also be on the portal.

In the case of Quebec City, public money is being used to pay for the development of these data sources. How does our city—I am also from Quebec City—evaluate the data site?

[Denis Deslauriers]

Could you be more specific? You want to know how much the site cost or how the site is perceived by citizens?

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

No. I would like to know how you find out from citizens what they think of the value of the site.

[Denis Deslauriers]

As with other levels of government, we haven't really promoted the fact that people can use the data on the site. As it now stands, we are still dealing mostly with developers, so they can create applications which will improve the collective well-being.

A few moments ago, I talked about parking, traffic, recreational activities and how to find municipal equipment. These are things which are useful for citizens to know about as they go about their daily lives. However, they cannot transform the existing data in information which is useful to them. For that, we need developers. We are still at that stage.

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

You referenced Quebec City.

[Denis Deslauriers]

We have to go further and we need to have tools which will allow everyday people, people who are not computer experts, to interpret the data, to draw conclusions and to share information with others. You know that everybody is plugged into a social network. This is what we saw in Quebec last year, during the student protests. People communicate with each other. How can we provide them with the right information so that they can talk to each other about real things, and not share information which might not be reflective of reality? That is the second part which we will work on with regard to the portals, in other words, to provide accurate information which is useful to ordinary citizens.

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

My next question is for all the witnesses.

One of the objectives of our study is to give people access to open data which is useful and usable, and which would help to stimulate economic growth. Do the various portals reach that objective?

Mr. Deslauriers can answer, or maybe one of the representatives from the City of Montreal, or the representative for Newfoundland and Labrador. In fact, all three witnesses can respond.

[Denis Deslauriers]

Generating wealth is not easy. You have to encourage people to do so.

As a comparison, if I had put 25 smartphones in a room even before they had been put on the market, you would not have known what they were. Perhaps you would have looked at them, but you would not have known how to get them to work, nor what they might be useful for. You would not have used them.

It's more or less the same thing with open data. People don't really know how to use it. You have to get them to do so. We had to convince one CEGEP after another to develop applications. Today, they understand the usefulness of these applications and they appreciate them.

Citizens who use these applications are also happy. The applications do not yet officially generate wealth, but one way to make sure they are sustainable is to get young people to create businesses for that very purpose. These applications will allow people, for instance, to find a parking spot without risking a $45 parking ticket. People will gladly pay $1, $1.50 or $2 for an application from an application store. If there was a way to help people easily find out what is available in the area so they can have an even nicer evening without paying much more, by accessing an application store, that would be a way of creating wealth. We have to find ways to do this.

There are other data, for instance, on contaminated land on which there has been drilling activity. These lands are located in municipalities and provinces; the federal government also is responsible for contaminated sites. It is possible to transform this information into open data so that people who have to work on a given piece of land, regardless of whether the land belongs to a level of government or a business, can find out what others have already paid for the drilling.

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

Let me stop you here.

It seems to me that in G8 member countries, data must be accessible, universal and free. In fact, these data have already been paid for by taxpayers. Did you say that you are making people pay for open data?

[Denis Deslauriers]

No. The data are free, but people will have to buy the application created by using the open data. The application, for instance, might be to find a parking spot without risking a parking ticket. This type of application could be sold in an application store which would have been developed by others, who would have worked on that. Those people would not be reselling data; they are selling a service. If you want to get to a certain place, an application could tell you where parking is available and where you could park on the street. The application could tell you, in real time, where available parking meters are located and whether there are parking spots left in major parking lots. So with the help of this application, you will be able to find out where you can park your car. People might be willing to pay $1 or $2 for this type of application. The city would not have developed the application, nor paid for it; this application would have been designed by the private sector.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

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

Mr. Hillyer, it's your turn for five minutes.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Hollett, you said that Newfoundland has been working with open data since 2000.

[Alton Hollett]

I said we've been very active in sharing data since 2000. If I stretched the definition of open data, I could say that, but I'm not going to do that.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

At what point would you say the notion of open data even became part of the conversation in Newfoundland?

[Alton Hollett]

Last year.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

If you don't want to stretch the definition of open data, I don't expect you to call it something...but what were you doing that's changed now that open data is part of the conversation?

[Alton Hollett]

That's an interesting question.

In the past we'd have people come to us and say, “I've looked at the community accounts, and you have your table, so you must have an awful lot more data to have created those” and our answer was yes. If somebody wanted that and they asked for it, we would deal with the privacy and confidentiality issues and we would provide it to them on request.

What's changed is that with open data there is essentially a focus now on the more elemental forms of the data that before, for example, we might have put in a table form, or for that matter, the data could be in a lot of government administrative databases and that sort of thing. From our perspective, the big change now with open data is that governments have embraced the idea of providing that additional elemental form. In the past, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of what we provided had value added to make it easy to understand, easy to use, and easy to access.

With regard to business development and that sort of thing in particular—because I think that's probably where a lot of the action is going to be in terms of open data in our province, and I suspect, in lots of others—what we plan to do, as we consult, is to see what businesses think they need and what would be useful. That, in combination with our own thinking in terms of the data sets we may have in government that we can bring forward and that will be useful to people for that particular purpose, presents an opportunity now, with the open data commitment by government, to actually begin moving some of that data out there.

One point I haven't heard anybody mention here this morning, which I would like to just toss out there, is that if you really think of what a best practice would be in terms of a good, solid organization providing open data, one of the things would be rejigging how that organization does its business and builds its databases and sets up its databases, and so on and so forth, so that it gets the data out there efficiently and effectively.

For example, you would build your administrative databases in that manner, change your organizational process so that you could actually get access to those data efficiently, and then do at least the minimum that is adequate to make sure that raw data, when it's out there, even though it's raw, is still good quality. That's one thing I haven't heard anybody mention. I haven't heard that mentioned pretty much anywhere.

I don't know if you have, sir, but it really is something that needs to be thought of, because the resources required to provide open data are huge. Right now I would argue that the resources required to do it today are probably 50 times what they should be, just because you have the administrative databases that are just not designed to provide that kind of data.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mary, would you like to comment on his suggestion and his recent comment?

[Prof. Mary Francoli]

I agree. It takes time, effort, and resources to develop quality data that can be put out there. It's not just about taking data and putting it up on a website. There are a lot of other components to it. It needs to be good quality data that people can use.

Ideally, there should be not only data specialists but also, as I said during my comments, people who might have lower levels of expertise with raw data. That's a really difficult thing to address. There are different types of software programs that allow for data visualization, which people can plug raw data sets into and they might get something out of them in a much more meaningful way. It might even be just a matter of identifying those sorts of technologies and providing them on a data portal or linking to them on a data portal for people to use.

I'm kind of departing a little bit from what you said, but I think you made really very good points.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hillyer.

To conclude, I will give the floor to Ms. Day for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My questions will be mainly for Mr. Fortin, from the City of Montreal.

Mr. Fortin, data is collected, stored and transferred, but one often gets the impression, in the case of collecting and storing, that the data accumulates into something like a library with a million books. One needs the right tools to be able to read them. However, an average citizen is not usually capable of reading datasets.

I believe the City of Montreal has 106 datasets. How often are the new datasets made available? Which datasets are downloaded the most frequently? Does the City of Montreal expect to realize savings or make its cultural and creative services more popular by having an open data website?

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

Your question contains many parts.

It has maybe been difficult to make data available because of the approach that has been used up until now, which has been more or less successful.

Currently, data is released on a somewhat discretionary basis. There has maybe also been a lack of understanding about ownership of the data. Those in charge of the various municipal services are automatically deemed the owners of this data and it is at their discretion that data is released or not. Therefore there is, generally speaking, resistance. There is also a lack of consistency from one service to the other in terms of which data is released.

Of course we are thinking about an approach that would involve a model for others to follow. Take, for example, the American model which, besides being open by default, also includes an action plan. Under the American model, each department, each agency must, within a specific period of time, release a specific number of datasets from the accumulated legacy data. Furthermore, the expression "by default" implies that data within future systems will have to be what is called open data.

In terms of the quality of the data, there have been many discussions on what is open data and how it should be defined. I think we should be referring back to the charter signed by the G8 countries, of which Canada is a member. There are certain characteristics that define open data. Open data must be complete, primary or raw, timely, accessible, machine-readable, non-discriminatory, commonly owned, free of licensing restrictions, permanent, and available at little or no cost. When those characteristics are met you have true open data. Those qualities should also be true of any government initiative on open data programs. It is not enough to provide raw data; that data has to meet the criteria that I have just listed for them to be truly open.

You asked if the city will realize savings. That is not the current purpose. The main concern or goal of the current administration is that of transparency, for all kinds of reasons, including recent events. The city must be very open and agree to releasing all data as well as information on its own administration.

The data that is most frequently consulted deals with daily life. I am referring here to city websites on sports, recreation, parks and cultural events. We recently organized a programming marathon with the cities of Quebec and Sherbrooke on the events occurring in our respective areas. That is the kind of data that is of particular interest to citizens and that is downloaded.

Other kinds of data that are used deal with transportation, traffic lights, bus schedules and other similar kinds of information.

Could you please remind me what your other questions were?

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

I think my time is up. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Yes, Ms. Day, your time is up.

On that note, I would like to thank you all for coming to this morning's meeting. Ms. Francoli, Mr. Deslauriers, Mr. Hollett, and Mr. Fortin, live from Montreal, who was accompanied at the beginning of the meeting by Mr. Chitilian, thank you all for your expertise. Your testimony will certainly help us with our study, which is reaching its end.

I would like to remind committee members that we will meet again on Thursday at the same time. It will be our last meeting for hearing testimony on open data. After that, we will come back on Tuesday, May 27 and Thursday, May 29 for the purposes of other study topics.

Before adjourning, I would just like to confirm that the Clerk of the Privy Council wanted to appear on his public service report, but he was not available on May 27. He has asked if he can appear on June 5. If the committee agrees, we could modify our schedule. There appears to be agreement.

We will set aside some time at the end of our Thursday meeting in order to discuss witnesses for our next study. I know that the government party has already submitted a few names but if the other parties also want to submit names, they will have an opportunity to do that next Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.