Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning to the committee members and my colleagues from the department.
My name is Pierre Ferland, and I am the chief information officer at NRCan. I am accompanied by Prashant Shukle, director general of the Earth Sciences Sector.
This is my first appearance before you, and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you about our experience with open data and to answer your questions.
If you know the history of NRCan going to back to the origins of it in 1842, the creation of the geological survey commission has always been about developing information for purposes of dissemination to Canadians in businesses, so, for us, the concept of open data is a natural extension to that. It's a new channel, essentially. It started with maps and survey reports and it expanded to more information, so we've always been strong supporters of open data.
We recently participated in the CODE experiment, the Canadian Open Data Experience exercise, and one of our data sets, specifically, in this case, the vehicle fuel consumption, was used in collaboration with information from transport to create one of the top 20 apps. It was called CAN Fuel.
We publish open data on the topics of forestry, mining and extraction, and energy efficiency, but of course—as referred to by my colleague from Stats—one of our core products is in the geomatics area and maps, and I will let my colleague Prashant tell you more about this and our experience there.