Government Operations committee  Just to keep it brief, I would say I hope I have impressed on this committee the responsibility it has when thinking about this issue. A lot of people are going to come before you and talk about the huge opportunity and the money. This stuff matters. I want you to be thinking ho

Government Operations committee  I agree; I think there are criteria that we need to be worried about. The first would be making sure that we're not releasing data that has personal information in it, or at least not releasing data that has personal information that we don't want to be releasing. I'm quite happy

Government Operations committee  You guys actually have a much bigger responsibility than I think people would let on. I'll maybe share that more in closing. As an illustration of that, I love what Clay Christensen, a famous author and Harvard Business School professor, says, that when you destroy the value in

Government Operations committee  Yes, agreed.

Government Operations committee  I think there are numerous examples and I don't say this to pick on this particular government. As previously said, all governments get cautious around sharing data and information. One of the reasons we have a competitive political process is to keep people honest. There are tw

Government Operations committee  And I would say that the product recall data.... The federal government has an app on product recall data, which strikes me as a great example. When you look at the data that underlies that app, only some of it is available in the open data portal. But you have to be the most OCD

Government Operations committee  That's an excellent question. I agree with the carrot and the stick. I'm a big fan of carrots and I've used them with this government, but I'm also a believer in sticks. So the question is how do you manage both. And the question of culture is enormously important. It doesn't

Government Operations committee  I don't disagree. It's actually enormously difficult to get governments to provide data, especially data that might make them uncomfortable. My hope is that longer term we could end up in a world where we have a more iterative review of government where we're less driven by the

Government Operations committee  I have about three pieces of advice today. I'm really glad you raised the G-8 because there are some things going on there that I think are quite interesting. The first thing I would say is that at a very tactical level I worry about some of the ways we might be slipping around

Government Operations committee  I'll try to be brief. I agree with you. I think there needs to be accountability, especially around datasets that government is using to make decisions. I am interested in crowdsourcing, but I think there are incredible limits around how to do it. Even in the example of peer t

Government Operations committee  I was really hoping we were going to go in reverse order for once. I don't know whether this takes us out of the pack. This is going to be boring and technical, but the danger we have with open data right now is the thing we're tacking on at the end of the process. You have a go

Government Operations committee  I will answer in English, as I cannot explain all the nuances in French. There are a few things I would say. First, I think we have to look at some timelines here that are going to matter. I love the point about students using open data in their research. Prior to the release

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. I agree there's opportunity there, but for the reasons you mentioned, I'd be fairly conservative about how I would try to engage in that opportunity. One of the things that the government has done, and I think has been quite effective, has been a canonical source for

Government Operations committee  Yes. If I were looking at this committee and I was trying to think about how we were going to assess the value of Canada's open data policies, I'd be looking at three things. The first thing I'd be looking at is whether we are thinking strategically about the policy in economic

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Just so Mark doesn't get all the credit, I'd like to note that I also just came in from Vancouver, so it's also 5:45 in the morning for me.