Information & Ethics committee  I just want to say how delighted I am to have been part of the conversation today, and thank you very much for your attention. I'd say that this is something that should be taken seriously, because the question of open government and the sharing of data and making government co

Information & Ethics committee  My view is that I think the thing to recognize is that the web as a tool really operates in a culture of scrutiny, and if you are presenting data that isn't the same as the government, which has the high-fidelity authoritative data set—

Information & Ethics committee  —it's going to be obvious. I think you have, certainly, from a question of reputation and especially if you're media and you decide that this is a.... For governments, things don't get bad until the media picks it up, right? If the media picks it up, they have their own processe

Information & Ethics committee  New Zealand is a national government, so certainly things like expenses, as well as.... In New Zealand, deputy ministers are called chief executives, so chief executives' expenses are requested. Statistical information is requested, locations, road information, trail information,

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, some of that, absolutely. If you go to data.govt.nz, you'll see the data catalogue for New Zealand, so that can give you some understanding of what it is they've made available and some of the more popular sets there.

Information & Ethics committee  I have no idea. What I'd recommend to you, though, is an innovative group of public sector web developers in the United Kingdom called mySociety, mySociety.org. They're a non-governmental organization that likes to do government-related things. They designed a site called WhatD

Information & Ethics committee  One of the things you have to realize is that certainly when you're looking at data sets, personal privacy is alongside public safety. It's going to be one of the key things you're going to examine. This is common data management practice. So when we think about things like Stati

Information & Ethics committee  I would say the answer is yes, provided you're ready and willing to be able to capture that information, sort through it, and begin to work with it, and that you're also ready and willing to be engaged in conversations with people. Twitter and Facebook can be remarkable push tech

Information & Ethics committee  My own sense of that is, certainly, you should start with whatever you're publishing already and bring that together. I would recommend you look closely at Statistics Canada data. That has some profound implications for how Canadians understand the nation. Data that I've seen say

Information & Ethics committee  It's a tough one to answer because it is quite new. I think what we're getting right now is people learning to understand that the resource is available. Especially for public servants, who are just beginning to work in this area, they've got some questions. They know it's usefu

Information & Ethics committee  Could I start with the New Zealand question first?

Information & Ethics committee  When I went to New Zealand, I was there working as a consultant with the State Services Commission, which is sort of an oversight body, kind of close, I think, to what Treasury Board Secretariat is here. It focuses on public sector management. In particular I was working with the

Information & Ethics committee  Is your question what sort of data should the federal government start with?

Information & Ethics committee  The key thing for me is it's never really good practice to do a consultation when you're not very clear on what you need to know from Canadians. As well, it's not a good idea to have a consultation in which information, background, and context for people aren't well developed, un

Information & Ethics committee  Beth Noveck was the director of the open government initiative in the White House. She has recently left the White House and is now a professor at New York University. She helped lead some significant consultations with the public about open data and transparency that fed into th