Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for inviting me to participate. Obviously the area I specialize in is technology so if I can be of assistance to committee members around technology issues, I'd be very happy to do that. In closing I think it's a tremendous opportunity. We have a long way to

Government Operations committee  I think my colleagues have said it very well. We have to be careful, obviously, about sharing open data with personal, private information. By and large that does not happen except in specific circumstances. But there is data that can be shared that would historically or traditi

Government Operations committee  I think this is a very important point. Going back to my point that I made earlier, the amount of data is only going to increase. I think where government can help is by providing easy access to that data, based on the way that consumers and citizens want to access it. Don't fo

Government Operations committee  Sorry, are you asking for final comments? Is that your question?

Government Operations committee  Yes, I think I would totally agree with that. I think there are already examples of where we've seen transformational things being done with government data that's being used by commercial entities. One of the examples that David will be very familiar with was back in the early

Government Operations committee  The last thing I would say—sorry, I have just one more point—is that we have a sea, an ocean, of data coming down the line. If you guys think the data we're sitting on today is it, it is not. Even the data that the government alone will produce is nothing compared to what we call

Government Operations committee  I think I would build on earlier comments. I think this is about reducing friction. Many governments around the world build their open data policies on the freedom of information legislation or access to information legislation that they have in place. I think this issue is reall

Government Operations committee  Sure. The comment I was going to make on this is that first of all it's important that you have attribution: who is accountable for curating a particular dataset? That's very key here. The second thing I would say is that it's very important to have an agreed feedback loop wher

Government Operations committee  I think one of the things that I would point to, as a way of responding to this question, is that we're starting to see some interesting relationships outside of the traditional, say, government/industry relationship pattern, particularly around open data. One example that I woul

Government Operations committee  One of the areas I would focus on is data that is locked in siloed government data stores. I'll give you a very simple example, I was working with the Government of Slovenia and I met with their bureau of statistics. One of the challenges they had is.... I don't know whether an

Government Operations committee  I hope that was....

Government Operations committee  I think one thing that's very important to understand with this topic is that all data is inaccurate to a certain level, so you can't wait until the data is 100% accurate to share it. That's something that some government departments feel very concerned about. Again I agree with

Government Operations committee  First of all, I can only obviously comment on the jurisdictions where I have personal experience. I would say a couple of things. If I back up a little bit and re-clarify what I said earlier on, I think where we see a top-down approach such as in the U.K. and the U.S.... And wha

Government Operations committee  Hello, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to participate this morning. It's bright and early in Vancouver. My name is Mark Gayler. I work for Microsoft Canada. I've been working with Microsoft for more than 10 years. I'm a technology strategist for Microsoft Canada.