Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 7th, 2010

[Michael Mulley]

I'm not sure, but largely there's not an incentive to do so. Is my site destroying the integrity of the data when I make it searchable by someone's name? Some people might say yes, but I would say that makes it more useful.

I could certainly go in and change what people said on my site. Then someone would quickly notice and no one would ever visit it again, and the official government data source would keep its integrity and remain the official source of data.

I don't see too may risks of this happening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson.

Go ahead, Mr. St-Cyr.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Mulley. First all, I'd like to congratulate you on your website. I sympathize with you over the problems you had reading Hansard. It's not always easy, even for mere mortals. Sometimes I have trouble finding my own statements in Hansard. That says a lot.

I'd like to know if you have observed that people logging on to your website to get information are looking for something different. Let me explain what I mean.

A number of MPs are concerned about specific issues, in particular those who live in urban areas like mine where there really isn't any local media. People can get a lot of information about their leaders and about the parties, but very little about their MP. This criticism about the state of democracy in our society is one that we often hear.

For example, are people looking for something more by way of information from a website like yours than what they would find in the media in general? Are those logging on to the website focused mainly on the parties and their leaders? Or are people more interested in their own MP, in his comments and actions?

[Michael Mulley]

Users of the website are in fact very interested in MPs. This is one of the great opportunities that the website data affords the Bloc Québécois. It provides information on party activities closer to home. When I'm in Montreal, the local newspapers cover events happening on the Island. However, the website provides specifics on what my MP said in Parliament or in the National Assembly, something that a local newspaper won't cover.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Still on the same subject, there is much discussion today in the traditional media of the instantaneous nature of information and of the way in which people view current news and data from a short-term perspective. Do you think a website like yours, Facebook entries and other blogs only serve to emphasize this approach?

I'm thinking here about Facebook, because I use this medium a great deal. Naturally, my entries are in chronological order. Anyone wishing to review my profile can see what I've been up to, but won't get much of a long-term perspective.

Is there any basis for this concern? Since people decide for themselves how they will be using the data, shouldn't this be an opportunity to possibly give them a more long-term perspective of an MP's or government's accomplishments? How do think this affects how people perceive their work in the short-term?

[Michael Mulley]

That is a very interesting question. I don't think we give this much thought when we look to publish data. It comes down to the perception of Internet users. It's interesting, but I don't know what people are thinking.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

For example, if a website provides election-related information, the latest speeches and articles, it is choosing to provide a short-term snapshot of the situation. However, a programmer or historian could take that same data and use it to make a historical presentation spanning a longer period of time. Ultimately, the individual decides how that information will be used and presented.

[Michael Mulley]

That's right. Because the data is public, different kinds of presentations are possible.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I'd like to stay on the subject of data and the criticisms that have been levelled.

WikiLeaks has been in the news a lot these days. I don't want to get into the politics of this issue, but one thing we're constantly hearing about in the news is these hundreds of pages of information. Of what use is this massive amount information to the average person, or even to an expert? The same can be said of Hansard. If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Speaker's Salon off the back corridor, you will find a library filled with copies of Hansard. The same information can be accessed on the website.

I have a question that I already know the answer to, but I'd still like to get your opinion. Could the availability of so much information cloud the real issue and make it even harder for members of the public to access information that is truly useful?

[Michael Mulley]

That's one of the great challenges of the years we're living in right now. Our society and our professional lives are increasingly about dealing with these huge gluts of information. That's why a lot of the focus of industry, of Internet companies, of technology is increasingly on finding ways to deal with the glut of information and make data useful. That's one of the reasons I talk about the innovation that releasing data makes possible. Finding what's valuable in data is a future of the digital economy.

So yes, I'm scared and fascinated by the huge quantities of information we're all increasingly expected to process, but the only way forward is to find solutions and find ways as a society that we can deal with the information. Releasing data is one of the best routes to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. St-Cyr.

Ms. Block, five minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I join my colleagues in welcoming you here today, and agree with Mr. Siksay, Mr. Mulley, when he comments on your passion for open government and the repurposing and redistributing of information. It's very evident. My questions, though, will be for Mr. Moore. If you feel you have something you would like to offer, I'm open to that as well.

First of all, Mr. Moore, you mentioned the need to engage the community, and the question you needed to have answered is who is the community? When your municipality determined to move to an open government model, how did you go about determining who the community was?

[Chris Moore]

Excellent question.

When I had to respond to the council inquiry and write a report, the first thing I did was I went to the social media world and I asked who would like to collaborate. It was one of the first council reports that was collaboratively written. We had 39 people from across North America. My challenge was to take all that information and turn it into a format that would be presentable to council and still maintain the integrity of the source information.

When we went to the community, we went twice: once in November 2009 and once in March 2010. We just went out. We asked anybody who was interested in this to please come.

The first meeting we had was more city staff and a few technology experts who knew we were working on it, so there were about 45 people for a population of 850,000. At the second meeting we had in March of this year we had over 120 people. We webcast it in English and in French, and we had 50 people over the web. The archives of all that are still online. We had people from across the country.

At the second meeting we wanted people--not just the technology people, we wanted people in other levels of government, academia, just regular people. We did end up with that.

It's just engaging in the conversation. People are more interested in talking about the usefulness of the data. The developers want the data, they're going to make applications, but the people want to know how that will tell them tomorrow that their garbage needs to go out. That's one of the applications that was created as well.

It was an open invitation.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Okay, so that's a good segue into my next question. How did you determine or what criteria did you use in determining what data would be of high value to your constituents?

[Chris Moore]

We had a lot of information on our website, and it was in non-readable formats, PDFs and text. We also looked at the number of calls to our 311. People were looking for information. We wanted it to be driven by the public, as opposed to the city believing this is what they needed. Again, we went for things we knew people were looking for: transit schedules, waste pickup, neighbourhood boundaries, road closures. Some things are really practical that we know people are looking for.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I used to be the mayor of a very small community, so the whole notion of open government wasn't that difficult.

As a city council, did you experience any increased costs in moving toward the open government model?

[Chris Moore]

No, we didn't. Actually, we've seen some cost savings. For example, we made the schedule available. There are multiple applications now, and our transit people have recorded fewer calls from people asking about the bus. When's the bus coming? What's the schedule? I can't tell you that they're printing any fewer paper copies of the schedule, but there's an opportunity.

In terms of where we're running, our open data catalogue runs in “the cloud” which is just the Internet. It's public information, so we have it publicly available. That didn't cost anything either. We like to be cost-conscious, frugal. It's great. If you're going to have open data, then it might as well be in an open format. I like our data catalogue. It is not behind our firewall; it is out in the public domain.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you.

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You can ask a small question.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I want to ask Mr. Mulley a quick question.

Do you anticipate or foresee any changes that will need to be made to our current legislation--privacy, access to information, or more specifically PIPEDA?

[Michael Mulley]

This may be a question for Mr. Moore. I'm far from a legislative expert; I'm a computer programmer.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Okay.

Mr. Moore.

[Chris Moore]

I too am far from being a legislative expert, but I spent a lot of time with our Privacy Commissioner. From a Canadian perspective, I think the answer is probably yes, only because Australia went through some of that. It's more about providing clarity on what is private and what is public.

The great thing about open data is that it really starts to solidify what is open and publicly available, and also draws some really clear lines for what is private. So I would say it probably does. There are some things that need to be changed, because new definitions needs to be inserted into the legislation.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Ms. Block.

Dr. Bennett.