Evidence of meeting #37 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was moore.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Is there a risk on the up side, that if we get flooded with millions of submissions, we wouldn't actually be able to wade through them all, and possibly create expectations that are unrealistic for us to meet?
Chef Information Officer, Information Technology, City of Edmonton
I understand what you're saying. It's always a risk any time you engage people in that. I don't know how you operate or function, but I don't know if you can have a working group and they could do that work. There's clearly a lot of information that would need to be brought together, looking at other models. There are really only four other countries in the world that have done anything, and three of the four are in the Commonwealth. So that aligns with our approach to government.
Conservative
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Just quickly then, you mentioned a number of cities that have already gone this route, and you mentioned the U.K. and Australia. Are you aware of any Canadian provinces that are already using this open government in the way you described it?
Chef Information Officer, Information Technology, City of Edmonton
My understanding is the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia have work under way. British Columbia released information about climate change. Those are the only two I'm aware of.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
We're now going to start the second round of five minutes each.
Mr. Easter, for five minutes.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, folks, for making the presentations.
Mr. Mulley, your enthusiasm is catching. It certainly makes one want to look into this further.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Yes, I just saw the site, which I didn't know existed and which knows more about me than I do myself, which is maybe not a good thing.
In any event, Mr. Mulley, you called it “repurposing”, and Mr. Moore talked about “scraped the data”, in different circumstances. You are trying to use data for more open purposes, but to use it—as Carolyn said earlier—to get an assessment of the conditions in a certain area and if there is an impact on health care, etc. Could both of you expand on that?
On the other side of that coin, how do you prevent misleading information from getting out there? I just came back from a meeting in the United States that looked at that system. Ours is bad. Theirs is worse, in terms of one side trying to tear the other down with information that's not exactly accurate.
Web programmer, As an Individual
Certainly that's a political problem, but I'm not convinced that releasing data will contribute to that. There is certainly no shortage of inaccurate information being sent by people in news media all around the world. I think providing more information that is raw in terms of data and relatively free of interpretation makes it that much more likely for people to be able to see information at the source and to make up their own mind, in one sense.
Talking about repurposing is also important. One of the defining facts of this age is the glut of information we're all faced with, which makes it easier in some ways for misleading things to get in. One of the great benefits of data, meaning something that is computer-readable, is that you are that much more able to search through it, to get the bits that interest you, to repurpose, to find what's relevant to you.
It's definitely a challenge of the times with the amount of data we are facing and trying to make accurate sense out of it, but I think more information from government is a good thing.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I will come to Mr. Moore in a minute.
We're dealing with one factor of the question in the House today, and that is doing away with the mandatory census. We see that as an extremely serious issue: your data is not going to be as accurate. How do you get around that? I'll turn to Mr. Moore, and then maybe Mr. Mulley can think about that.
Go ahead, Mr. Moore.
Chef Information Officer, Information Technology, City of Edmonton
On your question about information and people creating stories, the best example for me is that Canadians always talk about the weather, everywhere they go. Environment Canada has been releasing weather information since the late 1800s, so they kind of started this whole thing. When the information is available, then people can talk about it and analyze it. When you don't release your data you create a void of information, and when there is a void people will always make up a story.
My experience has always been that the story is pathologic, so if you want the opportunity to get the story out then you release the data. All we're saying is that if you release it in a machine-readable format, over PDF or text, then it's much more useful for people in a broader way.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Moore, you said we need clear direction from the leadership, so what is required? What has to be done to get to where we have to go in terms of access to information, and data getting out there, and it being accurate data? I mean, I can't underline enough the concerns we have about the census.
Chef Information Officer, Information Technology, City of Edmonton
The accurate data comes from the source. The source is managed by the people who own and maintain the data. For us, three things have worked: political sponsorship, administrative leadership, and community engagement.
I've been in Ottawa many times this year, and as a Canadian I'm embarrassed by the state we are in compared to other countries. When I'm there I'm always tweeting at people to say we need to do something. The sad thing is that the last time I was there for GTEC I talked about open government, because it's part of open data, and I was told by a number of staff that they're not allowed to talk about open government, they can only talk about open data.
So there needs to be some heart-to-heart discussion somewhere, and there needs to be the political sponsorship, the administrative leadership, and community engagement.
I was very excited with the invitation from the clerk last week. The work you are doing encourages me, but like anything there need to be some outcomes and some direction. I think it's possible; you just need that.
Liberal
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks very much to Mr. Moore and Mr. Mulley for being here with us this afternoon.
As you can see from the questions you are getting, this is something we are all pretty excited about, but I don't think too many of us have much expertise in this. We're grasping on how we approach this and what the parameters of the study would be.
Mr. Moore, you said something that caught my attention: that people couldn't talk about open government but they could talk about open data. So far we have been calling our study “open government”.
I am wondering if both of you could tell me what open government means to each you, why it's important to you, and why it should be important to Canadians.
Mr. Moore, do you want to start?
Chef Information Officer, Information Technology, City of Edmonton
Absolutely.
One of the things I like to say is that in Edmonton, open government is not new. We've been doing it since 1905, when we joined Confederation.
Using technology enables us to have a deeper level of engagement. If you look at some of the issues in Edmonton over the last little while, whether at the municipal airport or the downtown arena, there have been the traditional public meetings but also a whole host of online social media. So to me, open government is doing what we've always done in this country at all levels of government; but now, with the technology enabling us to have a deeper level of engagement and faster engagement, we leverage it.
Why is it important to Canadians? First of all, we're standing still right now. If we keep standing still and everybody else is moving forward, we are going to move back. We need to do something. As I said earlier, we had a leadership position in the 1990s around e-government and we've lost it. I think it's easy to regain. It's important for national pride, from a heritage perspective. We have done so many great things in this country that other people have taken as theirs—basketball, hockey, insulin—and we have had huge leadership in the use of technology in government, and I think we just need to get back to a leadership position.
Web programmer, As an Individual
To me, open government means a government whose default posture is one of collaboration and cooperation, recognizing that technology enables many more people to comment and participate in the workings of government, and government that is always ready to see where it can spark innovation and that capitalizes on the innovation of others.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you both.
One of the things I've been questioning, as we've had this discussion here this afternoon, is that we talk about having a readable format. Absolutely, I think that if we're going to produce the data, they have to be in a usable format. But one concern I have relates to what I think Mr. Mulley talked about in giving an example of some data on health issues, and perhaps some rates of illness, and so on. So do you think that anybody can just take those data and analyze them? You don't think there's any danger in that?
Web programmer, As an Individual
I'm not necessarily sure what the dangers would be. Assuming that privacy issues aren't at play and nothing is personally identifiable, then no. We're talking in slightly broad terms here, but I believe it absolutely should be the case that researchers—even someone who has training but not necessarily institutional affiliation, and who is interested in looking at rates of illness in Canada—are able to look into that.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
So these would be specialized people who would be looking at the data and drawing conclusions that would be used in their field, for example?
December 7th, 2010 / 4:30 p.m.
Web programmer, As an Individual
Sure, but increasingly the word “specialized” means something like training in statistics and access to the Internet. Of course the people who will want to do this will have a particular interest in the field. We're talking slightly in generalizations, but I think the ability to get at the data, as long as there are no privacy issues for society, is something that could really spark data literacy, an interest in how the country works, and how to make it better among citizens, which I think is a wonderful thing.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
I also wanted to ask you about protecting the integrity of the information. I know that is something that has been brought up many times with me, and certainly I think some Canadians have a great fear of that.
Is there an ability for people to take this machine-readable information and change the data in any way?
