I get excited about this because I like the idea of transparency and open government, and the economic development aspect of it is pretty exciting, too.
However, I'm worrying a bit as I listen, because it strikes me that when we talk about this public asset, once it's up on the Internet, we're not talking about the Canadian public anymore. It's really international. Everybody who has access to the Internet has access to this asset and can use it.
Does that make this open data policy the information equivalent of the export of raw logs? Are we taking a Canadian asset and allowing it to be shipped out of the country unprocessed? How do we guarantee that Canadians get the economic development part of this? How do we ensure that Canadian entrepreneurs are the ones who get to use this data and repurpose it to find those interesting applications? Am I way off track? Are we exporting raw logs by implementing this kind of policy?