Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 7th, 2011

[Dr. Penny Ballem]

Thank you.

From our perspective, we can see that we need to build some skill sets in our staff. First of all, as you start to publish data, the ability of the public and partners to pull that data together and create a more complicated story does drive them to do the same thing. I think we who have worked in bureaucracies all know that sharing of information across the bureaucracy isn't something that comes naturally.

I would say our staff is on an enthusiastic learning curve about how much better they can ramp up the integration of data across a lot of interesting policy areas that are important to council. We are trying to provide skills. We're working to put together a small corps of people who are good at that, who like to use it so they can collaborate within the organization to help resource the rest of the department so they can get some help with moving it along faster.

I would say we're building some skills across staff, some of whom have been there a long time. There's a lot of enthusiasm for it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Siksay.

Ms. Davidson, seven minutes.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank our three presenters here this afternoon. I think all of us sitting at this table have certainly enjoyed what you have relayed to us. Sometimes after you've been into a study for as many weeks as we have, you wonder if you're going to hear something new and exciting and different, and I think we've heard that today. I think the message each of you has brought us has been very beneficial.

I'm going to start by asking Mr. Michaud a question, please. You have had some remarkable success, it sounds like, for the length of time you've been involved in this process. I think that you and your organization deserve a lot of credit for that, because I don't think it's an easy thing to do. But the one thing you did outline was that you had public involvement from day one and that you did public consultation. Could you tell us how you did the public consultation? Outside consultants? In-house? The social media? Or was it a combination?

[Guy Michaud]

I would like to answer that question by explaining to you my personal journey through this open data event and the consultation.

We at the City of Ottawa have an IT subcommittee. The purpose of the committee is to look at any issues dealing with technology. As I mentioned earlier, we were requested by council to review our data dissemination policy.

If you live in Ottawa, you know we have a fiscal reality to deal with. Those IT subcommittees are open to the public. They are open to delegations. One delegation represented said to the committee if you give us access to the data, we'll develop the application free of charge to the city. That caught a lot of attention from the elected officials. This is how I first became aware of the community out there who wanted to have open data.

Following that, they invited me to what is called a hackerfest, where people go in for a weekend or half an afternoon and develop an application that is good for the region and the city. I saw the enthousiasme of the participants. They were trying to work to get a better city. We began to exchange information: their views, what they were looking for, what they need from us. Everything followed after that.

We never used outside consultants. We also talked to our colleagues in other cities and tried to learn from their experiences to see what we could do and what we could share in order to move forward. From day one we began to keep in touch with those individuals. I mentioned earlier the Apps4Ottawa contest we had. We said we would like to launch apps for our contest; what do you recommend for categories, prizes, judging panels, etc.? From day one, they continued to exchange information. We never used outside consultants. We used the residents. That's how we did it.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you very much. That's certainly interesting.

Mr. Beamish, I think you indicated that you have responsibilities, both municipal and provincial, through your office, and that you felt that open government was done best at the municipal level.

From my involvement at the municipal level, I can see that the type of data people want is day-to-day, and you are definitely far closer to the people at the municipal level and are dealing with issues that they deal with on a day-to-day basis, whereas once you get to the provincial level you are a little further removed, and at the federal level I think you are a bit more removed again.

First of all, my question would be whether you would agree that this might have something to do with how well it's accepted or perceived to be done.

My other question for you would be this. In your opinion, what kind of federal data do you think would be of high value to Canadians? What would they do with it? What are the possibilities? What kinds of avenues would this open up for us?

[Brian Beamish]

I agree with your first statement. Just from my own observation in Ontario, I believe that municipalities that have gone down this road have done it better. Not every municipality in Ontario, obviously, has done what the cities of Ottawa or Toronto or Vancouver have done; there is still a patchwork. But those that have engaged in this concept and principle have done a very good job of it.

As to why that is, I don't know. It may be, as you say, that they are closer to the kinds of data people want. It may be that it's easier for them to adopt a principle and philosophy as a collective and put it into action, as compared with other levels of government that are dealing with multiple ministries and such. I'm not sure exactly why it is. Quite often in the United States public policy development happens at the state level rather than the federal level. It may be the same type of thing that's happening here: they are a bit like a laboratory that can try new ideas to see whether they work.

I can speak from the Ontario experience about the kind of data. In addition to the types of things that you've heard about, we have tried to put an emphasis on transparency of expenditures, the general principle being that the public has a right to know how public dollars are being spent.

I've seen a progression. In Ontario we have a Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act; I mentioned in my comments the extent to which posting of expenses is now required; we're making inroads in contracts. In terms of the kinds of formal FOI requests we get, we get a lot based on procurement: who won the competition and how much money they are getting. I think we'll continue to stress that area.

I think public expectations will drive this. I think we're not far from a day when government institutions will have to make their procurement process fully transparent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson.

Thank you, colleagues. That concludes the first round.

We're now going to go to the second round of questions, for five minutes, starting with Dr. Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

We heard during the summer that different levels of government, particularly the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, would like the census data to be available without their having to pay for it again. They've already paid for it as a taxpayer; why do they have to pay for it again? In terms of the kind of data that you could use, would the census data and survey data that Statistics Canada collects be the first thing you would get up and online to start with?

How much does either of your cities pay to get census data? As I guess Penny knows, at the Public Health Agency of Canada we had the map generator project, whereby you could put the census data up and be able to map, with GIS, problems that you can show your citizens in a very simple way. Would that be one of the recommendations in the report, to get the census data up there and free?

[Dr. Penny Ballem]

Census data is used extensively by municipal governments, as are such things as the household survey and many of the various health surveys that are done. I can't tell you how much we spend on those, but that kind of data is invaluable to us, and we need to be able to access it as much in real time as possible. There is a host of other StatsCan data that would also serve us extremely well, if we could access it more readily.

Stats Canada, as you know, has developed a number of tools to help fairly sophisticated users utilize their data sets, and I think it will be quite a transformation for them to potentially make it broadly available to all the public. I think the benefit of that enormous treasure trove of really valuable population-based information could be an enormous step forward in this country towards allowing us to address, as I said, important public policy issues.

[Guy Michaud]

Like my colleague from Vancouver, I can tell you that the information is very important to us, but I cannot tell you how much we are paying for it.

That being said, when we put the motion for open data in front of the IT subcommittee for a vote, one of the questions we got was whether we were going to sell this data. The concept of open data is to make the information freely available. Conceptually, there was an issue about why we should pay twice for the same thing, what the reason would be for doing so.

I used to joke with some of the elected officials that this will foster economic development, and all of us pay taxes, so sooner or later we are going to get the revenue anyway. I think it is better to make the information readily available free of charge and foster economic development.

The point we made also with some of the elected officials is that the process we would have to put in place to monitor who is downloading it and whether they have paid us and everything else would be more costly than the revenue we would get from selling it in the first place. So just make the information readily available—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Just to follow up on that, by having stuff out there through proactive disclosure, how much money do you think you save in access to information and all those people beavering away trying to—

[Guy Michaud]

We never did any study to determine how much money we had saved, but let's look at the result of our open data Apps4Ottawa contest. The initial investment was $50,000. That's it. Out of that contest, we received over 100 applications, either for smartphones or for websites, etc. After the first review, about 80 of them are what I would call of high enough quality to be considered for the contest.

Getting 80 applications for an investment of $50,000...? There's no way you could get even one developed for that cost. So we may not have savings, but we sure have a nice return on our investment.

[Brian Beamish]

I think you raise an interesting point about potential cost savings under the formal access system. I can give you an example. I know that the City of Toronto, between 2008 and 2009, cut their formal FOI requests by more than half, and they had been at one point the largest recipient of FOI requests in the province. So there can be that beneficial effect, although that might not be why you set out down this road.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Dr. Bennett.

Mr. Albrecht, you have five minutes.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I apologize that I wasn't here for the first part of your presentation. I was at another meeting.

I do thank you for your input. I think those of us sitting around this table have not only found this discussion very enlightening, but also it follows up on our government's commitment to increase the accountability and transparency. I'm really thinking we're definitely moving in the right direction. Maybe we need to move more quickly. I think that's the impression we're getting.

I found the fundamental principles, Mr. Beamish, that you brought from your commissioner interesting. My question somewhat follows up on Ms. Bennett's question. The first one talks about being proactive rather than reactive. You indicated eliminating a costly and cumbersome disclosure process in the last part of that first paragraph.... I don't expect you to have the numbers for what the federal costs would be on access to information requests, but certainly, if my memory is correct, when we had Environment Canada officials before this committee, I think there were something like 15 full-time personnel dedicated simply to processing access to information requests. There's a twofold reason for that. One is the sheer number of requests that are being made, but the other is the complexity in terms of having to dialogue with other departments and so on.

To follow up on the earlier question, would you suggest--I think your earlier response indicated this--that possibly we could expect a 50% reduction in the costs of continuing with the current system of access to information requests if we were to move to a more open data availability?

[Brian Beamish]

The example I gave was the City of Toronto, and they did experience a 50% reduction in the number of requests. The comment I would make is that the resources that organizations have to commit to access to information, to the formal request process, while most of them may have staff who are dedicated to that--and my colleagues can comment--the commitment of resources does go far beyond that. For example, normally the information that needs to be retrieved does not sit with the FOI office; it sits with finance or parks and recreation or another arm of the ministry. It involves a lot of people whose main job is not access to information.

Then I did mention the role of our office in an appeal. So individuals put in a request, get a response, aren't satisfied, and they have the right to appeal to their provincial access to information commissioner, or federally. That, again, involves time and resources that I would suggest could be better spent elsewhere.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I wonder if Dr. Ballem has any response to the question of estimating the potential savings. Certainly, we want to improve efficiency. I think that's clear. You pointed out that this will create economic development opportunities, and we get that. But on the other side of it, there is also the savings aspect, which I think would be good for the Canadian public to know.

[Dr. Penny Ballem]

Thank you, Mr. Member.

This is what I would say. We've experienced quite an increase in freedom of information requests. At a certain point, it's related to a changing government. Really, I think the way you can use this initiative to actually address that is to deconstruct what kind of request you're getting and what is absolutely amenable to just releasing the information regularly and proactively. There's a fair amount of those requests where you can do that.

The Vancouver Police Department uses this, for example. When media put forward FOI requests, they post that on their website. So actually by posting the requests you're getting, and you're not able to identify the requester, that also opens it up and makes it more transparent for the public and everybody to know what we're dealing with. Without any disrespect to my colleague, there is some silliness around FOI sometimes that consumes an enormous amount of time. By being transparent about what people are asking for, that helps mitigate that, and it helps the privacy commissioner understand what you're dealing with when you're having difficulty responding.

I've spent my whole career dealing with a statute that encourages us to share information. It's very, very important. I think, really, we have to continually transform how we're doing that business to make sure we are responsive under the law and responding to our citizens' needs. Sometimes it's not easy, but you have to remain creative. This open data initiative will do nothing but actually help us with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Albrecht.

Madame Thi Lac.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you very much.

My first question is for Ms. Ballem. When I visited the site data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/ that you created, I tried to download documents and files made available by the City of Vancouver. In most cases, my computer did not have the programs required for opening these files and, in other cases, the downloads could not be completed. Do you think that the current data sharing method is effective for Canadians who are not computer experts?

[Dr. Penny Ballem]

I think your question is about one of the most important challenges ahead of us. Our data is being used by a broad array of people. Some of them have a lot of expertise in data analysis and others are just the public. The secret to helping the public use our data and understand it is really in the apps world. Our younger generation particularly has an ability to develop applications to take data that may be quite complex and translate it to make it easily understood. They use some of the new technology that our public is very much taken with and put it to good use. So it's a matter of application development and us developing tools that will make it easier.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Do you feel that the federal government could also come up against similar obstacles by making certain documents available online? I ask that you keep your answer very short.

[Dr. Penny Ballem]

I think every level of government can make use of those methodologies. Every level of government has their mandates and areas. I come from the health sector, which is of importance at both the federal and provincial government levels. There are thousands and thousands of data sets. Many of them are really fairly simple, but they would be of great interest to our public. I believe they could be shared without any risk to individuals or to the policy agenda of a government.

So yes, we've shown that it can be done quickly at a different level, and there's a huge amount of opportunity.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Michaud, in answer to a question my colleague Mrs. Freeman asked you earlier—and this is a topic that Dr. Bennett also touched on—you said that the City of Ottawa is bilingual. You said that you respond to geospatial data requests in the language of the person making the request and that, so far, you have not come across any translation-related obstacles.

I have something to share with you. Last week, we had a witness at one of our committee meetings. We were shown documents translated by Google and, in one of the documents, to my great bewilderment, it said that Colombia was a model of transparency. Of course, I questioned the witness about this, but it made me realize that, in extreme cases, completely erroneous information could result from translation, even if it is done with the best intentions.

What will be the biggest obstacles to overcome with regard to the translation of requested documents?

[Guy Michaud]

To answer your question, I would like to talk about data formats. When we make data available for citizens to download, we use the format used by the city. Let's look at the geospatial data example. There are two or three standards in the industry, and we make our data available in a format that is very recognized.

Our residents use a broad array of software, and it's possible that, in certain cases, they may not have the software needed to read the format.

That being said, there are programs that enable users to convert this data. Normally, there should be no problem with text or spreadsheet files. Our long-term objective is to make several formats available in order to facilitate the residents' use of our data.

Regarding translation, I don't foresee any significant difficulties, except perhaps the effort required and the cost of translation. It's true that we use tools to translate certain documents. When the City of Ottawa issues a document, the translation is verified by translators. We have no intention of translating all the material automatically. Personally, I do not foresee any problems. It's a matter of demand and of our ability to meet it. We also have to know whether there is really a demand for bilingual material.