Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 9th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Abbott has the floor. There's no point in our yelling across the floor here.

Mr. Abbott, continue.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Taking NRCan as an example, I'm interested in coming to the point of releasing findings. In the testimony I've heard up to this point, in the time I've been on this committee, there has been a desire to allow dissemination of information that can then be easily manipulated, and I don't think that's necessarily a negative word. In other words, you can't move stuff in a PDF document.

What is your caution with respect to that? If you have data out there, what would the limits be on the manipulation of the data?

[Corinne Charette]

We're not studying or preoccupied with what Canadians would do or how they might use data sets that we would render accessible in machine-usable format from this portal.

There certainly is no end to the imagination and the creativity of programmers. They can take either geospatial information, statistical information--any kind of information--and come up with a good idea, as they've done. They've proven at the municipal level in Canada, and they've proven in the U.K. and the U.S., that there are a lot of interesting and good ideas out there.

We're not concerned about how people will use data. We're concerned about making sure that we can promote data with integrity; that the data that we put out can be correctly interpreted by people of both official languages; that in doing so we are not going to be, for instance, introducing any security issues into our government cyberframework; that we are respecting accessibility, which is an important requirement for government websites; and that we are doing it at a pace and in a way that departments can continue to fulfill going forward. We don't want to be in a position of publishing a portal with a certain inventory of data sets on one day and then having to perhaps take them down because we can't refresh them or because the costs of refreshment are too onerous, and so on.

We're not really preoccupied with how the data might be used. I don't think that NRCan or Environment Canada spends a great deal of time worrying about that. It's really about ensuring that if we make an open data portal available, it will be compliant with our legislation as well as one we can stand behind and one of enduring value.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

Next is Madame Thi Lac.

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

Good day, Madam, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today.

My first question is for Ms. Charette. As the person responsible both for formulating policy and strategies on open government and for protecting personal information, how do you draw a line between these two areas?

[Corinne Charette]

The line is fairly clearly defined in the act. The legislation is quite specific as to the issue of privacy. Personal information cannot be disclosed and can only be stored after permission has been obtained, because this a program requirement. Personal data must be stored very safely and securely. We are required to publish so-called personal information banks, to let Canadians know what type of personal information we have about them and why it is being maintained. Furthermore, the government must turn over any personal information it has on file when the person that information is about so requests.

The Privacy Act is fairly clear. In terms of personal information, the Access to Information Act provides for a number of exemptions from disclosure. If we receive an access to information request concerning personal information, such as the name of a particular person or other information about that person, obviously, obviously we cannot disclose that information and we must deny the request.

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

I have a second question.

You mentioned your office's GCPEDIA initiative. Can public servants share any kind of information using this platform, as is the case with Wikipedia? How do you ensure that controls are in place? Do public servants have access to more information than we, the elected representatives of the people, actually have?

[Corinne Charette]

There are guidelines in place governing the use of GCPEDIA.

First, anyone who posts information or a document on GCPEDIA—because anyone who registers is free to do so—can be identified, through their e-mail address. If I post a document online, I post it under the name “Corinne Charette, Treasury Board.” A person cannot share documents or information while keeping his or her identity secret. A whole series of guidelines for posting information must be followed, along with our ethical practices code.

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

I see, Ms. Charette. But, as elected officials, can we register to use this website?

Also, if someone posts information, can it only be removed from the website by that individual, or can another user remove information posted by someone else?

[Corinne Charette]

GCPEDIA is not a public website in that is intended exclusively for the public service. It is an internal website, albeit one accessible to all departments.

A document posted by an employee of one department can easily be consulted by other employees in other departments.

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

You misunderstood my question. Can anyone remove a document that has been posted, or is that something only the person who originally posted it can do?

You also said that the general public could not access GCPEDIA. So then, if I understand what you are saying, elected officials cannot access GCPEDIA.

[Corinne Charette]

GCPEDIA is a tool designed specifically for employees of government departments and agencies.

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

So then, you are better informed than we, the elected representatives, are?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You're out of time, Mrs. Thi Lac.

[Corinne Charette]

Users share information on GCPEDIA about products under development. For example, we are currently working on all kinds of initiatives, including information management and the directive on information management. We post documents that are shared by a broader community. Officials from different departments who are often called upon to work together can thus consult and work with the same version of the document.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Merci, Madame Thi Lac.

Please go ahead, Ms. Davidson, for four minutes.

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

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

To the witnesses, thanks very much for being with us this afternoon and giving us the information on what actually is happening in government. I think we were all under some misunderstanding about what is being done, so it will be good to have an outline and to see where you're going.

Although we've not talked to anybody who is doing anything on a national scale at this point, we hope to. We have talked to municipalities and to the Province of Ontario, and I think they all said that the consultation process of getting the public involved and knowing what they want to be able to access was the most important thing. I also agree with the statements made earlier that totally different kinds of data are being collected at the municipal and the federal levels.

However, all of them indicated that there are some easy things to start with. Maybe that's where we are now; I'm not sure. It seems to me that we've got mapping and some other data that are very readily available and maybe easy to put on, and we don't need to worry about translation for most of these things.

Can you comment on that? First of all, how do you think the public will be consulted as we continue with this process? Are we picking the low-hanging fruit and getting started that way, which is what everybody to this point has recommended is a good way to get going?

As well, as you continue forward in your process and your planning, do you have consultations back and forth with the U.K., for example, or Australia, which have done things on a national level?

[Corinne Charette]

Thank you. You have a number of questions.

First of all, there's no doubt that we're trying to work with the low-hanging fruit first, as you put it. That's absolutely the case, because the data that are readily available already in machine-readable format with translated metadata are fantastic, and we certainly will be looking to put that online first.

One of the strategies we're considering for the portal is the ability to use it as a vehicle for users to ask whether we have information on X or Y if that information is not available whenever we launch. We certainly would be using that capability as a way to gauge feedback from the public. As well, we would be able to see the most popular topics or departments or combinations of areas that the public might be interested in by what they are accessing.

Certainly the behaviour of the public on existing sites is definitely a key indicator of what they're interested in. For instance, we can look at Info Source statistics to determine the most visited sections within Info Source. While Info Source doesn't make data available in machine-readable format, it's certainly a source of information we are studying to see where the visits are. After the homepage for Info Source, where they go is usually a kind of telltale as to what they're interested in.

It's definitely a multi-phase strategy. We do want to start with low-hanging fruit, in a limited way, and carefully assess progress, assess how the reaction is, and use that as a basis for justifying, from a cost-benefit perspective, the need to extend that to more data sets, and perhaps spend more time and effort getting a broader base of data that we could publish one day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Siksay, you have four minutes.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I wonder if Mr. Gray and Mr. Shawcross could tell us a bit about how the official languages policy impacts their ability to post open data in terms of their operations, what kinds of challenges that policy presents, and how you meet those challenges.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'll start. Natural Resources Canada provides the geospatial metadata we've been talking about. That's the data about the data we have and the documentation relative to it in both official languages, compliant with the Treasury Board guidelines and policy.

Natural Resources Canada also provides the ability for Canadians to search, discover, and access our geospatial data in the language of their choice. NRCan has worked with Treasury Board to implement what is called ISO standard 19115, which is mandatory for federal departments by 2014.

The difference, once you get down to geodata, is that geodata is alphanumerics. It's numbers and letters. That is raw data that is not accessible to either language. The computer expert at the end of the table would say it's computer language.

[Chuck Shawcross]

Let me just perhaps expand on that. At Environment Canada all the information is made available to citizens in the language of their choice. A lot of the data is behind what I'd call API, which I think you've heard before: the application programming interface. There would be a screen where you could put what you're looking for, such as the maximum and minimum temperatures for your city in the last century. You'd put in your city and stuff like that. That's the interface, in both official languages, that accesses the database behind it with the numeric data, which, as Dr. Gray mentioned, is not readable; it's just computer language.

Just as a data point, when we were looking at the amount of data we've published, we have about 503 data sets, if you will, that we publish through the APIs or make available in raw format. Of those, about 42 are in what I'd call open data, machine-readable format that we can publish as a true open data type of data set.

Most of our data are accessible in both official languages, but behind an API or programming interface.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Dr. Gray, you mentioned that all fees were removed in 2007 from the data sets that had not been free up to that point. Then you also said that in 2007 the geodata downloads were fewer than one million, but that they increased to over 11 million last year.

Is it directly related to removing the fees, or is there something else going on?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'll let Prashant answer that one. Thank you.

[Prashant Shukle]

Certainly, the policy work we had done in previous years indicated that price was a barrier to the use and reuse of data. We are of the view that the price was a factor in limiting the potential download capabilities.

The fact that it increased elevenfold speaks to the policy decision.