Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee.
I am the assistant deputy minister of the chief information officer branch of Environment Canada. As a chief information officer, I am responsible for the management of our computer infrastructure, including such products and services as networks, desktop computers, mobile devices, email, databases, websites, and weather prediction systems.
I appreciate your invitation to appear before you today to discuss Environment Canada's current capabilities in making data available to the public. I would also like to provide you with a chief information officer's perspective on the considerations related to technical implementation of these public-facing sites.
Environment Canada has a long history of gathering and making weather information available to the public through the Meteorological Service of Canada. This service dates as far back as the 1870s.
As a scientific department, Environment Canada is a heavy data generator, not only in weather monitoring, forecasting, and research, but also in subject areas related to biodiversity; ecosystem monitoring; air, water, and ground pollution; and climate change.
Our scientists have a culture of sharing data and an expectation that through collaboration with others they will leverage the value of their research, generate discussion, and expand their knowledge. In addition, Environment Canada has a responsibility to provide information in a timely manner to citizens to protect their health and safety.
Therefore, Environment Canada already supports open data, as evidenced by the 503 data-related resources available on existing public websites run by Environment Canada. Via these websites, applicable environmental data--for example, weather, climate, or hydrology data--are made available free of charge to Canadians. A number of these sites are already configured to provide data in raw machine-readable formats, which means that the data can be easily read by other computer systems.
Weather data, is a vital resource with high economic impact, are made available free of charge to citizens and businesses—a point, I believe, David Eaves effectively addressed during his appearance here last Monday. Weather data are used daily by citizens, airlines, transport companies, farmers, municipalities, electricity generating companies, utility companies, and forestry firms. This information enhances their decision-making in response to changing weather, water, and climatic conditions.
Approximately 50% of all visits to Government of Canada websites come to Environment Canada. Our most popular website is weatheroffice.gc.ca. This past November, the site responded to 42.3 million visits, representing 1.2 billion hits, with users downloading 11 terabytes of information. Visitors were primarily looking for their local weather forecasts and weather radar data, as well as provincial summaries. The most popular areas visited were the 800-plus city pages; local, regional, and national radar; RSS feeds; and weather warnings.
For the more specialized scientific needs of Canadian industry, including the value-added meteorology or VAM sector, the academic community, and international peers, Environment Canada offers a data distribution service at dd.weatheroffice.gc.ca. This provides 24/7 access to numerical weather prediction models, real-time radar data, city page information in xml format, and all weather-related text products produced by Environment Canada. Throughout 2010, this site responded to an average of 6.6 million visits per month, comprising 132.2 million hits, and serving up 3.2 terabytes of information.
In addition to weather observations and satellite and radar imagery, a wide array of other public information--such as water levels, air quality, and weather forecasts for the public and marine communities--is also available online.
Another important data set is the national pollutant release inventory, or NPRI, which is Canada's legislated publicly accessible inventory of pollutant releases to air, water, and land; of disposals; and of transfers for recycling. I believe you have already heard previous testimony from other witnesses explaining how private citizens have recently used this NPRI data to create a web-based, zoomable map presentation of pollutants released by location within Canada.
For a chief information officer, there are a number of considerations in the technical implementation of data publishing on websites open to the public. For example, we need to have policies, directives, standards, and guidance in place for implementation of open data covering access to information, security, accessibility, official languages, etc., and ensure that these are respected during system implementation.
We also need to enforce the use of well-structured data and of solid record management. We need to have a well-defined architecture that is scalable, flexible, and standardized. We need to ensure application of open data principles and future systems development and implementation. We need to identify and reserve any needed ongoing maintenance costs. We need to have a realistic schedule for implementation in terms of resource and requirements. Finally, we need to assess the cost, feasibility, and value of migrating existing data sets or information to open data formats.
It is worth noting that continuing advances in computer and telecommunications technologies have made sharing and processing of information easy and affordable in comparison to older methods. The pace of innovation has been and will continue to be rapid, enabled by technology and fueled by easy access to information.
In historical perspective, the first-ever email in Canada was only in 1985. The first-ever web browser in the world became operational in 1992. Facebook has only been around since 2004, and Twitter since 2006.
Further in the future, there are other increasingly important considerations, notably the requirement for machine-readable formats, which enable machine-to-machine communications.
In closing, I will say that Environment Canada has been a leader in the domain of providing data openly and freely. We remain committed to continued leadership and to ensuring that the public has access to Environment Canada data.
I'm delighted to have been invited and I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.