Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 9th, 2011

[Prashant Shukle, Director General, Mapping Information Branch, Department of Natural Resources]

Mr. Chair, I would like to add that we have collaborated with the Treasury Board to implement a geospatial standard. In terms of the data around the geospatial data that are provided, we've had some excellent work go on with the Treasury Board Secretariat. We have implemented a geospatial standard that allows for interoperability, the sharing of data, and the use and reuse of data. We've addressed issues of privacy and those types of issues.

In that context there is some really good work going on.

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

Madam Chair, I'm still concerned, however, that we've seen this uneven application of ATIP across departments.

Madame Charette, you said that there's been an ever-increasing demand, and I appreciate that. I have a feeling that we're going to see ever-increasing demands for open data from government as well, so it sounds to me as though we're going to be in exactly the same position--that it's going to be uneven, that it's going to be underfunded in some departments, and that there are going to be some departments that don't get it, because they've never done it. They don't have a century's worth of experience about why this is important.

What is the strategy developing, then, to ensure some kind of consistency across government with regard to this kind of policy?

[Corinne Charette]

In fact, that's one of the reasons we've had to step back and carefully review our policy instruments and our strategy in this regard: because we do have to try to get a strategy that works for the wider community. It's not easy to reconcile all the variables that you mentioned.

However, I have to say that we're quite aware of the focus in this area by this committee and we continue to work on it. It is interesting; I don't think it's quite parallel to ATI, in that the value of the open data portal is that having done some important work up front to create metadata, translate metadata, and make information available in reusable format, the ongoing constant work is not as high, if you will, because the hard work is getting that data set available to begin with. After that, it's a question having the machine resources available to serve it up.

My colleague, Chuck, may add to that.

[Chuck Shawcross]

Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, I will give a historical perspective on where we are in Environment Canada.

Technologically, people set up these accesses to scientific data on their own portals. They ran them themselves, across the department, in a very siloed manner.

As the chief information officer, I'm providing the best and most efficient services I can to the Canadian taxpayer. As part of that, we amalgamate data onto fewer servers, because putting them on these servers means lower costs. However, a natural consequence is that these previously available sources of data, which people knew the location of, get amalgamated into this centralized area.

As part of that progress, last year I realized we had to start putting some sort of registry together so that people could find the data, which now had to be in accessible format and in both les deux langues officielles. As a result, I was exploring setting up a registry. As you start to look at the technical side, which is relatively easy, you start running into all of the issues of metadata, official languages, all the other policy issues.

That's what was happening last summer. In terms of actually setting something up technically, it's reasonably straightforward, but there are a number of issues that come from that.

From a technological perspective, that's basically how we got there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Siksay.

Mr. Calandra, you have seven minutes.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, all of you, for coming.

Ms. Charette, I'm a little more optimistic than some of my colleagues. When you consider how new everything is relative to how old the country is, I think we've been doing a tremendous job in getting a lot of data out there, and what I've heard today has been very encouraging.

We know from the testimony from provincial and municipal governments that their types of data are obviously miles apart. We heard from the municipal governments that the most popular data relate to bus scheduling and garbage collection. That's very important to a lot of people, but that's a heck of a lot different from some of the data that are being accumulated by the federal government. Also, I'm suspecting that some of the data that we do collect or that might be available would also have impacts on provincial and municipal governments.

By virtue of that, you must have to work closely with them or develop a policy that respects their jurisdictions so that we're not ultimately releasing data that could impact negatively on a provincial government. Am I correct in assuming that because of those interjurisdictional elements, it's a much more difficult process to release data at the federal government level?

I have a final comment and then I'll ask another question. I'd rather we get it right than rush it and get it wrong.

First, are we working with the provincial and municipal governments in releasing data?

Then the comment is that I want to offer congratulations on what we've done so far.

[Corinne Charette]

You raised two points. I will ask Prashant to talk to the issue of provincial jurisdictions.

In fact, there is an awful lot of data. Info Source has been fairly long-standing and widely available on the TBS website. These are data that reconcile a lot of information from different government sources. We do get quite a bit of traffic to Info Source. Info Source itself may not have any provincial implications, but certainly some data do.

[Prashant Shukle]

One of the examples used by the honourable member was the issue of bus schedules and garbage pickup. There's one fundamental defining element to those, and that is roads. Our GeoBase initiative, which has been a federal, provincial, and territorial collaboration, has been in place for a considerable period of time. It works at a multi-jurisdictional level to collect road data and try to make the data as available and as open as possible. In fact, we have road data that are open and are shared with municipal governments or whoever wants to go onto our GeoBase website and collect those data.

Is the federal, provincial, and territorial process a robust one? Yes, it is. We've had a number of successes in this area. With respect to how we've engaged our provincial and territorial colleagues in this context, it's been a very productive effort.

As to our other federal colleagues, they rely on road data as well. Departments such as Elections Canada and Statistics Canada also use the road data, and the use and reuse is generated a number of times across multiple levels of jurisdictions.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Gray, I'm glad that you're here, because there are a few questions I have for you.

I think I'm correct that you were with Environment Canada and that you issued a statement with respect to the muzzling of individuals. You explained that there's a process that we go through in responding to public enquiries, that it's timely and orderly, that the policy has been in place for years, and that the policy was used throughout government.

I wonder if you can say that you've experienced the same type of timely and orderly process at Natural Resources Canada?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'm in my fourth week at Natural Resources. We have had several media events since then, and I think they have gone quite well.

I remember what Environment did, but I have a few statistics from NRCan as well. I am proud to say that Natural Resources Canada publishes about 900 peer-reviewed scientific papers a year. These come from our scientists. These scientists collectively gave about 600 media interviews last year. We also publish a range of non-peer-reviewed reports that come out either through our Internet site or through printed media.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

That's quite astonishing. David Eaves mentioned to us the other day that he'd been able to get a lot of information handed over for access to his website. I note that he worked on Mr. Ignatieff's leadership campaign, so he's not somebody who would necessarily be out to praise the government or the individuals who work at NRCan. Now you've clearly said that a lot of information is getting out, such as 900 peer-reviewed papers. I am consistently hearing a lot about media interviews and press releases getting out. At NRCan, they always seem to be available when they're asked to be available, which doesn't square with the suggestion that people have been muzzled.

Could you confirm for me that the scientists are able to speak, have their information reviewed, and approach the media to talk about their findings?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Yes. I don't have our statistics off the top of my head for NRCan, but the system is in place at Environment Canada and it is in place at our department. The first thing is that there is a media request. These are usually time-sensitive. We don't get, “We would like to talk to somebody in the next week”; we get, “We'd like to go to press by such-and-such a time and we want to talk to somebody about topic X”.

We take great pride in the public service in having expertise. We've earned that expertise and we guard it accordingly, so our job is to make sure we have the expert speaking to the question. Sometimes these questions aren't simple; sometimes they're multidisciplinary. You need a couple of experts to come together, and it takes time. Then, like any well-run organization, you have to ensure that these people are media-trained.

In that process, occasionally something's going to slip through the cracks, but all in all, I know that when I was at Environment, our stats were very good as far as being able to meet these timelines was concerned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Calandra.

I have a question for you, Madame Charette. We've been at this for about four or five weeks. We've looked at other provinces and at some of the cities, but we've also looked at what's going on internationally in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. They've made a lot of strides on this issue. It seems to have been driven from the top. When David Cameron came to power, he made the statement that “We're going to do it”, and when Obama came to power, he made the same statement: “We're going to do it”. Within 30 days, they had a sizable number of databases on their websites. Within two years they had over 200,000 databases, all in a reusable format, within this principle.

I've listened to your testimonies and I'm not even clear if we have a policy on open government, or open data, as it's called. Do we or do we not? Are you getting any direction from your superiors, whether it's your deputy minister or the President of Treasury Board, that this is something we should be doing?

[Corinne Charette]

Certainly the secretary and the President of the Treasury Board are aware that we are working on a strategy for an open data portal. There's no question about it. We briefed on our five-point plan in the summer and we embarked upon this process, which we will report on.

There is no open data policy instrument today. However, we are assessing the requirement for one so that we can potentially provide an open data portal that goes beyond two or three scientific departments and provides information of a wide enough range and in a sufficiently consistent and suitable format to enable us to also be more present in the machine-reusable space. We do continue to publish, and have for a very long time, quite a bit of information. It is simply not all in machine-reusable format, nor is it from one point of entry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much for that answer.

That concludes the first round.

We're now going to go to the second round. We're going to suspend at around 5:15 to deal with another item before the committee.

The second round is for four minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Charette, I was on this committee earlier, five years ago, and I didn't see anything to do with open government. This is the most secretive government that I have seen in Canadian history. When we talk about this today, there's nothing about open government. All we're talking about is open data. That has nothing to do with open government principles.

There's one question I have, one issue. Why is it that the Prime Minister's Office can mash data on Google Maps to promote itself, but other departments can't do so to provide useful information to Canadians?

[Corinne Charette]

Every departmental deputy head is accountable for the information holdings of his or her department and has responsibility for determining what they want to publish on their websites and how they want to publish it, provided they are compliant with our classical policy instruments for websites--that is, they're compliant with official languages, they're compliant with the common look and feel 2.0 standards, they're compliant with the federal communications policy, and so on. It's up to every department to decide that, and they do.

The open data portal we're exploring is slightly different, because it is not one deputy head. It's a portal that would encompass and bring together, through one logical front door, data from a number of departments. The issue of accountability is certainly one that we need to work through, because we're going through one front door and could be seeking data from multiple departments.

However, every department deputy head is accountable for determining what they publish and how they publish it, within policy guidelines.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Why did Canada fall behind so many countries when it comes to the open data process?

[Corinne Charette]

I don't believe that Canada is behind many countries. We are behind the U.S. and the U.K. on open data. The U.S. went out very strongly shortly after President Obama was inaugurated, and the U.K. followed shortly afterward with their open data initiative; however, from a freedom of information or an access perspective, Canada was there long before the U.K. was. Our access to information and proactive disclosure regime is really outstanding. We continue to make a lot of information available to Canadians.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

That is not what we see.

My next question is for Mr. Gray.

Mr. Gray, you say that there is data available that you can GPS in your car. When I have my Blackberry and iPhone sitting here and can have Google Maps accessing that information, why do I have to come to your portal to access that information? What information do you have that is different from those maps?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'll start off and then I'll let my expert to speak to this.

The two examples you gave are applications of open data. They are applications or end uses of it. You're seeing a tool that's using open data that someone has acquired when you use your GPS system, for example. The data there are data that an end user puts together to provide value, and you can navigate in your car with it.

That's the distinction. Open data is raw data. It's readable, but it's not something you can pull up on your BlackBerry or your cellphone. It's something you're going to have to download, and companies have used that to make end use applications for your iPhone or BlackBerry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

We're now going to move to Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Abbott, you have four minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

I want to spend a couple of minutes putting this into context.

I've had the privilege in the last few months of working with the president of the Public Service Commission on a project in a developing country. The developing country has the capacity to add probably 30% to its GDP per capita--right now, today, immediately--except that they don't have a professional public service. I want to commend you and the people in the public service for the fact that because we have a professional public service in Canada, we have the ability to take advantage of all of the opportunities we have in Canada, both socially and economically.

I salute your professionalism, and the fact that--and this is not a barbed statement, but the straight goods--when people approach a public servant in Canada, that person sees himself or herself as a public servant--somebody who is serving the public in Canada, somebody whose job is to keep confidences and to make recommendations to the people who are their political masters. The politicians are in charge in Canada, as should be the case in a democracy. The public servants make recommendations, but those recommendations stay behind closed doors. With very rare exception do we find any crossing of that boundary.

Today you have outlined for us the reasons, the background, and your caution on behalf of the people of Canada in terms of maintaining this very important element that we have in our society. Ten per cent of our workforce in Canada, in one way or another, are directly related to the public service or are members of the public service. It is they who make this place go, so I thank you for that.

That doesn't mean we don't have friction from time to time. Of course we do; that's the human condition. Of course we have friction. There's not quite the level of friction that my friends on the other side of the table would like to see, I'm sure.

[An hon. member]

Oh, come on, Mr. Abbott--

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

Well, I couldn't--