Government Operations Committee on March 4th, 2014

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Some data sets already have highly personal information. For example, if you look at a Government of Canada telephone directory, it lists not only the individual but their position, and then you can cross-correlate with pay scales and so on and so forth. Is this a concern to the open data project, that data miners could correlate information provided through open data with other data sets that are not protected from a personal information point of view, and very purposefully so?

[Corinne Charette]

First of all, the government directory with names, titles, and telephone numbers is not personal; it is available online.

[Stephen Walker]

Yes, that's public information so that one is not really a concern. I think if you're talking about Canadian citizen client information being included in individual data sets, the reality is that right now because privacy is such a paramount concern to us, we have to be exhaustive about working with the departments to ensure that no aspect of personal data is contained so that it cannot be correlated with any other data set. That's part of our work day to day with the individual departments.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

How did the G-8's assertion towards this initiative assist in crossing boundaries between jurisdictions? There is some information that Canadians would like to have access to that currently is not available because it involves a second jurisdiction, an international partner. Are there attempts being made to ensure, for those that are members of this charter, that those boundaries be removed?

[Stephen Walker]

There really are. The charter specifically listed a large appendix of very precise data sets that each individual member state has agreed to provide by the end of the two-year period. We all, as well, have to provide an update at the end of 2014 on how we're doing with those.

In terms of us, as Corinne mentioned, and the U.S. and the U.K., the bulk of these data sets are already available. You can already compare them under the existing licensing regime across those three jurisdictions. Some of the other G-8 countries are not quite so advanced. The monitoring that will be done will be to help them to catch up to the rest of the G-8 numbers.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

I have one final question. In terms of procurement, other governments have a tendency to be very covetous over internal procurement data. Would there be a schedule or chapters that would include that which would be included in the open data within the G-8 concept?

[Stephen Walker]

Procurement data was one of the areas defined.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thanks very much, I appreciate it.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I would like to thank the witnesses for accepting to appear before our committee.

We will suspend the meeting for a few minutes and we will come back to discuss the second point on our agenda.

I will take this opportunity to thank you for your presentation on open data. This will be very useful to the committee in its future work.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I call this meeting back to order.

As I announced at our last meeting, we will vote on the supplementary estimates (C) 2013-2014. Pursuant to standing order 81(5), votes have been referred to the committee.

PRIVY COUNCIL

Department

Vote 1c—Program expenditures..........$2,062,421

(Vote 1c agreed to on division)

PUBLIC WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES CANADA

Department

Vote 1c—Operating Expenditures.......... $68,822,039

(Vote 1c agreed to on division)

Shared Services Canada

Vote 15c—Operating Expenditures.......... $102,331,630

Vote 20c—Capital expenditures.......... $1

(Votes 15c and 20c agreed to on division)

TREASURY BOARD

Treasury Board Secretariat

Vote 1c—Program Expenditures......... $1,424,230

Vote 15c—Compensation Adjustments......... $73,303,264

(Votes 1c and 15c agreed to on division)

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Shall the chair report the supplementary estimates (C) 2013-14 to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Those are all the votes, but I would like to add something before we adjourn. We have asked the clerk to check the dates when the President of Treasury Board would be able to come and appear before our committee. However, he is not yet available to appear on the main estimates 2014-2015.

We are adjourned until Thursday, March 6th.