Evidence of meeting #17 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sets.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC
Sorry. I'm talking about the appointment of the President of the Queen's Privy Council. That is, the individual today who is the infrastructure minister is also a privy councillor. I'm asking what his function is. Forget Infrastructure. What's his function?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
That's a very good question. Thank you for that. I think that question is best answered by my colleague, Mr. Joe Wild, who is in charge of machinery of government and could probably best describe for you what his function is. I apologize for not having that answer at my fingertips today.
Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC
Therefore you couldn't tell me how many people work for him, not at Infrastructure but in the other job?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
We support the portfolio ministers for the Prime Minister, all of them, at the Privy Council in a couple of ways. We support the operation of their offices in the sense of technical and administrative support, so providing them with computer services, with HR services, and the normal internal services. Minister Lebel receives the same support from us. That would be he would have ministers' offices support from folks in my branch.
In addition to that, Minister Lebel has a number of responsibilities, and if that requires advice from the Privy Council Office, from all of those folks I talked about earlier, the bright analysts, then he would be receiving advice on matters pertaining to the various aspects of his mandate. For instance, on intergovernmental affairs, we have a centre of expertise that provides advice on that, and all the other analysts at PCO who have to speak to federal, provincial, and territorial matters also provide advice. That would be an example of the kind of support that we would provide to PCO portfolio ministers. It would extend to each and every one of them. If they have a portion of their mandate that pertains to our advice and expertise at Privy Council Office, we would provide that advice.
Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC
Does Mr. Lebel consult the premiers? Does he consult the various provinces on some common issues?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Mr. Lebel, as the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, would have at the essence of his mandate communications with the leaders of provinces and territories. He is supported in doing that, as I said, by the analysts who are specialists in that at the Privy Council Office, who work closely with their counterparts across the rest of government whenever we have to deal with federal and provincial relationships.
For instance, we can think of a number of departments that would have a key role to play, like the former HRSDC, which deals constantly with their provincial and territorial counterparts. They would do that in coordination with us at PCO. We would advise Minister Lebel if there's anything he needs to know about that. He would play his role as appropriate for having pan-governmental responsibility. The minister of that portfolio, the specialist portfolio, would also have a role to play in the conversations with the provinces and territories. As the Privy Council Office, we would work to coordinate that.
Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC
I assume the minister of democratic reform is under your aegis somewhere. I can't imagine he comes up with every idea himself, so he has to get learned advice. Does he get this learned advice from members of your staff?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
All ministers get advice from various sources. The public service is just one of them. I described earlier the mandate of the public service vis-à-vis ministers. Certainly at the Privy Council Office we have a small section of folks who provide advice, non-partisan public servants who provide advice directly to the minister of democratic reform through the usual channels that are provided across government. That is one source of advice the minister receives. I can't speak to the other sources of advice he would receive, but we certainly play that very important part in our PCO mandate of providing advice to all of our ministers.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you for your answers.
To wrap up, you have five minutes, Mr. Martin.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm glad to have the opportunity to continue where I left off, actually. I'm still not satisfied that I understand what seems to be a shell game of shuffling around budgets here. I opened my remarks before by saying that there has been a disturbing pattern that more and more expenditures seem to be in the statutory category and not voted.
Let me just back up here and say that under the office of Infrastructure Canada there has been a decrease of $2.5 billion from votable issues to statutory, that shift.
Now when all of this was transferred to the PCO, why would there not be a corresponding amount of money showing up in the statutory or votable items of the PCO? We seem to have lost track of that money or lost oversight of that money.
This is a big ticket item, and it worries me that under the same minister—I mean, the president of the Privy Council is the same person as the Minister of Infrastructure—this $2.5 billion that we used to be able to vote on is now shifted neatly out of the purview of public oversight.
Am I reading this right?
Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Planning Division, Privy Council Office
Thank you for your question.
As I said earlier, unfortunately, the Privy Council Office has no vision of what the Department of Transport does. This information would come from the chief financial officer of the Department of Transport. The Privy Council has no funding whatsoever related to that statutory item in its own statutory appropriations.
Those are usually very simple. They include benefits, wages and vehicle allowances for ministers and ministers of state. The PCO's statutory appropriations have not changed much over the past few years.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Yes, I understand that. That doesn't help me to understand where we track this money, this transfer.
Are some of the office of Infrastructure Canada's voted appropriation now found in its statutory items? Can you help me to understand that, now that this all falls under you? I'm not explaining this very well at all, I don't think. I'll do a little more research on this perhaps, and we'll try to get down to the bottom of it ourselves.
It appears to me we have lost the oversight of a lot of money under Infrastructure. Then in July of last year, it was all transferred to the PCO from Infrastructure Canada, Intergovernmental Affairs, etc. The oversight or the responsibility was transferred to the PCO, but I don't see a corresponding transfer of accountability for that block of money.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
You are correct in saying that you don't see oversight from PCO for that block of money, because we don't have oversight for that block of money. I, as the chief financial officer, and Karen, as the deputy chief financial officer, advise the clerk and the Prime Minister on the appropriations we're seeking from this committee today, which are our main estimates, and then on any other funds that we would seek through the course of the year. We have done our best to explain those in the main estimates, and our RPP document has further detail on those.
We do not have accountability or oversight for the budget of Infrastructure Canada. Our function is limited to supporting Minister Lebel in his role as a minister in the PCO portfolio, specifically in the ministerial office function. That comes down to almost an internal services role for us.
Let me be a little bit more precise. I talked earlier about the support that we give to the minister of democratic reform. I believe Mr. O'Connor asked if we provide advice to the minister of democratic reform, and my answer was that we do. That's part of our mandate at the Privy Council Office.
Advice provided to Minister Lebel, as the Minister of Infrastructure, is provided by a separate deputy and chief financial officer and set public servants whose specialty that is. PCO's role in that would only come in if there were a proposal before cabinet that required our normal challenge function and coordination function and advice to the Prime Minister. As well, on a day-to-day basis, we make sure that Minister Lebel has a car and that we look after our part of supporting the running of his office. He also has folks in other departments who support him on that, too, and we coordinate with our colleagues in the Department of Transport to do that.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
I have to stop you there.
That concludes the first portion of our meeting. Thank you for being here.
Before I suspend the proceedings, I will call for the question on the votes, since this is our last meeting on the main estimates.
With your unanimous consent, I will group the 22 votes so that we vote only once.
Is there unanimous consent to proceed in this fashion?
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
As long as you could have the record show that they are passed on division.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Absolutely.
Since we have unanimous consent, I am going to group all the votes in the estimates into one vote here.
CANADA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE Vote 1—Canada School of Public Service—Program expenditures.......... $39,921,868
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADIAN INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT Vote 1—Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat—Program expenditures.......... $5,548,958
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADIAN TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION AND SAFETY BOARD Vote 1—Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board—Program expenditures.......... $25,757,380
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
GOVERNOR GENERAL Vote 1—Governor General—Program expenditures, the grants listed in the Estimates and expenditures incurred on behalf of former Governors General.......... $17,150,426
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR INTEGRITY COMMISSIONER Vote 1—Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner—Program expenditures and contributions.......... $4,923,694
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
Privy Council Vote 1—Privy Council—Program expenditures.......... $105,754,626
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION Vote 1—Public Service Commission—Program expenditures.......... $71,676,677
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC SERVICE LABOUR RELATIONS BOARD Vote 1—Public Service Labour Relations Board—Program expenditures.......... $12,501,779
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC SERVICE STAFFING TRIBUNAL Vote 1—Public Service Staffing Tribunal—Program expenditures.......... $4,891,908
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES Vote 1—Public Works and Government Services—Operating expenditures for the provision of accommodation, common and central services......... $1,786,071,771 Vote 5—Public Works and Government Services—Capital expenditures.......... $759,963,628
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
REGISTRY OF THE PUBLIC SERVANTS DISCLOSURE PROTECTION TRIBUNAL Vote 1—Registry of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal—Program expenditures.......... $1,664,105
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
SHARED SERVICES CANADA Vote 1—Shared Services Canada—Operating expenditures.......... $1,176,098,834 Vote 5—Shared Services Canada—Capital expenditures.......... $216,592,917
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
The Senate Vote 1—The Senate—Program expenditures.......... $57,532,359
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
TREASURY BOARD SECRETARIAT Vote 1—Treasury Board Secretariat—Program expenditures.......... $231,214,433 Vote 5—Government Contingencies—Subject to the approval of the Treasury Board, to supplement other appropriations and to provide for miscellaneous, urgent or unforeseen expenditures.......... $750,000,000 Vote 10—Government-Wide Initiatives—Subject to the approval of the Treasury Board, to supplement other appropriations in support of the implementation of strategic management initiatives.......... $3,193,000 Vote 20—Public Service Insurance—Payments, in respect of insurance, pension or benefit programs or other arrangements.......... $2,260,002,208 Vote 25—Operating Budget Carry Forward—Subject to the approval of the Treasury Board, to supplement other appropriations for the operating budget carry forward from the previous fiscal year.......... $1,600,000,000 Vote 30—Paylist Requirements—Subject to the approval of the Treasury Board, to supplement other appropriations for requirements related to parental and maternity allowances.......... $1,450,000,000 Vote 33—Capital Budget Carry Forward—Subject to the approval of the Treasury Board, to supplement other appropriations for purposes of the capital budget carry forward allowance from the previous fiscal year.......... $600,000,000
(Votes 1, 5, 10, 20, 25, 30 and 33 agreed to on division)
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Shall I report to the House these 22 votes of the 2014-15 main estimates, less the amounts voted in interim supply?
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
On that note, I thank the witnesses for being here.
We are going to suspend for a few minutes to welcome other witnesses and talk about a different topic.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Order, please. We'll reconvene the meeting.
In this second hour, we are turning to a completely different issue, or at least a slightly different issue. We are receiving witnesses who will provide us with information on our study on the government's open data practices.
Today, we are pleased to have two witnesses with us: first, Mr. Sharma, founder of XMG Studio Inc. and, second, Mr. McKay, head of public policy and government relations at Google Inc.
Each witness will have 10 minutes at most for their presentation, after which members of the committee will be able to ask questions related to our study on the government's open data practices.
Without further delay, you have the floor for 10 minutes, Mr. Sharma. Thank you for appearing before our committee today.
Ray Sharma Founder, XMG Studio Inc.
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to address everyone this morning. I have a lot of content to cover so I'm going to jump right in.
I'm going to address some of the questions that I think are important to the committee's agenda.
I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I've had a bit of a “de-evolutionary” career. I started out on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley working for a firm called Credit Suisse First Boston. I repatriated back to Toronto to Bank of Montreal Nesbitt Burns, and JMP Securities. From there I went into the start-up world. Just as a quick overview of that—I won't even go into the stuff that I experienced on Wall Street and Bay Street—I'll focus more on some of my start-up investing and entrepreneurial activities.
For each of the logos you see on the screen, I was involved in the first start-up capital for each of those companies. Several of them went public. The only company that was an exception was a local Ottawa company, Bridgewater. I was involved in first capital for that business. Through Extreme Venture Partners we've been fortunate to have several exits. We sold a company to Google. Google has acquired five companies in the Toronto area alone over the last five years. We sold a company to Apple. That was Apple's first acquisition in Canada over the last 10 years. We sold a company to Salesforce.com, one of the Facebook billionaires. In total that has created about 1,000 high-tech jobs primarily in the downtown Toronto area, representing about $75 million to $80 million in annual salary.
I'll transition to talk a little bit about the app economy. This is a subject I've spoken about all over the world, including last year at the Milken Institute.
In Canada, a recent report published by the ICTC noted that the app economy had led to the creation of about 64,000 jobs and about $1.7 billion of revenue, which will grow to an estimated $5.2 billion by 2019. What's interesting about this statistic is that we often talk about the strength of the games industry in this country and the fact that it's the third-largest employer in the world, yet the actual app economy already dwarfs the number of jobs that exist in the gaming sector of the Canadian economy.
Minister Tony Clement and I were fortunate enough to meet through a third party. Over the course of time, the minister found the courage to see that there was an opportunity to take this data in open data and present it to the world through a hackathon concept. It takes a bit of courage to be the Government of Canada and to be involved in something that's even called a hackathon. It has a bit of a strange name by it's very nature.
What we sought to do through this project called CODE, which stands for the Canadian Open Data Experience, was to create an event that would let the world know that this data—at data.gc.ca—exists and to talk to the opportunities that it represents.
We were fortunate enough to be partnered with a bunch of other individuals like OpenText, Colin from Google, as well as IBM—some amazing brands. XMG was involved because it's one of the companies I've been involved in starting up, and it's the company that's maybe closest to my heart, that I really love.
XMG was the creator of a hackathon called the Great Canadian Appathon. The Great Canadian Appathon has had four different iterations. We're on the fifth version. It's a national competition. It's the only one of its kind that unites all post-secondary colleges and universities. In the last GCA, we had over 35 colleges and universities participate across the country. The reason XMG does this and the reason I'm involved in this is that it's our way of giving back to the community, for those 1,000 jobs. We're a huge beneficiary of our phenomenal academic system in this country. The purpose of this competition was purely to educate students on how to develop code in a 48-hour competition. We never expected it to be as successful as it has been. If you do a quick search on it, you'll see that there have been hundreds and hundreds of points of media about this competition. It was really the foundation on which CODE was established.
We have a short video, but we can skip it. It hasn't been translated, in any event. It would just give us a flavour for what happened that weekend. You would see developers sleeping as they were working throughout the night. I have some pictures that I'll show in just a minute, which will hopefully do justice to the event.
When the minister and I started off on our little adventure of CODE, we were hoping to get 100 participants across the country and to really bring knowledge and awareness of this phenomenal treasure trove of data called open data.
The bittersweet result is that the Great Canadian Appathon is no longer the largest hackathon in Canadian history, but that's because CODE is now the largest hackathon in history, or at least in this country's history, with over 930 participants, 290 teams, and 110 apps created that weekend.
As you see in this next graphic, which is a geographical representation, we had participants from coast to coast in an amazing geographical distribution from B.C. all the way to the east coast in Newfoundland. I'm very happy with the result.
The next slide talks to an event we did on the Friday of that weekend. On that Friday, we brought in experts—again, from our sponsors, and people who were industry experts from all over the world—to basically educate the participants about open data and about the different opportunities. I gave a presentation myself about how to visualize this data, because data in its raw form is very difficult to consume, but the human interface is very important. Shown here are snapshots of the different participants from McKinsey and so on.
At 111 Richmond Street in downtown Toronto—also the offices for Google—there's a big data accelerator. This is where the participants, at least 100 or so of them, got together for a very intense weekend of coding. The result at the end of the weekend was some really good products and applications. It was a very intense time period for everybody.
I want to switch to why open data has such awesome potential, in my humble opinion. This next slide is a graphic that comes from McKinsey. It talks to the potential economic impact of open data. You may have seen this in the past. It came out in September or October of last year, in that timeframe. The statistic here talks about $3 trillion in global economic impact of open data. That's trillion with a T, and it's a significant number. I want to talk a bit about what's driving this.
In the next slide, ”The Power of Open Source”, you'll see a bunch of graphics and images. I just want to touch on what these graphics are. Linux is the kernel upon which Android is based. It's an open source project that was openly developed by developers all over the world. MySQL is a database product that is the most popular database product in the world. About 25% of the world's databases use MySQL. The “W” shown here stands for WordPress. A tremendous number of the world's websites use WordPress. Mozilla is an open-source product; their CTO resides in Toronto. Wikipedia is the one that we all know very well.
In the next slide, we talk about the power of crowdsourcing. You may be familiar with Kickstarter, which is a venture capital type of phenomenon in which people's products are funded by the community. One thing you may not know is that Twitter has been a tremendous beneficiary of the crowdsourcing phenomenon. I'll give you some examples: “trending” and ”what's trending”, hashtags, and even the word “tweet” itself are all from the community.
There was one interesting point when Twitter tried to stop people from using the word “tweet”. They actually said, no, it's not “tweet”; it's “Twitter”. They eventually gave in and trademarked the word “tweet” and it is what it is today. Twitter is an unusual beneficiary. It's such a popular product that the users have been a large reason for why it's so successful.
A local example is Goldcorp. In the 2005 and 2006 time period, it had all this geological data. This may be something that you're already familiar with, but it's a tremendous story. They had this geological data, but they were running out of funds. The company was about a $100-million market cap company at the time. Then what happened was that they put out a half-a-million-dollar competition and put all their geological information out there on the web. Then some developers in Australia actually determined where the gold was located. Today, Goldcorp is the second most valuable gold company in this country.
Locationary is the company that Apple acquired last year. My best friend from university was actually the CEO of that company. When Locationary was acquired by Apple, they had 6.5 billion data sets about location information. Not only would this particular service say “this is the Parliament building and this is the GPS latitude and longitude”, it would say whether or not there was Wi-Fi and whether there was accessible parking, and all of the other deeper pieces of information that you just don't find in the Yellow Pages.
If you've been watching what's been happening with the Malaysian airlines story recently, you've seen that the people of the world have all contributed to try to go through the satellite information to help determine the location of that particular tragedy.
Open data combines the best of both open source and crowdsourcing. It's interesting that the root word for both is source and that's why, I think, it has very interesting potential. However, before I turn to this next slide—probably my favourite two slides in the presentation are coming up now—if you have all this data, yet you do not have applications in which to present them, then there is unfortunately.... How can you get utility out of it?
When you look at entertainment on a per hour basis, you'll see that the reason apps are so successful is you'll look at movies at two hours at $12.50 or $13.50 for your experience. That's $6.25 an hour. You can all do the math for these different things. When you talk about an app like Angry Birds and you're getting 20 hours of experience for a dollar application, you're talking about pennies per hour in terms of the cost of entertainment.
This next slide I'll skip through very quickly, but it shows you.... If you look at the bottom graphic, it took AOL nine years to get to one million users; Facebook, nine months; and this app called Draw Something, nine days.
Just last week, I was part of the committee that was put together to put in a report for the Ontario government on their open data initiative. I'm happy to talk about those results in the Q and A. That's the most recent and comprehensive report on open data. It was published last Thursday and the URL is indicated there. I would encourage you to look at it. We did look at best practices around the world, and I'll try to address the answers to these questions during the Q and A, out of respect for time.
In conclusion I would say that the Canadian government is one of the world leaders when it comes to open data. Certainly within Canada there are some pockets of leadership: the City of Edmonton, the B.C. government. I did study the U.K. government, the Australian government, the Indian government—a whole bunch of governments around the world—to see where we stand.
Lastly, I know transparency is really important to a lot of people in this room and Canadians, but I see the biggest impact is in productivity. We can elaborate on that in the question and answer period.
Thank you for your time.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you.
Without further delay, I give the floor to Mr. McKay, a representative for Google Inc.
Mr. McKay, you have 10 minutes.
Colin McKay Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Inc.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I just want to recognize the work that Ray has put into advancing open data in Canada. He mentioned the success of CODE and the efforts of his hackathon, but really his team has put a lot of effort into it. It's really through his dedication that the hackathon was a success and that we've moved forward to this part. I'm glad to be sharing a table with him
Ray closed off with productivity, to which I'll largely be speaking today—the use of open data and government data by both individuals and members of the private sector to create businesses and increase the productivity of Canadian businesses. There's real promise inherent in making government data open to individuals, groups, and businesses. As Ray hinted, with the right data and effective analysis, individuals can make better choices about their education, their health care, home purchases, investing in their businesses, and even such mundane tasks as their restaurant choices.
We now live in a world where a free and open Internet can connect every Canadian to the data, services, communities, and customers we value no matter where in the world. That's important. We're talking about technology and networks that allow Canadian businesses and Canadians as citizens to make contact with their colleagues and their counterparts around the world. Data-driven innovation, the ability to derive insight and influence decision-making, is now available to us all. Government data can inform and guide our decisions as individuals, businesses, and governments, especially when it's correlated with experience in other countries and compared with data available from other governments.
I'm very glad to see this committee taking an interest in making government data open and available to all. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to your discussion.
Let's take a moment to remember life as it was before we had access to these networks, tools, and data. Think about weather forecasts. You could find them in three places: the upper right-hand corner of the morning newspaper, the 6:30 p.m. local news broadcasts, and on the radio on the nines or on the elevens, depending on where you lived. Now stop and think, when the last time was you were caught in a rain shower or truly surprised by a sudden snowfall—last Sunday excepted.
What about maps? Remember the epic Griswold family-style vacations, paper map in hand and near daily confusion about which turn to take on the highway? Today who doesn't have immediate access to traffic and construction data about any route they choose to take today or tomorrow?
Obviously, both weather and maps are shining examples of how government data, when used imaginatively and taking full advantage of today's technology, can have a significant impact on how we live our everyday lives. An important point is that I've described consumer experiences to you, but technology has greater impact and creates greater efficiencies among our businesses who depend on weather and traffic reports to run really efficient logistics chains.
In Canada we often look to our past when setting economic goals. We're global grain exporters, we're lumber barons, we're nickel magnates, we're car manufacturers, we're telecom giants. Thanks to data, technology, and the Internet, these industries are being revolutionized and new ones are being created, as Ray mentioned. Stop and ask a farmer how weather forecasting, local mapping, soil analysis to a square metre, and market forecasts have changed their business.
I'd like to bring up the example of the famine early warning system, which is a 25-year-old project by organizations like the national oceanic administration in the United States and NASA. They use data that they collect through satellites to anticipate drought, subsequent agricultural market collapse, and famine conditions in 35 developing countries, all by analyzing bundles of government data and making that available for free, and publicly, to those 35 developing nations.
Similarly, researchers used 10 terabytes of data on mobile phone usage in Rwanda to understand the role that mobile phone payments play in the Rwandan economy and the social patterns of payment sharing within those communities.
Ray mentioned some numbers around how much of an impact open data can have on your economy. The open data provided by the U.S. National Weather Service supports a private weather industry worth over $1.5 billion per year. Here in Canada, Pelmorex and others run similar services available to consumers and businesses.
When the government decides to open up its data to public review, analysis, and reimagination—importantly, “reimagination”—it effectively asks the community how that data can be used better.
Local entrepreneurs use it to create transit apps, track infrastructure investment—or infrastructure non-investment, in many cases—and better understand the economic, social, and security challenges in their neighbourhoods.
In making economic, market, and scientific data available, businesses can make more informed decisions about their investments, their products, and the markets they choose to enter, both in Canada and internationally. Open data helps translate individual initiative; that is, the sort of person who obsessively attends an appathon, a hackathon, has an idea about a social policy or an economic policy challenge, and wants to use the data available to derive insight and deliver a product to their consumer. They translate that initiative into business opportunities, into jobs, into that most elusive of economic drivers: innovation. After all, that's why we're all very excited about appathons and hackathons. They're the very representation of an innovative spirit and a concentrated energy.
Now, what does that mean in terms of real economic impact? The European Commission estimates the aggregate direct and indirect impact from open data applications in use across the EU is 140 billion euros a year. It's important to remember that's direct and indirect, because within that we have both the direct impact for the consumer, businesses, as well as the productivity gains, as well as the efficiency gains across both consumer and business applications.
Open data also sets the stage for greater efficiency in other government programs. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, the government is looking to health data as a source of inspiration for better program management and improved citizen services. How do you overlay data about infection rates in clinics versus length of stay at hospitals, versus frequency of infections to viruses, and then derive insight on how you anticipate health challenges within society, and therefore reduce the long-term costs of reacting to those health care challenges, rather than simply being in a reactive health care system?
As I noted earlier, innovation and entrepreneurship are at the heart of any strategy based on open data. Gone are the days when government held data close to its chest, developed a range of options, and advocated within Ottawa's own hallways for the best course of action in the face of a given policy challenge. Given access to the same information, community members can often do this in a more effective, more innovative, and less costly manner than the government could on its own.
The role of government then, in my opinion, is to develop open data policies that will best serve those outside of government, who are best placed to make use of open data, maximizing its value to the public. As I see it, there are three main elements to ensuring that an open data policy will be robust and effective.
First, open data initiatives with strong political and bureaucratic support achieve higher maturity and better results. Ray mentioned that he was working on the Government of Ontario's open data plan, and mentioned examples in other countries. I differ slightly with him in that I see that the U.S. and the U.K. are considered leaders on open data policy. Both countries have committed substantial resources to the pursuit of open data and have placed responsibility for driving these policies in the hands of senior members of the executive. They are transparent about their goals and their success in achieving them.
The good news—as Ray points out—is that Canada is catching up. Though we started work later than the U.K. and the U.S., we are making progress in encouraging the private and public sector to take advantage of open data. The federal government's data portal hosts close to 200,000 data sets. It is engaged with the international Open Government Partnership and signed on to the G-8 open data charter. Just last month, it committed $3 million to a new Open Data Institute. In Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Montreal we see that municipal data is empowering transit infrastructure and democracy activists. The governments of British Columbia and Ontario are taking concrete steps to build relevant open data strategies for their citizens.
The second essential element of open data policy is fairly straightforward: make the data useful. I mentioned 200,000 data sets. You'd be hard pressed to identify a number that people actually find relevant to their policy challenges. Open data needs to be relevant and accessible. The government needs to focus its efforts on identifying and making available the kind of data that generates the most interest from users and will have an impact.
It's certainly worth highlighting that any open data needs to be regularly updated. Innovators, whether in the community or in business, need to know that the core data they are basing their projects on will not slowly grow obsolete.
Last, but certainly not least, the third key element is encouraging user participation through appathons, through hackathons. But importantly, it boils down to making sure that the people who use the data are able to contribute to policy discussions that affect their lives over the long term.
As this committee considers the value of open data and how Canada should move forward on open data policy, I encourage you to keep these key elements in mind. Obviously, I could speak for hours on open data, but in the interest of time, I'll wrap up my remarks with one closing thought.
From my point of view—and obviously I represent Google, and I represent somewhat of an exceptional point of view—Canada is in the process of economic transformation. Data innovation is fuelling innovation in every sector of our economy, from the most traditional resource industries to our world-leading health care providers. In the past six months two Canadian online platforms have been valued at over $1 billion. These are companies that did not exist six years ago. The government has traditionally had the resources and interest to invest in data sets with economic and social relevance to all Canadians and in specialized data that is extremely valuable to specific industries. It must recognize that, by dedicating the resources to unlocking this data and making it easily available to all, it could trigger innovation at home, in our community, and across our business community.
Thank you.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you for your presentation and for keeping to the time constraints.
We will now move on to questions from committee members.
Ms. Day, you have five minutes.
NDP
Anne-Marie Day NDP Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Just on time....
Welcome. Thank you both for being here. You represent an important symbol for many Canadians.
As you know, our study is looking specifically at data that can encourage economic growth in an information economy. It's really quite specific.
What kinds of expenses do you think a system like the one Canada is putting forward will require? What kind of investments need to be made for this sort of approach to be successful? What is the cost of designing and maintaining this system?