Thanks very much.
There have been great remarks already that have taken a lot of the points that I was going to make.
I would start off by saying that over the past 20 years, we've seen an awful lot of innovation, creativity, and disruption. Today we don't know exactly where open data will lead, but we do know that it will be very transformative. Some ways of doing business will start and some will evolve, and learning how to navigate them will be the challenge that lies ahead for us. But the potential that certainly we saw in the very early days of the web—and I lived through all of that—is what I see now with open data.
I believe open data is data with a mission. It will create jobs; it will fuel start-ups and launch new industries with revenue purportedly in the billions. However, every day untold numbers of people try one more time to figure out Facebook's privacy settings and wonder exactly what Facebook knows about them anyway, and most people have only one concern about their personal data, and that is that they want to keep as much of it as they can as private as possible.
So there is a central paradox here. Releasing personal data as open data can definitely benefit society and ultimately help the individual, but if the data is not controlled carefully, having it out in the open will damage individual privacy and may outweigh the benefit and slow the process down.
I was introduced as the executive director of University of Waterloo's new Stratford Campus focusing on digital media. Additionally, I have had an extensive background in technology in corporate Canada with 30 years at Bell Canada in IT and digital communications and I am currently a member of the board of governors for SSHRC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, so you can understand that I have a number of viewpoints on the open data opportunity.
I'd like to begin with the viewpoint of our wonderful young digital natives enrolled in our undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Waterloo. Digital natives are young people who were born in 1997—ouch—who have literally never not had a device in their hands. And as Mark mentioned, we have engaged them on a number of occasions with the municipality.
We recently ran a project for Stratford on garbage, of all things. It was a hackathon run over a weekend. Essentially, when do you put your garbage out and how do we communicate with our citizens? We didn't think that our young students would be particularly interested in this. They dove in and produced some remarkable methods of connectivity that the city is now looking to continue to develop.
But that pales in comparison with Code 2014, run by Tony Clement. That was a hackathon run across Canada about a month ago engaging 900 young people that challenged them to develop apps around the open data that the Canadian government already has laid out. I am delighted to tell you that of the 900 applicants or participants, a team from our school actually won. Their application essentially delved into StatsCan employment and social development, Canada data, the Canada Revenue Agency, and the CMHC in helping immigrants choose the right place to come when coming into Canada. It was featured on the CBC this morning.
There are a number of other kinds of applications that were developed as well. Fifteen were finalized.
But, Mark, I loved what you said. From my point of view, what we're really doing here is engaging young people in the affairs of the government. That has been a huge challenge, I think, certainly at municipal and provincial government levels.
With regard to the expectations of these digital natives, as a consumer, they definitely want the personalization of their experience which comes from open data, but they also want to ensure that their data is very private, or that they have control over that. As an entrepreneur, they want ready access to the data, but they also want assurances of ownership once they have developed their idea.
At a corporate level, I think a storm is brewing. Corporations want access to unattributed personal data to examine trends by demographic group, for example, but they want attributed data to do specialized or specific targeted marketing, which is scaring a lot of people. The opportunity examples that McKinsey has pointed to look to billions, $300 billion annually in health care, in the U.S. alone. They go throughout the world and the opportunities are limitless, as David referred to earlier.
Finally, I do believe that the Canadian government is at the leading edge of governments around the world. Certainly we are seen as leaders, and we are regularly referenced, particularly in U.S. documents on the topic. I think we are well positioned for significant savings. The granting agencies, the tri-council, conducted extensive consultations around big data's role in the development of digital scholarship in Canada, which was conducted in the fall of last year, coining the term “open research”.
The conclusions were threefold: first, that there is a culture of stewardship that asks for an establishment of clear policy for data sharing; second, that there is a coordination of stakeholder engagement, in other words, long-term planning—and remember that this isn't about data on colliding particles but mostly data on people—and therefore the involvement of SSHRC is very important; and third, they raised as an issue the developing capacity, so that engages funding and roles and responsibility among national, provincial, and institutional stakeholders.
In conclusion, I'd just like to say that I believe open data is our next natural resource. Canada has the digital infrastructure. We have the reputation for collaborative management. We have the respect of many in the world in this arena, and we have a hugely developing knowledge worker population, through programs such as ours in Stratford. Canada should make open data a priority, establishing policies, engaging in long-term planning, and developing capacity.
Thank you.