Fundamentally, data is collected, aggregated, created by individual programs across government in every department. Larger departments have multiple data sets that they collect and work with as evidenced by the amount we have. We don't yet have an inventory of all the available open data sets that we could wish to publish, so we're working on a policy instrument, a directive on open government, that will require departments to do two things.
The first is to compile an inventory of all the data they collect or aggregate or create by virtue of their individual programs. This is program by program, a data set or an inventory.
Once they have this inventory—and we anticipate that this will take some time, so it's not something that will happen overnight—and a directive is published, departments will have an implementation period to conduct their inventory and report their inventory to us. Then they'll have an implementation period to phase in these additional data sets for publication on the open data portal over the next couple of years. As you may recall from the last time I was here, each time we publish a data set on the open data portal once, it has to be in one of the formats that the open data community is prepared and able to use. Sometimes it requires manipulation. Then it requires descriptions at the metadata level that says what the data set is about, for instance, health information on diabetes, or whatever it is on. Then it has to describe each one of the fields in the data set sufficiently well so that somebody downloading it could repurpose it. This metadata has to be available, of course, in both official languages. Then we have to load it onto the portal.
The directive will allow us to do that.