Evidence of meeting #23 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 departments.
A video is available from Parliament.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Oh, $100 million. I could talk to the last couple of years quite easily. The total for both last fiscal year and this fiscal year in its entirety would be somewhere close to $1.6 million.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, and that would cover the technical platform, the development—
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Coffee money for this committee is roughly $1.6 million per year isn't it, Gerry?
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, that was the 2013-14 amount. The plan for 2014-15 is about the same. It would have been less the two previous years before that, and before that, zero.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
If I'm not mistaken, we've spent $1.2 billion building a building for CSEC and 2,000 full-time employees to spy on Canadians, and we're spending $1.6 million a year to provide access to information.
Thank you for that answer. I'm very surprised to learn that, actually.
Can I ask a specific question? What's the relationship between the Treasury Board's open government steering committee and the advisory panel on open data?
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
The open government steering committee is the cross-departmental ADM level committee. It has representation from 35 departments that meet regularly to help plan the open government activity moving forward.
The open government advisory panel is a committee that exists as an advisory group specifically to the minister only, made up of outside, non-government employees.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
That's very helpful.
This is my very last question and it's very specific.
David Eaves, who is a member of the advisory panel, apparently said that in prioritizing data to be delivered to Canadians, the government should focus on opening data that will be the most use to other countries in terms of encouraging economic development and obtaining the best return on investment.
Has it been the focus of the advisory panel to provide information that is of interest to other countries, or is the priority to provide information that is of use of Canadians?
I'm a little confused with the tone of that recommendation to the minister.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
I'm not sure of the context of his comment. I certainly know that he has been consistent with his feedback that we need to prioritize data. The CIO mentioned that it's pretty hard to make all the data available in one fell swoop, so we need to be able to try to target the data that would have the biggest impact sooner.
We do that mostly in terms of Canadians.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
This is the first time I've heard an emphasis on international investment, etc.
Is it the purpose, is it one of the stated mandates of the open data initiative to entice investment and economic development by virtue of other countries getting access to our information?
NDP
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
It has been highlighted for a few specific subject areas, and agriculture specifically, mostly as a result of G-8 discussions. Canada has been asked, as a number of other countries have been asked, to publish data related to its agricultural activities because it is immediately useful to developing countries.
NDP
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
Thank you for being here today.
I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on whether there are any ongoing studies in terms of how we're stacking up against other jurisdictions, both internationally and domestically.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
The area of measuring impact associated with open data is an ongoing concern and pursuit for most jurisdictions.
As was mentioned, I chair the OGP committee on open data, and we've been asked by the OGP to make a specific line of activity related to the measurement of impact. The provinces here in Canada are preoccupied with it. In the United States, the state governments as well as the federal government are preoccupied with it. So is the U.K.. Everyone is preoccupied.
There are so many different ways, so many different facets that are going to have to come into play in order to measure impact. It will take some time to get to what I hope will be a regularized framework that will be applicable from jurisdiction to jurisdiction so that we're measuring apples to apples. That work will be collaborative as well as consultative. Many countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., have agreed to work with us on that.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
You kind of pre-empted my next question because I wanted to know if there are uniform definitions, if specific words mean the same thing in different jurisdictions so that the data that you get in one jurisdiction is comparable to the data you're getting in another jurisdiction, and you're actually measuring apples to apples.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
That's another key area.
Most of the time when people are talking about standards and open data standards, that's what we're talking about. As an example, there's an undertaking for OGP countries to come up with a standardized view of the metadata that should be used to describe open data, regardless of where it is, because there aren't gigantic variations among ourselves, the U.K., and the U.S. There are small variations. The G-8 has taken on the exact same activity. They want to be able to map open data from all member countries, and to do so, we have to come close. We don't have to be exact, but we have to come close on the alignment of our metadata. So yes, that's a formal activity of ours going forward.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
It is. Yes.
Do you anticipate at some point there will be some standard regime in place that will have an accurate definition of all these specific terms and references?
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, and there are a couple of organizations currently, Schema.org and World Wide Web Foundation. There are different actors. Someone already mentioned the Open Knowledge Foundation. There are a bunch of organizations that are feeding into the development of these standards.
As I said, at the end of the day we just have to get to the point where the data from one jurisdiction is comparable to the data from any other jurisdiction. We have to come close on these standards, and you'd be challenged to find a jurisdiction that isn't interested in doing that. Most of them want to be able to compare their data to another jurisdiction's data.
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
If I could just say one more thing....
Senior Director, Information Management Strategies, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
Canada has signed on to the international aid transparency initiative, IATI, which is basically an offshoot of just that kind of thinking, that Canada can't compare its international aid data to any other country's and no other country can compare theirs to ours. IATI gets founded and establishes international standards, and now all international aid data can be compared to each other.
Some of that will continue to be subject related, subject specific, like that one for aid.
