Evidence of meeting #24 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 information.
A video is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
Yes, it is.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
—and a lot of data brokers are making a lot of money doing this. I was just wondering if there was any thought at any point given to government going in this direction? I'm not necessarily making a case in favour of going that route, but I'm asking if there was any thought ever given to that?
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
We do value-added types of products all the time. That geocoder I mentioned earlier is a good example of that. There are a whole bunch of address data that are collected and shared by municipalities. What we're attempting to do is bring the address data together so that you can use a geocoder that helps you find authoritative locations across the province. That's a value-added piece, but in that case we're not necessarily charging people to use the geocoder system.
Conservative
Mark Adler Conservative York Centre, ON
If you go to specific websites now, a lot of the companies that you go to use these data brokers and they collect profile information on you. When you go to a specific website, you're going to get advertising directed towards you that's different from advertising directed towards Mr. Ravignat, for example. Are you looking at any kind of model whereby you could make that opportunity available to private companies so it's an added source of revenue for government, or not?
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
I want to make sure I understand. Are you thinking we should be selling ads on our DataBC site? I don't think I quite get the question.
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
Oh, no, we're not doing that.
Conservative
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
No intention of selling advertising on the government website.
Conservative
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you, Mr. Adler. Your time is up.
We'll now go to Madam Day.
You have five minutes.
NDP
Anne-Marie Day NDP Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am happy that it's my turn again. I have many questions.
Today, the Quebec City press made an announcement about Laval University, which is located in my beautiful and magnificent city of Quebec. In fact, I invite you all to visit the city this summer. Let me know and I will give you a tour.
The local press announced that a first sustainable development course was going to be offered online. This formula already exists at HEC Montréal, as well as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and Harvard, in the United States, where it has been very successful.
Have you considered having this type of training in your respective provinces? Do you have any contacts in the universities who could tell us?
It is clearly a way to make education more democratic. I know that New Brunswick is buying a number of medical and dental surgery courses from the Université de Sherbrooke. Have any similar open-access courses been considered by your provinces?
Chief Information Strategist, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Government of New Brunswick
Would you like me to answer the question, Mrs. Day?
Chief Information Strategist, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Government of New Brunswick
In New Brunswick, we currently have online training. In the past, we had a program—and I forget the name—that allowed the public to have access to online services.
To go back to the education sector, I am not aware of everything that goes on. As you mentioned, universities share some medical courses. My daughter's university also has that type of sharing. Schools perhaps do a little less of that kind of sharing.
Some courses are now offered in China, for instance. In this day and age, there are probably a lot of opportunities for sharing.
I am sorry, but I cannot give you a more detailed answer.
NDP
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
Certainly the universities are doing a lot in terms of online education. Royal Roads University in Victoria does this as part of its core business. Also, in the public education system, online courses are available for students in the more senior years, in the high school years. That allows them to actually opt out of physical classes and take classes online to be able to do this, and so yes, we are doing that. Sustainable development is also an area of real interest in British Columbia, and so there are a number of courses that do that.
NDP
Anne-Marie Day NDP Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Ms. Nadeau, you talked about three steps. At the third step, your document reads:
How do we accomplish this when each government still supports many data silos and finds it difficult to open data even within their own government? How do we start accomplishing this as a country?
In line with those questions, one of our guests, who came from Chicago, told us that, according to the municipal government that was in place, access to some data could be either open or restricted.
How can we turn that situation around? Can you suggest some solutions?
Chief Information Strategist, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Government of New Brunswick
As I said earlier, the second step is to study the data and determine which can be open. We need resources to change the way things are being done today. We must decide whether the system needs to be redone or whether a new capacity simply needs to be added.
In New Brunswick, since our resources are quite limited, we must be prudent in our approach. Each case can be a bit different since every piece of information is different. In health, we will have to be much more careful, but in the area of natural resources, we might be able to make the data accessible much faster.
NDP
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
It's great to have you here and appreciate the experience you've shared with the committee about the liquor road map and where to consume your favourite beverage in British Columbia. It's easy. It's in the Okanagan—international award-winning wines right there.
I know it has been helpful. It's been an ongoing discussion, using information and technology, I was just reflecting with my colleague, when we had all this discussion about RDF and website specification, technology specification, it reminds me of 30-plus years ago when we had the debate over Beta and VHS. So we're just going to the next generation in technology.
I have UBC Okanagan and Okanagan College in my constituency. One of the concerns I hear from constituents about research information is that people want to take that information and build on it. Have you had any challenges to date when you handle the open source access for academia and then for researchers, having their information used for private application and wanting to patent and copyright information?
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement, Government Communications and Public Engagement, British Columbia Government
I can tell you that one of the strongest user bases for our dataset, DataBC, is the post-secondary sector. And while our analytics don't tell us exactly who's using the set, whether they're a student, teacher, instructor, professor, or researcher, it's clear that UBC is a big user, and SFU and other provincial post-secondary education institutions are really important.
In other areas of data access, we have other data agencies in British Columbia. Population Data BC is one that provides access to researchers for health-related data. That is much more constrained than the DataBC presence because it involves personal information. We have heard from the research community that they would like more available streamlined access to data that's relevant to them in those kinds of areas. You mentioned the commercialization and IP issues. The open data opportunity there is that our licensing allows people to go and repurpose it for whatever they're looking to do, and that includes commercial purposes. It's cleaner that way.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
And I think with the medical perspective, my wife works as a doctor, and QHR Technologies is leading the way for electronic medical records. That's more and more with the technology, with our universities integrated with education campuses as well, using that technology.
One quick question for both of you, then, would be on the issue of privacy. We have 10 provinces and three territories. Each one has its own privacy act. We have the federal government respecting privacy. I used to be on the committee, so I'm just filling in. But I'm trying to figure out what the role is for the federal government. Do we sit back and develop the framework and be the referee perspective and have the provinces develop the guidelines? How do you see the federal role in developing this policy on a national basis, or pan-Canadian, as Ms. Nadeau referred to? Maybe you want to answer that question first, Ms. Nadeau.
Chief Information Strategist, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Government of New Brunswick
Yes, it would be great if the federal government would elaborate on the privacy policy more, and then all of the provincial and municipal governments could use it. Today we do share information about health with the University of New Brunswick.
It is quite difficult to decide the information that cannot be traced back to the person. It is very difficult to share information about health very openly. And I'm sure there are other areas, in social development or anything like that. It's very difficult and you will find a lot of resistance. The clearer the policy can be, the better it will be to help us out.