Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, everyone.
I am both pleased and honoured to be here today in order to share our experience with open data, in the hope of helping to improve the Canadian government operations with respect to data belonging to its citizens.
Like the Canadian government, we began in 2011 to release data, in response to requests from citizens.
For your information, the City of Quebec has a population of 575,000 people. As compared to Canada's population, which is about 35 million, that represents a ratio of 1 to 60. The City of Quebec currently has 65 data sets, as compared to 11,000 for the Canadian government, which is a ration of 1 to 180. The City of Quebec currently has 5,000 downloads per month on its website, where has the Canadian government has had approximately 15,000 per month over the last few months, including 5,000 during last February's EDOC, which is a ratio of 1 to 3. Since our launch in 2011, citizens have downloaded something 118,000 times on the City of Quebec's website. According to what I read this morning on your site, the Canadian government tallied 100,000. These numbers lead us to the question of whether volume necessarily equals usefulness.
Over the last few years, the City of Quebec has participated in several community events, events organized by the community rather than the city. For example, programming marathons that last between one and three days. We have also asked colleges and universities students to create, using our data, applications that truly benefit citizens, rather than creating bogus projects at the end of the school year that will be seen only by their professors.
We became aware that the one-to-three-day traditional programming marathons were much too short to allow the creation of quality applications, even if we provided funding.
We also realized that final projects submitted by students provided much better quality applications. However, at the end of the school year, students go off to work and forget about their applications. What is more, professors cleared the servers to prepare for the next session, and applications disappear, no matter good they are.
Among the problems we can raise, transparency and usefulness seem the most important to me. Take for example police data collected by each city in Canada, data which I have consulted myself. I cannot help but wonder how useful it is for a citizen to find out how many officers are working or the numbers of officers eligible for retirement. Although it is made accessible for reasons of transparency, does this data truly improve a citizen's daily life? I truly wonder.
As to statistics per province on break-ins, attempted murders, drug trafficking, gambling and so forth, they may well interest statisticians, but do they improve taxpayers' daily lives? I find all this a bit much.
Our mayor recently announced he would be making crime data available and break it down by neighbourhood. This will certainly have an impact on property values in neighbourhoods with higher crime rates. Furthermore, the residents' reaction will be to ask the city to double, triple or even quadruple patrols. In one hour, rather than having one pair of eyes watching, we will have four. Is that sufficient? Forgive me for my skepticism.
I would prefer the residents become more aware and stop asking themselves what government can do for them, thinking that government is responsible for surveillance and security. No, that should not be the case. As a citizen, one should be responsible for reporting events that seem suspicious. Thus, instead of having four pairs of eyes per hour, there would be 100, 1,000 or 10,000. If we raise citizens' awareness about the quality of life in their own neighbourhoods, we will improve safety in those neighbourhoods and bring property values back up. Generally speaking, citizens are unconcerned by their provincial or municipal crime rates. They are mainly interested by what is going on around them, in their own backyard.
I believe there are changes to be made, and I have other suggestions to that end.
What would you say if we provided real data on waiting times at border crossings, so that people could head to the right stations? What if we provided information about wait times in hospitals, medical clinics, and all the places where permits are issued? So that people can choose the least busy ones for themselves? That would certainly help mitigate problems.
What would you say if we provided information as simple as georeferenced data on our parks, fountains and public washrooms? These are things people regularly complain about, as they do not know where fountains and public washrooms are located.
Imagine the consequences if we provided the rate of success for kidney surgeries by hospital. Of the four hospitals in my own city, one has a success rate of 62%, and the others, 80%. What would people do? They would choose one of the hospitals with an 80% score. This data would allow us to improve as communities. We could try to find a solution to any given hospital problems, by checking whether the hospital received proper funding over the last few years, whether its staff is competent or has received the necessary training. It might be appropriate to reduce investments in hospitals with a success rate of 80%, to spend two years attempting to correct the situation in the one with the 60% score, and thus, rebalance supply. In my opinion citizens would be better off.
As for developers, I think we could make their lives simpler. We have already begun to do so this year by adopting the Creative Commons International licence for the cities of Gatineau, Montreal, Quebec and Sherbrooke, as well as for the Quebec provincial government. Developers no longer have to worry about which licence must be taken into account when using this data.
We have also begun standardizing data. For the first time, datasets for events and new ideas have been standardized among cities. We now host this dataset on our website and are uniting portals into a single stop for these four cities and the Quebec provincial government, in order to facilitate the use of the website for citizens.
We must not shy away from encouraging their use. We have kept citizens in the dark for a very long time. We felt we were in a better position to know what was in their interest. It is time to let them in. To that end, we have to show them how to go about it, as they have lost the habit. We must encourage use.
We recently held a municipal programming marathon. These four cities each contributed a $5,000 prize. Then, during one week, we asked the winning teams to polish their products in preparation for a provincial competition. We provided four organizations with $12,500 in funding for that purpose. It cost my city $8,000 for an application that is compatible with iPhones, Windows Phone and Android, as well as online in an adapted format. That application will be maintained for one year. That was one of the requirements to be able to win the contest.
We can also try to create wealth. Universities have begun to design products with us, for example, an application that helps you find a parking spot downtown during events. We encouraged them to partner with a not-for-profit organization, or NFPO. They continued to improve the application to make it possible, for example, to prolong the parking permit through a smartphone, without having to return to the parking meter, or, getting a discount at a nearby restaurant before attending a show. We are creating wealth at the same time.
We are supporting two CEGEP initiatives that will create a not-for-profit so that applications developed by students at the end of the year can be used permanently by future student cohorts. If these applications become too cumbersome to maintain, CEGEPs may ask the students to take them over and set up a business. That would create jobs.
We also need to think about facilitating data consultation by citizens. We have a great deal of data, but could we provide citizens with the required tools to view them easily and automatically generate graphs in columns and pie charts, rather than providing them with raw data? Ultimately, these measures are not focused on the developer, but rather the ordinary citizen. We could provide citizens with mapping that would allow them to view data on their area and benefit from it. Imagine the possibilities.
We could also invest in playing a role as liaison and catalyst for the community. Some software engineering students are quite good at developing applications, but not great at designing. In an another faculty, students who specialize in multimedia design are very good at designing, but have never developed applications. All these students are asking to work with us. We play a middleman role with citizens and try to maximize their contributions. According to the testimony we have heard, this is greatly appreciated. These students offer real benefits to citizens. They are happy to return the favour, because they know that their tuition fees are largely subsidized by citizens.
I will be pleased to answer your questions.
Thank you.