Thank you, Mr. Chitilian.
I will continue by speaking to the points of interest which were submitted to us when we were invited to appear. In the invitation, it was suggested that we talk about the needs of users and about socio-economic benefits, if there were any, as well as the ways different governments could collaborate. It was also suggested that we talk about best practices, and of the ones we felt were better than others.
But before doing so, I think it is important to specify certain statistics.
Up until now, the City of Montreal has released 107 datasets. They deal with subjects of interest to citizens, which Mr. Chitilian mentioned, including transportation, administrative data and services close to the people, such as sports, recreation, culture and so on.
As far as the needs of users and citizens are concerned, I believe that others before us have already said this, but we really have to insist on the fact that beyond the accessibility of data, citizens are asking for information and structured data so they can improve the way they use the services the city has to offer and the way they can access these services. Structuring the data of course depends on the availability of platforms. In this situation, we are not talking about platforms which would only receive data, but really about systems which make the way these data can be used understandable. Taken to its logical conclusion, we could even draw a parallel with environments involving business intelligence. Otherwise, these data would really be of interest to no one.
I also think that citizens need to feel that their city is transparent, and therefore their government as well. In return, we can hope that the public's cynicism towards its institutions would go down. So what we are talking about is creating and maintaining a relationship of trust.
As for the socio-economic benefits, I have just mentioned the first one, namely the feeling of belonging and of pride people have when they contribute to a more open society, one which is more dynamic and which makes sense. Another effect is that this creates bottom up work and initiatives, that is, initiatives which create value based on this data. For example, citizens could take the initiative and create applications for their fellow citizens.
If you do your job well and if you like your community, you can expect that a virtuous circle will develop. It would be a kind of ecosystem which includes a city that has data and makes it available, that includes supporters or creators of solutions who use these data, as well as informed and engaged citizens. So you would find yourself in what could be called a virtuous circle.
Regarding best practices, at the City of Montreal, we have always found inspiration in Europe's best practices. This includes both top down initiatives, where governments strongly participate, and, to the contrary, initiatives which strongly call on community involvement.
We also are clear on the fact that the British government contributes not only because it publishes wide ranges of datasets, but also because of the open quality of this data. We were recently consulting an index on open data of various governments, and Great Britain ranked first precisely because of the fact that its data is so open.
Which leads me to talk about the choice of licence.
As with our friends from Quebec City, whom I would like to recognize, and officials from the Government of Quebec and those of the other Quebec towns, we believe that this is an extremely open licence which has very few restrictions. It's the Creative Commons 4.0 licence, whose only requirement has to do with attribution.
In our opinion, it is essential that governments which want to work together agree on a licence which is as open as possible. Otherwise, even though there might be common standards, if the licence does not allow for combining data in a very general way, the work will be in vain. This is why we are working very hard to get all of Canada's public organizations to adopt a licence which is as open as possible and which, of course, comes with the fewest restrictions.
In addition, as far as collaboration is concerned, there are licences and standards, but in this case, as in other countries, the process is moving forward by trial and error. Everybody wants to do their own thing. On the other hand, we are witnessing a form of industrialization of all our processes, and because there are so many platforms, it will probably not be necessary for everyone to develop and maintain their own. Perhaps we can think about sharing these platforms, which would be defined based on common criteria and interests. At the end of the day, we might have super platforms, within which all public organizations could deposit their data. The level of interpretation of these data would largely exceed the level of interpretation of each order of government.
For example, it might be interesting for a Canadian citizen to not only know the extent to which people engage in recreational activities or use public transit, but also, generally speaking, to have an idea about the way in which Canadians engage in recreational activities in their hometowns. For that type of information to be available, the data would obviously have to be combined and integrated into common platforms.
I will stop here. I am ready to take your questions.