I think that's something that could definitely be strengthened. I think you raise a really good point to say that the data portal is really young, and our commitments in general to various aspects of open government are pretty young. So really we're in the second year of our commitments under our national action plan. We're trying to develop a second one. It's been a learning curve, and there's work to do for sure.
I think part of that work is developing a more ongoing dialogue between a range of different users. I heard academics mentioned a few times this morning. I'm really happy to be part of that discussion. It's always nice to get out of your office, certainly, to make your work meaningful, and not just say it's on the syllabus 100 times a day. But it's not just academics; it's people maybe you wouldn't think of at first blush. A lot of non-governmental organizations really want to be engaged in this dialogue around open data and tell the government how they think the data portal can be improved. Data scientists want to be involved in the conversation on a more ongoing way to say, “These are the problems we're seeing realistically with being able to use the data sets”, so some of the problems that I spoke to directly during my opening remarks.
Even though we've done what I think is a fairly good job with citizen consultation and engagement in relation to our particular open data commitments, that kind of mechanism for an ongoing and sustained dialogue amongst different actors is something that certainly needs to be developed in a much better way, and I think the government has acknowledged that. So right now, if you go to the data portal, you'll see that they're running a consultation on how to do consultations. So they're kind of asking people, “How do you think we can do this? How can we develop a mechanism for engaging people, and who needs to be part of that discussion?”
We're not the only government struggling with that. I mean I certainly heard that from other national governments at the OGP meetings in Dublin last week.