Information & Ethics committee  Just that I am excited to see that the study is taking place. It's great to hear that you plan on making a very consultative effort to see what's happening with Canadians. I hope you move quickly. I hope that Canada can regain a position of prominence in online government. I hope there is action as soon as possible and we'll get to see a lot of important outcomes and innovation coming from it.

Information & Ethics committee  This may be a question for Mr. Moore. I'm far from a legislative expert; I'm a computer programmer.

Information & Ethics committee  I assure you there'll be significant online interest in a consultation on this matter. I and many other people will do whatever we can to get the word out.

Information & Ethics committee  Users of the website are in fact very interested in MPs. This is one of the great opportunities that the website data affords the Bloc Québécois. It provides information on party activities closer to home. When I'm in Montreal, the local newspapers cover events happening on the Island.

Information & Ethics committee  That is a very interesting question. I don't think we give this much thought when we look to publish data. It comes down to the perception of Internet users. It's interesting, but I don't know what people are thinking.

Information & Ethics committee  That's right. Because the data is public, different kinds of presentations are possible.

Information & Ethics committee  That's one of the great challenges of the years we're living in right now. Our society and our professional lives are increasingly about dealing with these huge gluts of information. That's why a lot of the focus of industry, of Internet companies, of technology is increasingly on finding ways to deal with the glut of information and make data useful.

Information & Ethics committee  To me, open government means a government whose default posture is one of collaboration and cooperation, recognizing that technology enables many more people to comment and participate in the workings of government, and government that is always ready to see where it can spark innovation and that capitalizes on the innovation of others.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not necessarily sure what the dangers would be. Assuming that privacy issues aren't at play and nothing is personally identifiable, then no. We're talking in slightly broad terms here, but I believe it absolutely should be the case that researchers—even someone who has training but not necessarily institutional affiliation, and who is interested in looking at rates of illness in Canada—are able to look into that.

Information & Ethics committee  Sure, but increasingly the word “specialized” means something like training in statistics and access to the Internet. Of course the people who will want to do this will have a particular interest in the field. We're talking slightly in generalizations, but I think the ability to get at the data, as long as there are no privacy issues for society, is something that could really spark data literacy, an interest in how the country works, and how to make it better among citizens, which I think is a wonderful thing.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not sure, but largely there's not an incentive to do so. Is my site destroying the integrity of the data when I make it searchable by someone's name? Some people might say yes, but I would say that makes it more useful. I could certainly go in and change what people said on my site.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly that's a political problem, but I'm not convinced that releasing data will contribute to that. There is certainly no shortage of inaccurate information being sent by people in news media all around the world. I think providing more information that is raw in terms of data and relatively free of interpretation makes it that much more likely for people to be able to see information at the source and to make up their own mind, in one sense.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't think that releasing data increases the risk of fraud. One can always commit fraud, but I'm not aware of a single case of anything like this happening in any of the open data efforts worldwide. I don't see the incentive to do something like that, to the best of my knowledge.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly. I think the State...

Information & Ethics committee  It was very kind of her to say that. I hope...