So the other day a reader sent me an email pointing me to a story in iPolitics titled “StatsCan anticipates $2M loss from move to open data” and asked me what I thought. Frustrated, was my response. $2M is not a lot of money. Not in a federal budget of almost $200B. And, the number [...]
Entries tagged as “statscan”
StatsCan’s free data costs $2M – a rant
Statistics Canada Data to become OpenData – Background, Winners and Next Steps
As some of you learned last night, Embassy Magazine broke the story that all of Statistics Canada’s online data will not only be made free, but released under the Government of Canada’s Open Data License Agreement (updated and reviewed earlier this week) that allows for commercial re-use. This decision has been in the works for [...]
Making StatsCan Data Free: Assessing the Cost
Regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve advocated that StatsCan’s data – and particularly its Census data – should be made open (e.g. free, unlicensed, and downloadable in multiple formats). Presently, despite the fact that Canadian tax dollars pay to collect (a sadly diminishing amount, and quality of,) data, it is not open. [...]
Census Update: It’s the Economy, Stupid
Yesterday during a press conference newly minted House leader John Baird announced “The next few months will be sharply focused on Canadians’ No. 1 priority: jobs and the economy… The economic recovery remains fragile and it is increasingly clear that we are not out of the woods yet.” Fantastic news. I just hope someone sends [...]
Creating effective open government portals
In the past few years a number of governments have launched open data portals. These sites, like www.data.gov or data.vancouver.ca share data – in machine readable formats (e.g. that you can play with on your computer) that government agencies collect. Increasingly, people approach me and ask: what makes for a good open data portal? Great [...]
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