Category Archives: public policy

I Stand for My Rights & Privacy: The Coming Online Police State

“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

This was Mr. Toews’s, the Minister of Justice, counterattack to a question in the house regarding concerns of letting the police monitor citizens internet use without a warrant.

Apparently this is our choice: a big brother state or child pornography.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Not to mention frightening. But this is the world Canadians will be entering in a few short weeks once the new Conservative Crime bill passes. The provisions that require a warrant, are interesting: the bill forces internet service providers to record and make available, to both police and governments, their customers internet activity such as the websites they visit. Citizen, understand, this now means that Bell, Rogers or anyone else that provides you with internet on your phone or at your home will now be recording every website you visit. Disturbed about that invasion of privacy? It gets worse.

Most disconcerting is that police would be allowed to obtain your email address, your IP addresses (which often identifies you on the Internet – your home, for example, likely has an IP address), or your mobile phone number and other information without a warrant. They just have to demand it. Suddenly a lot of what you can do online can be monitored by the police – again, without a warrant.

It isn’t just opposition members who are concerned. The Federal Privacy Commissioner and provincial counterparts are deeply concerned. They understand what this means. As Jennifer Stoddart, the federal Privacy Commissioner wrote to Minister Toews:

I am also concerned about the adoption of lower thresholds for obtaining personal information from commercial enterprises. The new powers envisaged are not limited to specific, serious offences or urgent or exceptional situations. In the case of access to subscriber data, there is not even a requirement for the commission of a crime to justify access to personal information – real names, home address, unlisted numbers, email addresses, IP addresses and much more – without a warrant.

In a few short weeks, this will be our reality: we will live in a country where the government can gain access to information that enables them to monitor its citizens online without a warrant. Obviously, the opportunities for abuse are astounding. If you are a ~~radical element~~ non-profit advocacy group that disagrees with the government, you’re probably doubly concerned. Of course, if you are an regular citizen I hope you haven’t written any anonymous comments in opposition to the Gateway Pipelines, since this legislation, combined with the government’s new focus on eco-terrorists (they are as much a threat as neo-nazi groups apparently) could make you a “vulnerable individual” and so an obvious target for security forces.

Of course the real irony of all this is that while the government seeks to increase its powers to monitor Canadians online it has used the opposite argument – the fear of government intrusion into citizens lives – to end the long gun registry. Not 6 days ago, Conservative Larry Miller (Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound) expressed his concern about how the gun registry would help foster a police state:

[…] Before I discuss the bill I would like to review how we arrived at where we are today. I would like to share with the House a quote from former Liberal justice minister Allan Rock: “I came to Ottawa last year, with a firm belief that the only people in Canada who should have firearms are police officers and the military.”

Does that sound familiar? Adolf Hitler, 1939.

You know what really reminds me of Adolf Hitler, 1939? A government that seeks to monitor the actions of all its citizens. That ask companies to record their activities in their homes and their places of work and that gives the police the right to access their personal information without a warrant. As a father I agree we need to fight child pornography, but I’m not willing to sign away my – or my children’s – civil rights and online privacy. I suspect most Canadians, as they learn more about this bill, will feel the same way. They don’t want any government, Conservative, Liberal or NDP, recording what they do, or accessing information about them without a warrant from an independent judiciary.

The Exciting Launch of Represent and What It Says About Open Data in Canada

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Last week a group of volunteer programs from across Canada announced the launch of Represent – a website that tries to map all of Canada’s boundaries. Confused? Don’t be. It’s simple. This is a nifty piece of digital infrastructure – try visiting the website yourself! After identifying where you are located it will then tell you which MP riding, MLA/MPP district and census subdivision you are located in.

So why does this matter?

What’s important about a site like Represent (much like its cousin site Mapit, which offers a similar service in the UK) is that other websites and applications can use it to offer important services, like letting a user know who their MP is, and thus who their complaint email should be sent to, or identify what by-laws are applicable in the place where they are standing. Have you ever visited the site of a ~~radical group~~ non-profit which urged you to write your MP? With Represent that organization can now easily and cheaply create a widget that would figure out where you are, who you MP is, and ensure you had the right address or email address for your letter. This significantly lowers the barrier to advocacy and political mobilization.

This is why I consider sites like Represent to be core digital infrastructure for a 21st century democracy. Critical because the number of useful services that can educate and engage citizens on politics and government is virtually limitless.

But if we accept that Represent is critical, the site’s limits tell us a lot about the state of our democratic institutions in general, and our open data policy infrastructure in particular. In this regard, there are three insights that come to mind.

1) The information limits of Represent

While Represent can locate any of the federal and provincial ridings (along with the elected official in them) there are remarkably few cities for which the service works. Calgary, Charlottetown, Edmonton, Mississauga, Montreal, Ottawa, Stratford, Summerside, Toronto and Windsor are all that are identified. (The absence of Vancouver – my home town – is less alarming as the city does not have wards or boroughs, we elect 10 councillors in an at large system). The main reason you won’t find more cities available is simply because many cities choose not to share their ward boundary data with the public. And of course, things don’t need to stop with just city wards, there is no reason what Represent couldn’t also tell you which school district you are in, or even which specific school catchment area you are in, in say Vancouver, or North Vancouver.

The paucity of data is an indication of how hard it is to get data from most cities and provinces about the communities in which we live in. There has been great success in getting open data portals launched in several cities – and we should celebrate the successes we’ve had – but the reality is, only a tiny fraction of Canadian cities share data about themselves. In the overwhelming majority, useful data about electoral boundaries, elected officials, schools, etc… exists and are sued internally by governments (paid for by our tax dollars) but they are never shared publicly and so cannot help drive democratic engagement.

So here’s a new rule. If your city boundary data isn’t in Represnt – your city is screwing up. It’s a pretty simple metric.

Oh, and Canada Post, you’re the biggest offender of them all. Your data is the default location specific data set in the country – the easiest way to locate where someone is. Being able to map all this data to postal codes is maybe the most important piece of the puzzle, but sadly, Canada Post clings to data our tax dollars subsidize the creation and maintenance of. Of course, in the UK, they made Postal Code data completely open.

2) Lack of Standards

And of course, even when the data does exist, it isn’t standardized. Previously non-profits, think tanks and even companies would have to manage data in various forms from innumerable sources, (or pay people lots of money to organize the data for them). It shouldn’t be this way. While it is great the Represent helps standardize the data, standard data schemas should already exist for things like MPP/MLA/MNA ridings and descriptions. Instead we have to rely on a group of volunteer hackers to solve a problem the countries leading governments are unable, or unwilling to address.

3) Licenses & Legality

However, the real place where Represent shows the short comings in Canada’s open data infrastructure is the way the site struggles to deal with the variety of licenses under which it is allowed to use data from various sources.

The simple fact is, in Canada, most “open data” is in fact not open. Rather that have serious restrictions placed upon them that limit the ability of sites like Rperesent.ca to be useful.

For example, many, many cities still have “share alike” clauses in their licenses, clauses that mean any product created using their data may not have “further restrictions of any kind.” But of course, each city with a “share alike” clause has slightly different restrictions in their license meaning that none of them can be combined. In the end it means that data from Vancouver cannot be used with data from Edmonton or from Montreal. It’s a complete mess.

Other jurisdictions have no license on their data. For example electoral boundary data for British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia is unlicensed, leaving users very unclear about their rights. Hint to these and other jurisdictions: just make it open.

What Represent really demonstrates is that there is a need for a single, standard open data license across Canada. It’s something I’m working on. More to report soon I hope.

Despite these hurdles, Represent is a fantastic project and site – and they are looking for others to help them gather more data. If you want to support them (and I strongly encourage you to do so) check out the bottom of their home page. Big congratulations to everyone involved.

Requests for Endorsements: My Application to Attend The Open Government Partnership

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Dear friends,

Below (first in english then in a rough french translation – my spoken is much better than my written so I’ve relied on Google translate) is my application letter to attend the April 16-18 Annual Open Government Partnership meeting in Brasilia as a Civil Society Representative.

The first reason I’m posting this is in an effort to make my application as transparent as possible. By posting it, if people have comments, additions, questions,I thought it might be helpful to post it. I can’t promise to engage every issue – I know some people have disagreed with positions I have taken – but I will do my best to engage what I believe is a broad community that cares about everything from open data, to access to information requests, to simply having more accessible MPs and websites.

Another – connected – reason I’m posting my application is I need your help. As part of the process I’m asked to submit organizations that endorse my application. For those of you who already have expressed this support… thank you. I will definitely add you to this letter. If you are willing to support my application and have not yet let me know, please do send me an email (or comment below). I need to add you organization (if any), your name and your email address.

The application deadline is February 6th (yes, it would have been better to get this up sooner) so ideally any feedback would be great to get today or this weekend. That said, I would still love to get feedback after the 6th in case I do go, I’d still like to be able to listen for and act on what you care about.

If you have other questions about or suggestions for the application, please let me know. Thank you!

Dear Open Government Partnership,

I am writing to express my desire to participate as a local civil society member at the 2012 OGP meeting in Brazil.

I have been active in Open Government for the past 7 years working as an advocate, adviser and chronicler of transparency in Canada and around the world.

Background and Engagement in OGP Issues

As an advocate, I’ve spoken about the challenges around Open Government across Canada at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. Internationally, I’ve given the opening keynote at the last two International Open Government Data Camps hosted by the Open Knowledge Foundation, was invited to address the 7^th International Conference of Information Commissioners in Ottawa and Mexico’s Semana Nacional de la Transparencia, and given talks at the Gov 2.0 Expo and Summit in Washington DC (at which the host, Tim O’Reilly, stated, “If you read only one blog in the Gov 2.0 space, you should read eaves.ca”).

In addition to speaking, I’ve tried to actively demonstrate ways open government can improve our communities. My belief is that we need a broad set of ways to engage citizens in open government – some will be motivated by accountability, but others will be engaged by simply having their lives made easier. Consequently, in pursuit of advancing accountability, I worked with a team of developers sponsored by Microsoft to create Emitter.ca, a website that mashes up pollution, politician, and company data to enable citizens to identify heavy polluters in their neighborhoods and region. While trying to find ways to show how open government can promote better services, I worked with friends to create Recollect.net, a simple service that uses open data to remind citizens to take out their recycling and garbage. And as an advocate, when the Federal Government lagged by years behind the US and the UK in creating an open data portal, I created http://www.datadotgc.ca which sought to track open data sets already being shared on various ministry website to demonstrate that, contrary to its position, the government already had a policy infrastructure to do open data. This site helped pressure the government into launching its own formal open data website.

I’ve also worked actively in the Open Government space by engaging with governments directly. In 2009, I co-drafted the open motion for the Mayor and Council of the City of Vancouver. This lead to the first city council motion in the world directing city staff to make open data part of their activities. As a result, Vancouver launched the world’s second municipal open data portal (after Washington DC). I also worked with the city’s IT staff to revise procurement rules to make open data a required specification as well make open source software a permissible option. At the federal level, I worked with NGO and educated key government players to shift Canada – which had been skeptical – into agreeing to participate in the OGP.

I have, however, also been critical when necessary. I’ve written pieces in newspapers and on my blog when governments have failed to be transparent or have taken steps in the wrong direction.

Meeting Contribution and Learnings

The Open Government Partnership provides civil society members with a rare carrot and stick for engaging their government on the issue of open government. Because it requires the government to set clear goals around transparency in an international forum, it provides civil society with leverage to hold the government to account.

While this leverage must be handled responsibly (factually incorrect critiques will erode the public’s confidence in civil society organizations), if properly used it can compel the government to move more aggressively on fixing problems in this area. This is of particular urgency in Canada, where government transparency has been in decline over the past several decades. Once considered cutting age, Canada’s access to information regime is wildly out of date. Access to information requests are handled more slowly than ever and access to government information – with the exception of a dramatic improvement in the area of open data – is becoming more restrictive. My goal at the Open Government Partnership will be to engage other government and NGOs to understand the transparency benchmarks being set by other governments that can be used as a way by which Canadians can judge the progress of their own government. I can also share my own experiences in moving open data policies through local and national governments, as well as some approaches for engaging non-traditional stakeholders in this space.

OGP Outreach Plan

Upon returning from the Open Government Partnership, I commit to aggregating feedback from various actors in an effort to have it directly inform the goals and actions of the Canadian Federal Government with whom I have a critical but cordial relationship. I will also, of course, blog about what I believe are the key benchmarks Canadian civil society actors should be using to pressure and measure the Canadian government against. Finally, I commit to get on the phone with any civil society actor that contacts me and discuss with them what I observed and how I believe it impacts their organization.

Funding

With regard to funding, my hope is that I will be able to find some alternative funding for travel. As a result, I’m looking to have my room and board covered along with some of my travel costs. My hope is that by doing so, it might be possible to use some of the OGP funds to support the travel of others.

The organizations, names and emails of the leaders endorsing my application

Organisation Leader Email

Thank you for considering my application. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

David Eaves

version française

Cher Partenariat gouvernement ouvert,

Je vous écris pour exprimer mon désir de participer en tant que membre de la société civile locale à la réunion de 2012 du OGP au Brésil.

J’ai été actif au sein du gouvernement ouvert pour les 7 dernières années de travail comme un défenseur, de conseiller et chroniqueur de la transparence au Canada et partout dans le monde.

Contexte et engagement dans les questions du OGP

En tant que défenseur, j’ai parlé des défis autour de la transparence du gouvernement partout au Canada aux niveaux municipal, provincial et fédéral. Au niveau international, je vous ai donné le discours d’ouverture lors des deux dernières International Open Camps de données hébergées par le gouvernement de l’Open Knowledge Foundation, a été invité à s’adresser à la 7e Conférence internationale des commissaires à l’information à Ottawa et du Mexique Semana Nacional de la Transparencia, et donné des conférences au l’Gov 2.0 Expo et au Sommet de Washington DC (à laquelle l’hôte, Tim O’Reilly, a déclaré: «Si vous ne voulez lire un blog dans l’espace Gov 2.0, vous devriez lire eaves.ca”).

En plus de parler, j’ai essayé de démontrer activement des façons un gouvernement ouvert pouvons améliorer nos collectivités. Ma conviction est que nous devons un large éventail de moyens pour engager les citoyens dans un gouvernement ouvert, dont certains seront motivés par la reddition de comptes, mais d’autres seront engagés en ayant simplement leur vie plus facile. Par conséquent, dans la poursuite de l’avancement de responsabilité, j’ai travaillé avec une équipe de développeurs parrainés par Microsoft pour créer Emitter.ca, un site Web qui écrase les données de la pollution, homme politique et la société pour permettre aux citoyens d’identifier les pollueurs dans leurs quartiers et de la région. Tout en essayant de trouver des façons de montrer le degré d’ouverture du gouvernement peut favoriser de meilleurs services, j’ai travaillé avec des amis pour créer Recollect.net, un service simple qui utilise les données ouvertes à rappeler aux citoyens de prendre leur recyclage et des ordures. Et en tant que défenseur, lorsque le gouvernement fédéral retardée par des années derrière les Etats-Unis et au Royaume-Uni dans la création d’un portail de données ouverte, j’ai créé http://www.datadotgc.ca qui a cherché à suivre les données ouvertes fixe d’ores et déjà partagé sur le site Web du ministère, pour montrer que, contrairement à sa position, le gouvernement avait déjà une infrastructure politique de faire de données ouvertes. Ce site a contribué pression sur le gouvernement en lançant son propre site web officiel de données ouvert.

J’ai aussi travaillé activement dans l’espace ouvert par gouvernement collaboration avec les gouvernements directement. En 2009, j’ai co-rédigé la motion ouverte pour le maire et le conseil de la ville de Vancouver. Cela a conduit à la motion du Conseil municipal première dans le monde de diriger le personnel municipal pour faire partie des données ouverte de leurs activités. En conséquence, Vancouver a lancé seconde municipale dans le monde Portail de données ouvertes (après Washington DC). J’ai également travaillé avec TI de la Ville de personnel pour réviser les règles de passation des marchés pour rendre les données ouvertes une spécification requise ainsi rendre les logiciels open source d’une option acceptable. Au niveau fédéral, j’ai travaillé avec des ONG et instruits joueurs clés du gouvernement de transférer au Canada – qui avait été sceptique – en acceptant de participer à l’OGP.

J’ai, cependant, a également joué un rôle crucial lorsque cela est nécessaire. J’ai écrit des pièces dans les journaux et sur mon blog où les gouvernements n’ont pas réussi à être transparents ou ont pris des mesures dans la mauvaise direction.

Comment vais-je contribuer à la réunion et ce, je veux apprendre de fréquenter;

Le Partenariat sur la transparence gouvernementale offre aux membres de la société civile avec une carotte et du bâton rare pour engager leur gouvernement sur la question d’un gouvernement ouvert. Parce qu’il oblige le gouvernement à fixer des objectifs clairs à la transparence dans un forum international, il offre à la société civile avec effet de levier pour obliger le gouvernement à rendre compte.

Bien que cet effet de levier doit être géré de façon responsable (dans les faits critiques incorrectes va éroder la confiance du public dans les organisations de la société civile), si elle est correctement utilisée, elle peut contraindre le gouvernement à agir de façon plus agressive sur la résolution des problèmes dans ce domaine. Ceci est d’une urgence particulière au Canada, où la transparence du gouvernement a été en déclin au cours des dernières décennies. Autrefois considéré comme la coupe d’âge, l’accès du Canada au système d’information est follement hors de date. Demandes d’accès à l’information sont traitées plus lentement que jamais et l’accès à l’information du gouvernement – à l’exception d’une amélioration spectaculaire dans la zone de données ouvertes – est de plus en plus restrictive. Mon objectif au sein du Partenariat sur la transparence gouvernementale sera d’engager les autres gouvernements et les ONG pour comprendre les repères de transparence étant fixés par les gouvernements d’autres qui peuvent être utilisés comme un moyen par lequel les Canadiens peuvent juger l’état d’avancement de leur propre gouvernement. Je peux aussi partager mes propres expériences dans le déplacement des politiques d’ouverture des données par les gouvernements locaux et nationaux, ainsi que quelques approches pour engager les acteurs non traditionnels dans cet espace.

Description de mon OGP plan de sensibilisation avec la société civile et d’autres où je rentre chez moi

Au retour de la société en commandite gouvernement ouvert, je m’engage à agréger les commentaires des différents acteurs dans un effort pour faire informer directement les objectifs et les actions du gouvernement fédéral canadien avec qui j’ai une relation critique, mais cordiale. Je vais aussi, bien sûr, blog sur ce que je crois sont les principaux critères canadiens acteurs de la société civile devraient être en utilisant à la pression et de mesurer le gouvernement canadien contre. Enfin, je m’engage à prendre le téléphone avec n’importe quel acteur de la société civile qui communique avec moi et discuter avec eux ce que j’ai observé et comment je crois que son impact sur leur organisation.

Financement

En ce qui concerne le financement, mon espoir est que je serai en mesure de trouver un financement alternatif pour les voyages. En conséquence, je suis à la recherche d’avoir ma chambre et pension comprise avec certains de mes frais de déplacement. Mon espoir est que, ce faisant, il pourrait être possible d’utiliser une partie des fonds du OGP à financer les déplacements des autres.

Les organisations, les noms et les courriels des dirigeants approuvant ma demande

Organisation Leader Courriel

Merci de considérer ma demande. S’il vous plaît laissez-moi savoir si vous avez des questions.

Sincèrement,

David Eaves

Algorithmic Regulation Spreading Across Government?

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I was very, very excited to learn that the City of Vancouver is exploring implementing a program started in San Francisco in which “smart” parking meters adjust their price to reflect supply and demand (story is here in the Vancouver Sun).

For those unfamiliar with the program, here is a breakdown. In San Francisco, the city has the goal of ensuring at least one free parking spot is available on every block in the downtown core. As I learned during the San Fran’s presentation at the Code for America summit, such a goal has several important consequences. Specifically, it reduces the likelihood of people double parking, reduces smog and greenhouse gas emissions as people don’t troll for parking as long and because trolling time is reduced, people searching for parking don’t slow down other traffic and buses as they drive around slowly looking for a spot. In short, it has a very helpful impact on traffic more broadly.

So how does it work? The city’s smart parking meters are networked together and constantly assess how many spots on a given block are free. If, at the end of the week, it turns out that all the spaces are frequently in use, the cost of parking on that block is increased by 25 cents. Conversely if many of the spots were free, the price is reduced by 25 cents. Generally, each block finds an equilibrium point where the cost meets the demand but is also able to adjust in reaction to changing trends.

Technologist Tim O’Reilly has referred to these types of automated systems in the government context as “algorithmic regulation” – a phrase I think could become more popular over the coming decade. As software is deployed into more and more systems, the algorithms will be creating market places and resource allocation systems – in effect regulating us. A little over a year ago I said that contrary to what many open data advocates believe, open data will make data political – e.g. that open data wasn’t going to depoliticize public policy and make it purely evidenced base, quite the opposite, it will make the choices around what data we collect more contested (Canadians, think long form census). The same is also – and already – true of the algorithms, the code, that will increasingly regulate our lives. Code is political.

Personally I think the smart parking meter plan is exciting and hope the city will consider it seriously, but be prepared, I’m confident that much like smart electrical meters, an army of naysayers will emerge who simply don’t want a public resource (roads and parking spaces) to be efficiently used.

It’s like the Spirit of the West said: Everything is so political.

Public Servants Self-Organizing for Efficiency (and sanity) – Collaborative Management Day

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Most of the time, when I engage with or speak to federal public servants, they are among the most eager to find ways to work around the bureaucracy in which they find themselves. They want to make stuff happen, and ideally, to make it happen right and more quickly. This is particularly true of younger public servants and those below middle management in general (I also find it is often the case of those at the senior levels, who often can’t pierce the fog of middle management to see what is actually happening).

I’m sure this dynamic is not new. In large bureaucracies around the world the self-organizing capacity of public servants have forever been in a low level guerrilla conflict against the hierarchies that both protect but also restrain them. What makes all this more interesting today however, is never before have public servants had more independent capacity to self-organize and never before have the tools at their disposal been more powerful.

So, for those who live in work in Ottawa who’d like to learn some of the tools public servants are using to better network and get work done across groups and ministries, let me point you to “Collaborative Management Day 2012.” (For those of us who aren’t public servants, that link, which directs into GCPEDIA won’t work – but I’m confident it will work for insiders). To be clear, it’s the ideas that are batted around at events like this that I believe will shape how the government will work in the coming decades. Much like the boomers created the public service of today in the 1960’s, millennials are starting to figure out how to remake it in a world of networks, and diminished resources.

Good luck guys. We are counting on you.

Details:

When: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Canada Aviation and Space Museum, 11 Aviation Parkway, Ottawa, ON or via Webcast

Cost: Free! Seats are limited; registration is required for attendance.

The GCPedia community defines collaboration as being “a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals—for example, an intellectual endeavour that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.” And this is exactly what the Collaborative Culture Camp (GOC3) will teach you to achieve at the next Collaborative Management Day on January 25, 2012.

This free event will offer you a day of workshops and learning sessions that will help you:

Expand your knowledge and use of collaborative tools and culture

Develop an awareness of alternative processes that deliver results

Understand how to foster an environment of openness and transparency

Develop networks to support the application of new tools

At the end of the day you will be able to bring a collaborative toolkit back to your organization to share with your employees and colleagues!

Keep up to date on the event by keeping an eye on our GCPedia pages and by following us on Twitter (@GOC_3) and watching the #goc3 conversation (no account needed to check out the conversation!).

Questions? Concerns? Feedback? Feel free to email the event organizers or leave a message on our Discussion page on GCPedia.

My Canadian Open Government Consultation Submission

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Attached below is my submission to the Open Government Consultation conducted by Treasury Board over the last couple of weeks. There appear to be a remarkable number of submission that were made by citizens, which you can explore on the Treasury Board website. In addition, Tracey Lauriault has tracked some of the submissions on her website.

I actually wish the submissions on the Government website were both searchable and could be downloaded in there entirety. That way we could re-organize them, visualize them, search and parse them as well as play with the submissions so as to make the enormous number of answers easier to navigate and read. I can imagine a lot of creative ways people could re-format all that text and make it much more accessible and fun.

Finally, for reference, in addition to my submission I wrote this blog post a couple months ago suggesting goals the government set for itself as part of its Open Government Partnership commitments. Happily, since writing that post, the government has moved on a number of those recommendations.

So, below is my response to the government’s questions (in bold):

What could be done to make it easier for you to find and use government data provided online?

First, I want to recognize that a tremendous amount of work has been done to get the present website and number of data sets up online.

FINDING DATA:

My advice on making data easier to engage Socrata to create the front end. Socrata has an enormous amount of experience in how to share government data effectively. Consider http://data.oregon.gov here is a site that is clean, easy to navigate and offers a number of ways to access and engage the governments data.

More specifically, what works includes:

1. Effective search: a simple search mechanism returns all results
2. Good filters: Because the data is categorized by type (Internal vs. external, charts, maps, calendars, etc…) it is much easier to filter. One thing not seen on Socrata that would be helpful would be the ability to sort by ministry.
3. Preview: Once I choose a data set I’m given a preview of what it looks like, this enables me to assess whether or not it is useful
4. Social: Here there is a ton on offer
– I’m able to sort data sets by popularity – being able to see what others find interesting is, in of itself interesting.
– Being able to easily share data sets via email, or twitter and facebook means I’m more likely to find something interesting because friends will tell me about it
– Data sets can also be commented upon so I can see what others think of the data, if they think it is useful or not, and what for or not.
– Finally, it would be nice if citizens could add meta data, to make it easier for others to do keyword searches. If the government was worried about the wrong meta data being added, one could always offer a search with crowd sourced meta data included or excluded
5. Tools: Finally, there are a large number of tools that make it easier to quickly play with and make use of the data, regardless of one’s skills as a developer. This makes the data much more accessible to the general public.

USING DATA

Finding data is part of the problem, being able to USE the data is a much bigger issue.

Here the single most useful thing would be to offer API’s into government data. My own personal hope is that one day there will be a large number of systems both within and outside of government that will integrate government data right into their applications. For example, as I blogged about here – https://eaves.ca/2011/02/18/sharing-critical-information-with-public-lessons-for-governments/ – product recall data would be fantastic to have as an API so that major retailers could simply query the API every time they scan inventory in a warehouse or at the point of sale, any product that appears on the list could then be automatically removed. Internally, Borders and Customs could also query the API when scanning exports to ensure that nothing exported is recalled.

Second, if companies and non-profits are going to invest in using open data, they need assurances that both they are legally allowed to use the data and that the data isn’t going to suddenly disappear on them. This means, a robust license that is clear about reuse. The government would be wise to adopt the OGL or even improve on it. Better still helping establish a standardized open data license for Canada and ideally internationally could help reduce some legal uncertainty for more conservative actors.

More importantly, and missing from Socrata’s sites, would be a way of identifying data sets on the security of their longevity. For example, data sets that are required by legislation – such as the NPRI – are the least likely to disappear, whereas data sets the the long form census which have no legal protection could be seen as at higher risk.

How would you use or manipulate this data?

I’m already involved in a number of projects that use and share government data. Among those are Emitter.ca – which maps and shares NPRI pollution data and Recollect.net, which shares garbage calendar information.

While I’ve seen dramatically different uses of data, for me personally, I’m interested mostly in using data for thinking and writing about public policy issues. Indeed, much has been made of the use of data in “apps” but I think it is worth noting that the single biggest use of data will be in analysis – government officials, citizens, academics and others using the data to better understand the world around them and lobby for change.

This all said, there are some data sets that are of particular usefulness to people, these include:

1. Data sets on sensitive issues, this includes health, inspection and performance data (Say surgery outcomes for specific hospitals, or restaurant inspection data, crime and procurement data are often in great demand).
2. Dynamic real-time Data: Data that is frequently updated (such a border, passport renewal or emergency room wait times). This data is shared in the right way can often help people adjust schedules and plans or reallocate resources more effectively. Obviously this requires an API.
3.Geodata: Because GIS standards are very mature it is easy to “mashup” geo data to create new maps or offer new services. These common standards means that geo data from different sources will work together or can be easily compared. This is in sharp contrast to say budget data, where there are few common standards around naming and organizing the data, making it harder to share and compare.

What could be done to make it easier for you to find government information online?

It is absolutely essential that all government records be machine readable.

Some of the most deplorable moment in open government occur when the government shares documents with the press, citizens or parliamentary officers in paper form. The first and most important thing to make government information easier to find online is to ensure that it is machine readable and searchable by words. If it does not meet this criteria I increasingly question whether or not it can be declared open.

As part of the Open Government Partnership commitments it would be great for the government to commit to guarantee that every request for information made of it would include a digital version of the document that can be searched.

Second, the government should commit that every document it publishes be available online. For example, I remember in 2009 being told that if I wanted a copy of the Health Canada report “Human Health in a Changing Climate:A Canadian Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity” I had to request of CD, which was then mailed to me which had a PDF copy of the report on it. Why was the report not simply available for download? Because the Minister had ordered it not to appear on the website. Instead, I as a taxpayer and to see more of my tax dollars wasted for someone to receive my mail, process it, then mail me a custom printed cd. Enabling ministers to create barriers to access government information, simply because they do not like the contents, is an affront to the use of tax payer dollars and our right to access information.

Finally, Allow Government Scientists to speak directly to the media about their research.

It has become a reoccurring embarrassment. Scientists who work for Canada publish an internationally recognized ground break paper that provides some insight about the environment or geography of Canada and journalists must talk to government scientists from other countries in order to get the details. Why? Because the Canadian government blocks access. Canadians have a right to hear the perspectives of scientists their tax dollars paid for – and enjoy the opportunity to get as well informed as the government on these issues.

Thus, lift the ban that blocks government scientists from speaking with the media.

Do you have suggestions on how the Government of Canada could improve how it consults with Canadians?

1. Honour Consultation Processes that have started

The process of public consultation is insulted when the government itself intervenes to bring the process into disrepute. The first thing the government could do to improve how it consults is not sabotage processes that already ongoing. The recent letter from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver regarding the public consultation on the Northern Gateway Pipelines has damaged Canadians confidence in the governments willingness to engage in and make effective use of public consultations.

2. Focus on collecting and sharing relevant data

It would be excellent if the government shared relevant data from its data portal on the public consultation webpage. For example, in the United States, the government shares a data set with the number and location of spills generated by Enbridge pipelines, similar data for Canada would be ideal to share on a consultation. Also useful would be economic figures, job figures for the impacted regions, perhaps also data from nearby parks (visitations, acres of land, kml/shape boundary files). Indeed, data about the pipeline route itself that could be downloaded and viewed in Google earth would be interesting. In short, there are all sorts of ways in which open data could help power public consultations.

3. Consultations should be ongoing

It would be great to see a 311 like application for the federal government. Something that when loaded up, would use GPS to identify the services, infrastructure or other resources near the user that is operated by the federal government and allow the user to give feedback right then and there. Such “ongoing” public feedback could then be used as data when a formal public consultation process is kicked off.

Are there approaches used by other governments that you believe the Government of Canada could/should model?

1. The UK governments expense disclosure and release of the COINS database more generally is probably the most radical act of government transparency to date. Given the government’s interest in budget cuts this is one area that might be of great interest to pursue.

2. For critical data sets, those that are either required by legislation or essential to the operation of a ministry or the government generally, it would be best to model the city of Chicago or Washington DC and foster the creation of a data warehouse where this data could be easily shared both internally and externally (as privacy and security permits). These cities are leading governments in this space because they have tackled both the technical challenges (getting the data on a platform where it can be shared easily) and around governance (tackling the problem of managing data sets from various departments on a shared piece of infrastructure).

Are there any other comments or suggestions you would like to make pertaining to the Government of Canada’s Open Government initiative?

Some additional ideas:

Redefine Public as Digital: Pass an Online Information Act

a) Any document it produces should be available digitally, in a machine readable format. The sham that the government can produce 3000-10,000 printed pages about Afghan detainees or the F-35 and claim it is publicly disclosing information must end.

b) Any data collected for legislative reasons must be made available – in machine readable formats – via a government open data portal.

c) Any information that is ATIPable must be made available in a digital format. And that any excess costs of generating that information can be born by the requester, up until a certain date (say 2015) at which point the excess costs will be born by the ministry responsible. There is no reason why, in a digital world, there should be any cost to extracting information – indeed, I fear a world where the government can’t cheaply locate and copy its own information for an ATIP request as it would suggest it can’t get that information for its own operations.

Use Open Data to drive efficiency in Government Services: Require the provinces to share health data – particularly hospital performance – as part of its next funding agreement within the Canada Health Act.

Comparing hospitals to one another is always a difficult task, and open data is not a panacea. However, more data about hospitals is rarely harmful and there are a number of issues on which it would be downright beneficial. The most obvious of these would be deaths caused by infection. The number of deaths that occur due to infections in Canadian hospitals is a growing problem (sigh, if only open data could help ban the antibacterial wipes that are helping propagate them). Having open data that allows for league tables to show the scope and location of the problem will likely cause many hospitals to rethink processes and, I suspect, save lives.

Open data can supply some of the competitive pressure that is often lacking in a public healthcare system. It could also better educate Canadians about their options within that system, as well as make them more aware of its benefits.

Reduce Fraud: Creating a Death List

In an era where online identity is a problem it is surprising to me that I’m unable to locate a database of expired social insurance numbers. Being able to query a list of social security numbers that belong to dead people might be a simple way to prevent fraud. Interestingly, the United States has just such a list available for free online. (Side fact: Known as the Social Security Death Index this database is also beloved by genealogist who use it to trace ancestry).

Open Budget and Actual Spending Data

For almost a year the UK government has published all spending data, month by month, for each government ministry (down to the £500 in some, £25,000 in others). More over, as an increasing number of local governments are required to share their spending data it has lead to savings, as government begin to learn what other ministries and governments are paying for similar services.

Create a steering group of leading Provincial and Municipal CIOs to create common schema for core data about the country.

While open data is good, open data organized the same way for different departments and provinces is even better. When data is organized the same way it makes it easier to citizens to compare one jurisdiction against another, and for software solutions and online services to emerge that use that data to enhance the lives of Canadians. The Federal Government should use its convening authority to bring together some of the countries leading government CIOs to establish common data schemas for things like crime, healthcare, procurement, and budget data. The list of what could be worked on is virtually endless, but those four areas all represent data sets that are frequently requested, so might make for a good starting point.

Ethical Oil and the Northern Gateway Pipeline Process

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This piece is cross-posted from the Toronto Star’s Op-Ed Page.

This week the “ethical oil” argument adopted by the federal government took an interesting twist. While billions from China pour into Canada to develop the oilsands and fund the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline, on Monday the government announced its desire to revise the rules so that Canadians will have less time to share their concerns and properly review these massive projects.

Why the change? Because environmental organizations, “other radical groups” and, ironically, foreign money, are allegedly corrupting the process. Is this the future of ethical oil — a world where the Canadian government limits its citizens’ ability to talk over an issue so that China, a country the Prime Minister’s communications director calls a dictatorship, can be allowed to own and exploit Canada’s natural resources?

It’s a curious twist. Many Canadians — me included — agree with one part of Ezra Levant’s ethical oil argument: oil should be evaluated by its environmental impact as well as its effect on the respect for human rights and international stability.

But where does it leave the government’s case for ethical oil if Canadians are sidelined in the decision-making process to please a country both Levant and the Prime Minister have accused of human rights violations? Indeed, on his show The Source, Levant is often critical of China, hosting discussions on how “the freedoms of its people are still on the decline” and labelling the country a “dictatorship.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has had equally strong words about China. He once said of the country: “I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values — our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights. They don’t want to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

So why start now? Especially when Canadians share the Prime Minister’s former concern. A recent poll of British Columbians showed that 73 per cent were worried or very worried about China investing in or owning Canada’s natural resources. Given the environmental implications, the broader ethical concerns raised by Levant, as well as the government’s promise to be more transparent and more engaged with Canadians, this is precisely the wrong time to limit discussion.

There is also a great deal to discuss with regard to foreign influence. Although the word “China” only appears once on the Northern Gateway pipeline website, Sinopec, China’s second largest energy company, was part of a group that recently invested $100 million in the pipeline, the terms of which also enable it to buy an ownership stake in the future. It also spent $4.65 billion (U.S.) to buy 9 per cent of Syncrude Canada. Another company affiliated with the Chinese government just paid $673 million (U.S.) for the remaining 40 per cent of the MacKay River oilsands development, completing its takeover of the project.

If the Northern Gateway pipeline is built, the influence of foreign money in Canada — especially from China — will increase, not decrease. Doesn’t the ethical oil argument demand that Canadians be given a comprehensive opportunity to discuss the pipeline and its impact?

Ultimately, this is why Canadians should be cautious about changing the rules for reviewing projects like the Northern Gateway pipeline. As more money flows in, the numerous decisions risk becoming less and less about Canada and more and more about China. This is something that deserves more conversation, not less.

Finally, I don’t know if the pipeline should be built, and suspect most Canadians don’t either. But this is probably the most important reason Canada needs a process that allows for a far-reaching consultation, so that a broad set of perspectives and issues may be heard. Maybe the new rules would be sensible. But proposing to change the rules on the fly, decrying the trickle of foreign money from the United States while ignoring billions from China and labelling those who would question or criticize the oilsands as “radicals” doesn’t inspire confidence as an opening move.

As leader of the opposition, a younger Stephen Harper once correctly asserted: “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.” The Prime Minister tapped into a powerful truth in that moment — a truth that Canadians still hold dear today. If the government’s approach to the pipeline amounts to nothing more than disempowering Canadians — and in particular the project’s critics — then its cancelling and avoidance of dissent will inspire confidence in neither the ethical oil brand nor the government itself.

Open Government Advocacy: The Danger of Letting Narrative Trump Fact

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So I loath making this the first post of the new year, but here we go.

Today Canada.com published a story “Tony Clement vows innovative new open government, but critics point to poor record.” In it, Jason Fekete the journalist responsible for the story, quotes a Democracy Watch spokesperson who sadly gets the facts completely wrong despite the fact that I warned Democracy Watch about their error a month ago after their press release caused similar errors to appear in a CBC story. I’ll outline why this is problem later in the post. Bur first the error.

In the article Fekete reports

Democracy Watch said it will appeal to the international open government group to reject Canada’s entry because the federal government failed to keep one of its required commitments to consult Canadians. Ottawa announced its online consultation one day after the watchdog complained about it.

This is, in fact, not true. To date, the government has not failed to meet its commitment. As I pointed out in an earlier blog post (to which Democracy Watch responded as is aware) Democracy Watch accuses the government of failing because it believed consultations needed to be conducted before a November OGP meeting in Brazil. Unfortunately, the meeting in which Governments will be sharing their plans (and thus need to complete their consultations) will be taking place in Brazil in April. The OPG clearly states this on their website (under section 5). There was a meeting in November, so the confusion was understandable.

Of course, just to be safe, I did what the CBC and Postmedia should have done. I emailed the OGP secretariat to check. Within minutes they confirmed to me that the April meeting is the deadline for consultations and developing plans. What is more interesting to me is the no one from Democracy Watch, the CBC or Post Media bothered to simply email or call the OGP secretariat and confirm these facts. For the CBC and Postmedia this is a matter of laziness. For Democracy Watch, I’m not sure what is driving this willed blindness. Ultimately, I suspect that once they went public with their narrative, backing down would be seen as weakness and then government secrecy would win!

This is dangerous for two reasons.

The first is, it isn’t true. Government secrecy doesn’t win if Democracy Watch got its facts mixed up. I agree that this government has a lot to answer for around its willingness to disclose government documents. Be it documents around the procurement of the F-35 or the treatment of Afghan prisoners there are many cases where the lack of transparency has been blatant and, I believe, counter to the principles of democracy and open government. Conceding that the Government is still on track for its Open Government Partnership objectives does not diminish that fact. The only thing that misrepresenting the facts does is cause conservative leaning voters who believe in government transparency (an important constituency) to tune out of the debate and believe that Democracy Watch is simply out to score points against the government, not fulfill its mission.

The bigger reason I think it is dangerous is that it undermines the very thing that makes the Open Government Partnership an effective tool of open government advocates. I want to be clear. The Open Government Partnership is, in part, designed to empower advocates and help them compel their government’s to be more open. Used correctly it could be powerful. The fact that Canadian government signed on to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a result, in part, of the fact that other OGP countries were signing on. We were able to use peer pressure to create an upward spiral. We can also use the timelines of the OGP to ensure the government carries out the pledges that it has made. And of course, there is an Open Government consultation that is currently taking place (please participate) that the government will have to share the results of with its partners – potentially giving us a way to verify that our input is being taken seriously. Indeed, participating OPG countries may even try to out do one another to demonstrate how seriously they are taking this input.

But when this tool is misused it gives the government license to ignore and write off critics. As someone who wants to use the OGP commitments as a carrot and stick to hold our government to account, stories like those I linked to above hurt our capacity to be effective.

This government does not have a great record of transparency. At the same time, there is a legitimate effort to create open government goals as part of the OGP, let’s let the process run its course (and criticize when they actually violate the process) and use the tools that are at our disposal constructively to maximize impact, rather than try to snare a quick headline that in the long term, could damage the open government movements credibility.

I certainly wouldn’t encourage Democracy Watch to petition the OGP to ask Canada to leave the partnership. I suspect the secretariat would be confused by the request. The deadline has not passed, indeed, most OGP countries are in the middle of their consultations right now.

Open Government Consultation, Twitter Townhalls & Doing Advocacy Wrong

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Earlier this week the Canadian Federal Government launched its consultation process on Open Government. This is an opportunity for citizens to comment and make suggestions around what data the federal government should make open and what information it should share, and provide feedback on how it can consult more effectively with Canadians. The survey (which, handily, can be saved midway through completion) contains a few straightforward multiple choice questions and about eight open ended questions which I’ve appended to the end of this post so that readers can reflect upon them before starting to fill out the form.

In addition to the online consultations, Tony Clement – the Minister responsible for the Open Government file – will host a Twitter townhall on Open Government this Thursday (December 15). Note! The townhall will be hosted by the treasury board twitter account @TBS_Canada (English) and @SCT_Canada (French) not Minister Clement’s personal (and better known) twitter account. The townhall will first take place in French from 4-4:45pm EST using the hashtags #parlonsgouvert and then in English from 5-5:45 EST using the hashtag #opengovchat.

Some of you may have also noticed that Democracy Watch issued a strongly worded press release last week with the (somewhat long) headline “Federal Conservatives break all of their international Open Government Partnership commitments by failing to consult with Canadians about their draft action plan before meeting in Brazil this week.” This seems to have prompted the CBC to write this article.

Now, to be clear, I’m a strong advocate for Open Government, and there are plenty of things for which one could be critical about this government for not being open about. However, to be credible – especially around issues of transparency and disclosure – one must be factual. And Democracy Watch did more than just stretch the truth. The simple fact is, that while I too wish the government’s consultations had happened sooner, this does not mean it has broken all of its Open Government Partnership commitments. Indeed, it hasn’t broken any of its commitments. A careful read of the Open Government Partnership requirements would reveal that the recent December meeting was to share drafts plans (including the plans by which to consult). The deadline that Democracy Watch is screaming about does not occur until March of 2012.

It would have been fair to say the government has been slow in fulfilling its commitments, but to say it has broken any of them is flatly not true. Indeed the charge feels particularly odd given that in the past two weeks the government signed on greater aid transparency via IATI and released an additional 4000 data sets, including virtually all of StatsCan’s data, giving Canadian citizens, non profits, other levels of governments and companies access to important data sets relevant for social, economic and academic purposes.

Again, there are plenty of things one could talk about when it comes to transparency and the government. Yes, the consultation could have gotten off the ground faster. And yes, there is much more to done. But this screaming headline is somewhat off base. Publishing it damages both the credibility of the organization making the charge, and risk hurting the credible of open government advocates in general.

List of Open Ended Questions in the Open Government Consultation.

1. What could be done to make it easier for you to find and use government data provided online?

2. What types of open data sets would be of interest to you? Please pick up to three categories below and specify what data would be of interest to you.

3. How would you use or manipulate this data?

4. What could be done to make it easier for you to find government information online?

7. Do you have suggestions on how the Government of Canada could improve how it consults with Canadians?

8. Are there approaches used by other governments that you believe the Government of Canada could/should model?

9. Are there any other comments or suggestions you would like to make pertaining to the Government of Canada’s Open Government initiative?

Canada’s Foreign Aid Agency signs on to IATI: Aid Data get more transparent