The End of the World and Journalism in the Era of Open

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For those not in the United Kingdom a massive scandal has erupted around allegations that one of the country’s tabloids – the News of the World ( a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation) – was illegally hacking into and listening in on the voicemails of not only the royal family members and celebrities but also murder victims and family members of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The fall out from the scandal, among other things, has caused the 168 year old newspaper to be unceremoniously closed, prompted an enormous investigation into the actions of editors and executives at the newspaper, forced the resignation (and arrest) of Andy Coulson – former News of the World editor and director of communications for the Prime Minister – and thrown into doubt Rupert Murdoch’s bid to gain complete control over the British satellite television network BskyB.

For those wanting to know more I encourage you to head over to the Guardian, which broke the story and has done some of the best reporting on it. Also, possibly the best piece of analysis I’ve read on the whole sordid affair is this post from reuters which essentially points out that by shutting down News of the World, Newscorp may shrewdly ensure that all incriminating documents can (legally) be destroyed. Evil genius stuff.

But why bring this all up here at eaves.ca?

Because I think this is an example of a trend in media that I’ve been arguing has been going on for some time.

Contrary to what news people would have you believe, my sense is that most people don’t trust newspapers – no more so then they trust governments. Starting in 1983 Ipsos MORI and the British Medical Association have asked UK citizens who they trust. The results for politicians are grim. The interesting thing is, they are no better for journalists (although TV news anchors do okay). Don’t believe me? Take a look at the data tables from Ipsos MORI. Or look at the chart Benne Dezzle over at Viceland created out of the data.

There is no doubt people value the products of governments and the media – but this data suggests they don’t trust the people creating them, which I really think is a roundabout way of saying: they don’t trust the system that creates the news.

I spend a lot of my time arguing that government’s need to be more transparent, and that this (contrary to what many public servants feel) will make them more, not less, effective. Back in 2009, in reaction to the concern that the print media was dying, I wrote a blog post saying the same was true for journalism. Thanks, in part, to Jay Rosen listing it as part of his flying seminar on the future of news, it became widely read and ended up as getting reprinted along with Taylor Owen and I’s article Missing the Link, in the journalism textbook The New Journalist. Part of what I think is going in the UK is a manifestation of the blog post, so if you haven’t read it, I think now is as good a time as any.

The fact is, newsrooms are frequently as opaque (both in process and, sometimes, in motivations) as governments are. People may are willing to rely on them, and they’ll use them if their outputs are good, but they’ll turn on them, and quickly, if they come to understand that the process stinks. This is true of any organization and news media doesn’t get a special pass because of the job it plays – indeed the opposite may be true. But more profoundly I think it is interesting how what many people consider to be two of the key pillars to western democracy are staffed by people who are among the least trusted in our society. Maybe that’s okay. But maybe it’s not. But if we think we need better forms of government – which many people seem to feel we do – it may also be that we believe we need better ways of generating, managing and engaging in the accountability of that government.

Of course, I don’t want to overplay the situation here. News of the World doomed itself because it broke the law. More importantly, it did so in a truly offensive way: hacking into the cell phone of a murder victim who was an everyday person. Admitedly, when the victims were celebrities, royals and politicians, it percolated as a relatively contained scandal. But if we believe that transparency is the sunlight that causes governments to be less corrupt – or at least forces politicians to recognize their decisions will be more scrutinized – maybe a little transparency might have caused the executives and editors at News Corp to behave a little better as well. I’m not sure what a more open media organization might look like – although wikipedia does an interesting job – but from both a brand protection and values based decision making perspective a little transparency could be the right incentive to ensure that the journalists, editors and executives in a news system few of us seem to trust, behave a little better. And that might cause them to earn more of the trust I think many deserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of Open Data Action in Canada

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A lot of movement on the open data (and not so open data) front in Canada.

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Open Data Portal Launched

IATI-imagesSome readers may remember that last week I wrote a post about the imminent launch of CIDA’s open data portal. The site is now live and has a healthy amount of data on it. It is a solid start to what I hope will become a robust site. I’m a big believer – and supporter of the excellent advocacy efforts of the good people at Engineers Without Borders – that the open data portal would be greatly enhanced if CIDA started publishing its data in compliance with the emerging international standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative as these 20 leading countries and organizations have.

If anyone creates anything using this data, I’d love to see it. One simple start might be to try using the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open source Where Does my Money Go code, to visualize some of the spending data. I’d be happy to chat with anyone interested in doing this, you can also check out the email group to find some people experienced in playing with the code base.

Improved License on the CIDA open data portal and data.gc.ca

One thing I’ve noticed with the launch of the CIDA open data portal was how the license was remarkably better than the license at data.gc.ca – which struck me as odd, since I know the feds like to be consistent about these types of things. Turns out that the data.gc.ca license has been updated as well and the two are identical. This is good news as some of the issues that were broken with the previous license have been fixed. But not all. The best license out there remains the license at data.gov (that’s a trick question, because data.gov has no license, it is all public domain! Tricky eh…? Nice!) but if you are going to have a license, the UK Open Government License used by at data.gov.uk is more elegant, freer and satisfies a number of the concerns I cite above and have heard people raise.

So this new data.gc.ca license is a step in the right direction, but still behind the open gov leaders (teaching lawyers new tricks sadly takes a long time, especially in government).

Great site, but not so open data: WellBeing Toronto

Interestingly, the City of Toronto has launched a fabulous new website called Well Being Toronto. It is definitely worth checking out. The main problem of course is that while it is interesting to look at, the underlying data is, sadly, not open. You can’t play with the data, such as mash it up with your own (or another jurisdiction’s) data. This is disappointing as I believe a number of non-profits in Toronto would likely find the underlying data quite helpful/important. I have, however, been told that the underlying data will be made open. It is something I hope to check in on again in a few months as I fear that it may never get prioritized, so it may be up to Torontonians to whold the Mayor and council’s feet to the fire to ensure it gets done.

Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) launches (non-open) data website

It seems the PBO is also getting in on the data action with the launch of a beta site that allows you to “see” budgets from the last few years. I know that the Parliamentary Budget Office has been starved of resources, so they deserve to be congratulated for taking this first, important step. Also interesting is that the data has no license on the website, which could make it the most liberally licensed open data portal in the country. The site does have big downsides. First, the data can only be “looked” at, there is no obvious (simple) way to download it and start playing with it. More oddly still the PBO requires that users register with their email address to view the data. This seems beyond odd and actually, down right creepy, to me. First, parliament’s budget should be free and open and one should not need to hand over an email address to access it. Second, the email addresses collected appear to serve no purpose (unless the PBO intends to start spamming us), other than to tempt bad people to hack their site so they can steal a list of email addresses.

Why not create an Open311 add-on for Ushahidi?

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This is not a complicated post. Just a simple idea: Why not create an Open311 add-on for Ushahidi?

So what do I mean by that, and why should we care?

Many readers will be familiar with Ushahidi, non-profit that develops open source mapping software that enables users to collect and visualize data in interactive maps. It’s history is now fairly famous, as the Wikipedia article about it outlines: “Ushahidi.com’ (Swahili for “testimony” or “witness”) is a website created in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election (see 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis) that collected eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and placed them on a Google map.[2]“Ushahidi’s mapping software also proved to be an important resource in a number of crises since the Kenyan election, most notably during the Haitian earthquake. Here is a great 2 minute video on How how Ushahidi works.

ushahidi-redBut mapping of this type isn’t only important during emergencies. Indeed it is essential for the day to day operations of many governments, particularly at the local level. While many citizens in developed economies may be are unaware of it, their cities are constantly mapping what is going on around them. Broken infrastructure such as leaky pipes, water mains, clogged gutters, potholes, along with social issues such as crime, homelessness, business and liquor license locations are constantly being updated. More importantly, citizens are often the source of this information – their complaints are the sources of data that end up driving these maps. The gathering of this data generally falls under the rubric of what is termed 311 systems – since in many cities you can call 311 to either tell the city about a problem (e.g. a noise complaint, service request or inform them about broken infrastructure) or to request information about pretty much any of the city’s activities.

This matters because 311 systems have generally been expensive and cumbersome to run. The beautiful thing about Ushahidi is that:

  1. it works: it has a proven track record of enabling citizens in developing countries to share data using even the simplest of devices both with one another and agencies (like humanitarian organizations)
  2. it scales: Haiti and Kenya are pretty big places, and they generated a fair degree of traffic. Ushahidi can handle it.
  3. it is lightweight: Ushahidi technical footprint (yeap making that up right now) is relatively light. The infrastructure required to run it is not overly complicated
  4. it is relatively inexpensive: as a result of (3) it is also relatively cheap to run, being both lightweight and leveraging a lot of open source software
  5. Oh, and did I mention IT WORKS.

This is pretty much the spec you would want to meet if you were setting up a 311 system in a city with very few resources but interested in starting to gather data about both citizen demands and/or trying to monitor newly invested in infrastructure. Of course to transform Ushahidi into a process for mapping 311 type issues you’d need some sort of spec to understand what that would look like. Fortunately Open311 already does just that and is supported by some of the large 311 providers system providers – such as Lagan and Motorola – as well as some of the disruptive – such as SeeClickFix. Indeed there is an Open311 API specification that any developer could use as the basis for the add-on to Ushahidi.

Already I think many cities – even those in developing countries – could probably afford SeeClickFix, so there may already be a solution at the right price point in this space. But maybe not, I don’t know. More importantly, an Open311 module for Ushahidi could get local governments, or better still, local tech developers in developing economies, interested in and contributing to the Ushahidi code base, further strengthening the project. And while the code would be globally accessible, innovation and implementation could continue to happen at the local level, helping drive the local economy and boosting know how. The model here, in my mind, is OpenMRS, which has spawned a number of small tech startups across Africa that manage the implementation and servicing of a number of OpenMRS installations at medical clinics and countries in the region.

I think this is a potentially powerful idea for stakeholders in local governments and startups (especially in developing economies) and our friends at Ushahidi. I can see that my friend Philip Ashlock at Open311 had a similar thought a while ago, so the Open311 people are clearly interested. It could be that the right ingredients are already in place to make some magic happen.

Mind. Prepare to be blown away. Big Data, Wikipedia and Government.

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Okay, super psyched about this. Back at the Strata Conference in Feb (in San Diego) I introduced my long time uber-quant friend and now Wikimedia Foundation data scientist Diederik Van Liere to fellow Gov2.0 thinker Nicholas Gruen (Chairman) and Anthony Goldbloom (Founder and CEO) of an awesome new company called Kaggle.

As usually happens when awesome people get together… awesomeness ensued. Mind. Be prepared to be blown.

So first, what is Kaggle? They’re a company that helps companies and organizations post their data and run competitions with the goal of having it scrutinized by the world’s best data scientists towards some specific goal. Perhaps the most powerful example of a Kaggle competition to date was their HIV prediction competition, in which they asked contestants to use a data set to find markers in the HIV sequence which predict a change in the severity of the infection (as measured by viral load and CD4 counts).

Until Kaggle showed up the best science to date had a prediction rate of 70% – a feat that had taken years to achieve. In 90 days contributors to the contest were able to achieve a prediction rate of 77%. A 10% improvement. I’m told that achieving an similar increment had previously taken something close to a decade. (Data geeks can read how the winner did it here and here.)

Diederik and Anthony have created a similar competition, but this time using Wikipedia participation data. As the competition page outlines:

This competition challenges data-mining experts to build a predictive model that predicts the number of edits an editor will make in the five months after the end date of the training dataset. The dataset is randomly sampled from the English Wikipedia dataset from the period January 2001 – August 2010.

The objective of this competition is to quantitively understand what factors determine editing behavior. We hope to be able to answer questions, using these predictive models, why people stop editing or increase their pace of editing.

This is of course, a subject matter that is dear to me as I’m hoping that we can do similar analysis in open source communities – something Diederik and I have tried to theorize with Wikipedia and actually do Bugzilla data.

There is a grand prize of $5000 (along with a few others) and, amazingly, already 15 participants and 7 submissions.

Finally, I hope public policy geeks, government officials and politicians are paying attention. There is power in data and an opportunity to use it to find efficiencies and opportunities. Most governments probably don’t even know how to approach an organization like Kaggle or to run a competition like this, despite (or because?) it is so fast, efficient and effective.

It shouldn’t be this way.

If you are in government (or any org), check out Kaggle. Watch. Learn. There is huge opportunity here.

12:10pm PST – UPDATE: More Michael Bay sized awesomeness. Within 36 hours of the wikipedia challenge being launched the leading submission has improved on internal Wikimedia Foundation models by 32.4%

CIDA announces Open Data portal: What it means to Canadians

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For those who missed it, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has announced it is launching an open data portal.

This is exciting news. On Monday I was interviewed about the initiative by Embassy Magazine which published the resulting article (behind their paywall) here.

As (I hope) the interview conveys, I’m cautiously optimistic about the Minister’s announcement. I’m conservative in my reaction only because we don’t actually know what the Minister has announced. At the moment the CIDA open data page is, quite literally, a blank slate. I feel positive because pretty much anything that gets more information about Canada’s aid budget available online is a step in the right direction. I’m cautious however, because the text from the Minister’s speech leads me to believe that she is using the term “open data” to describe something that may, in fact, not be open data.

Donors and partner countries must be accountable to their citizens, absolutely, but both must also be accountable to each other.

Transparency underpins these accountabilities.

With this in mind, today I am pleased to announce the Open Data Portal on the CIDA website that will make our searchable database of roughly 3,000 projects quick and simple to access.

The Open Data portal will put our country strategies, evaluations, audits and annual statistical and results reports within easy reach.

One of the core elements of the definition of “open data” is that it be machine readable. I need to actually get the “data” (e.g an excel spreadsheet, or database I can download and/or access) so that I can play with it, mash it up, analyze it, etc… It isn’t clear that this is on offer. The minister’s announcements talks about a database that allows you to search, and quickly download, reports on the 3000 projects that CIDA funds or operates. A report however, is not data. It may cite data, it may (and hopefully does) even contain data in charts or tables, but if what we are getting is access to reports then this is not an open data portal.

What I hope is happening – and what I advocated for in an oped in the Toronto Star – is that the Minister is launching a true open data portal which will share actual data – not analysis – with Canadians. More importantly, I hope this means Canada will be joining the efforts of Publish What you Fund, as it pushes donor organizations to share their aid data in a single common structure, so that budgets, contributions, projects, timelines, geography and other information about aid can be compared across countries, agencies, and organizations.

Open data, and especially in a internationally recognized standardized format, matters because no one is going to read all 10,000 reports about all 3000 projects CIDA funds. However, if we had access to the data, in a structured manner, there are those at non-profits, in universities and colleges and in the media (among other places) that could map the projects, compare budgets and results more clearly, compare our efforts against those of other countries, and do their own analysis to say, find duplication and overlap. I don’t, for a second, believe that 99.9% of Canadians will use CIDA’s open data portal, but the .1% who do will be able to create products that can inform the rest of us, and allow us to better understand Canada’s role in the world. In other words, Open Data portal could be empowering and educating to a broad number of people. Access to 10,000 reports, while a good step, simply won’t be able to create a similar outcome on any scale. The difference is, quite frankly, dramatic.

So let’s wait and see. I’m excited that the Minister of International Cooperation is using the language of Open Data – it means that she and her staff understand it has currency. What I also hope is that they understand its meaning – so far we have no data on whether they do or do not, and I remain cautiously optimistic, they should, after all, realize the significance of the language they are using. Either way, they have set high expectations among those of us who think about, talk about and work in, this area. As a Canadian, I’m hoping those expectations get fulfilled.

Links on Social Media & Politics: Notes from "We Want Your Thoughts #4"

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Last night I had a great time taking the stage with Alexandra Samuel in Vancouver for “We Want Your Thoughts” at the Khafka coffee house on Main St. The night’s discussion was focused on Social Media – from chit chat to election winner – what next?” (with a little on the social media driven response to the riots thrown in for good measure).

Both Alex and I promised to post some links from our blogs for attendees so what follows is a list of some thoughts on the subject I hope everyone can find engaging.

On Social Media generally, probably the most popular post on this blog is this piece: Twitter is my Newspaper: explaining twitter to newbies. More broadly thinking about the internet and media, this essay I wrote with Taylor Owen is now a chapter in this university textbook on journalism. Along with this post as a sidebar note (different textbook), which has been one of my most read.

On the riots, I encourage you to read Alexandra Samuel’s post on the subject (After a Loss in Vancouver, Troubling Signals of Citizen Surveillance) and my counter thoughts (Social Media and Rioters) – a blogging debate! You can also hear me talk about the issue on an interview on CBC’s Cross Country Checkup on the issue (around hour 1).

On social media and politics, maybe some of the most notable pieces include a back forth between myself and Michael Valpy who felt that social media was ending our social cohesion and destroying democracy (obviously, this was pre-Middle East Riots and the proroguing Parliament debate). I responded with a post on why his arguments were flawed and that actually the reverse was true. He responded to that post in The Mark. And I posted response to that as well. It all makes for a good read.

Rob-Cottingham-graphic-summary

Rob Cottingham’s Visual Notes of the first 15 minutes

Then there were some pieces on Social Media and the Proroguing of Parliament. I had this piece in the Globe and then this post talking a little more about the media’s confused relationship with social media and politics.

Finally, one of the points I referred to several times yesterday was the problem of assuming social values won’t change when talking about technology adoption and its impact, probably the most explicit post I’ve written on the subject is this one: Why the Internet Will Shape Social Values (and not the other way around)

Finally, some books/articles I mentioned or on topic:

Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World by Evgeny Morozov

The Inside Story of How Facebook Responded to Tunisian Hacks an article in the Atlantic by Alexis Madrigal

I hope this is interesting.

The next Open Data battle: Advancing Policy & Innovation through Standards

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With the possible exception of weather data, the most successful open data set out there at the moment is transit data. It remains the data with which developers have experimented and innovated the most. Why is this? Because it’s been standardized. Ever since Google and the City of Portland creating the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) any developer that creates an application using GTFS transit data can port their application to over 100+ cities around the world with 10s and even 100s of millions of potential users. Now that’s scale!

All in all the benefits of a standard data structure are clear. A public good is more effectively used, citizens receive enjoy better service and companies (both Google and the numerous smaller companies that sell transit related applications) generate revenue, pay salaries, etc…

This is why, with a number of jurisdictions now committed to open data, I believe it is time for advocates to start focusing on the next big issue. How do we get different jurisdictions to align around standard structures so as to increase the number of people to whom an application or analysis will be relevant? Having cities publish open data sets is a great start and has led to real innovation, next generation open data and the next leaps in innovation will require some more standards.

The key, I think, is to find areas that meet three criteria:

  • Government Data: Is there relevant government data about the service or issue that is available?
  • Demand: Is this a service for which there is regular demand? (this is why transit is so good, millions of people touch the service on a daily basis)
  • Business Model: Is there a business that believes it can use this data to generate revenue (either directly, or indirectly)

 

 

opendata-1.0151

Two comments on this.

First, I think we should look at this model because we want to find places where the incentives are right for all the key stakeholders. The wrong way to create a data structure is to get a bunch of governments together to talk about it. That process will take 5 years… if we are lucky. Remember the GTFS emerged because Google and Portland got together, after that, everybody else bandwagoned because the value proposition was so high. This remains, in my mind, not the perfect, but the fastest and more efficient model to get more common data structures. I also respect it won’t work for everything, but it can give us more successes to point to.

Which leads me to point two. Yes, at the moment, I think that target in the middle of this model is relatively small. But I think we can make it bigger. The GTFS shows cities, citizens and companies that there is value in open data. What we need are more examples so that a) more business models emerge and b) more government data is shared in a structured way across multiple jurisdictions. The bottom and and right hand circles in this diagram can, and if we are successful will, move. In short, I think we can create this dynamic:

opendata4.016

So, what does this look like in practice?

I’ve been trying to think of services that fall in various parts of the diagram. A while back I wrote a post about using open restaurant inspection data to drive down health costs. Specifically around finding a government to work with a Yelp!, Bing or Google Maps, Urban Spoon or other company to integrate the  inspection data into the application. That for me is an example of something that I think fits in the middle. Government’s have the data, its a service citizens could touch on a regular base if the data appeared in their workflow (e.g. Yelp! or Bing Maps) and for those businesses it either helps drive search revenue or gives their product a competitive advantage. The Open311 standard (sadly missing from my diagram), and the emergence of SeeClickFix strike me as another excellent example that is right on the inside edge of the sweet spot).

Here’s a list of what else I’ve come up with at the moment:

opendata3.015

You can also now see why I’ve been working on Recollect.net – our garbage pick up reminder service – and helping develop a standard around garbage scheduling data – the Trash & Recycling Object Notation. I think it is a service around which we can help explain the value of common standards to cities.

You’ll notice that I’ve put “democracy data” (e.g. agendas, minutes, legislation, hansards, budgets, etc…) in the area where I don’t think there is a business plan. I’m not fully convinced of this – I could see a business model in the media space for this – but I’m trying to be conservative in my estimate. In either case, that is the type of data the good people at the Sunlight Foundation are trying to get liberated, so there is at least, non-profit efforts concentrated there in America.

I also put real estate in a category where I don’t think there is real consumer demand. What I mean by this isn’t that people don’t want it, they do, but they are only really interested in it maybe 2-4 times in their life. It doesn’t have the high touch point of transit or garbage schedules, or of traffic and parking. I understand that there are businesses to be built around this data, I love Viewpoint.ca – a site that takes mashes opendata up with real estate data to create a compelling real estate website – but I don’t think it is a service people will get attached to because they will only use it infrequently.

Ultimately I’d love to hear from people on ideas they on why might fit in this sweet spot. (if you are comfortable sharing the idea, of course). Part of this is because I’d love to test the model more. The other reason is because I’m engaged with some governments interested in getting more strategic about their open data use and so these types of opportunities could become reality.

Finally, I just hope you find this model compelling and helpful.

Open Data Job Posting at MaRS in Toronto

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The following job posting can be found on the MaRS website here.

So here’s a job for an open data advocate living in, or willing to move to, Toronto. For the right person with the right vision, this could be about getting a group of organizations to open up their data to drive innovation and broaden the adoption or development of public goods. I’ve lots of thoughts on this and think it could be an interesting opportunity, thought I’d share.

You’ve got until the end of the month to submit the necessary documents…

Program Director – Regional Strategic Resource Centre Program (ReSRC)

Posted June 14, 2011

Job Title: Program Director – Regional Strategic Resource Centre Program (ReSRC)

Company Name: MaRS

Position Type: Program Director – Regional Strategic Resource Centre Program (ReSRC)

Location: ON – Metro Toronto

Application Deadline: 2011-06-30

Category: Project Management

Position Overview:

The development of Regional Strategic Resource Centres (ReSRCs) is an exciting new initiative in Ontario’s innovation system, supported by the Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI) and coordinated by MaRS in partnership with a range of stakeholders.

The ReSRCs will advance Ontario’s Innovation Agenda by creating the information infrastructure required to support 21st century knowledge economy decision-making, and by engaging the community to use this “open information” to strengthen innovation in the region.

The premise of this initiative is simple: By sharing and integrating disparate sets of data – often collected in institutional silos – from government, academia as well as the private and non-profit sectors, we will better understand the unique strengths, opportunities and needs of our communities and can more effectively work together to build vibrant, productive regional innovation economies.

Successful communities around the world increasingly rely on the information and insights garnered from of a wide range of sources, including civic organizations, businesses, academic institutions, non-profits and governments, among others. Significant amounts of data are collected by these organizations in the course of their work.  The aggregation of this data will create a rich virtual information hub that can be accessed by various community stakeholders to make more timely and better decisions on topics ranging from urban planning to drivers of economic development. Different models of these open data platforms are in development elsewhere; there is a unique opportunity for Ontario to become a leader in this arena, given the strong innovation network that is being developed across the Province.

As an example, the ReSRC may specifically focus on the role of high growth firms in the region, given their critical contribution to new job creation.  In this case, the hub will integrate relevant data sources and engage entrepreneurs and stakeholders working in/with these firms, in an effort to shed light on the following questions:  Where are the high growth firms located? What sectors are they in?  How old are these firms?  Where do the employees who work in these firms live?  How do they get to work?  What is their education?  How do the high growth firms collaborate with academic institutions in the region?  What other firms in the region do the high growth firms rely on or support?  Which public policy or program instruments are particularly effective in supporting the growth of these firms, or hinder their progress?  How can we do more of what works, to create more high growth firms in the region?  What barriers need to be removed?

We believe the time is right for Ontario to take a strong leadership position in the provisioning of open data to foster community leadership and collaboration.  This initiative will involve the creation of the inaugural ReSRC, which includes the identification and aggregation of disparate data sources, sourcing a data management infrastructure, and developing an online community engagement portal.  The small core ReSRC team will work closely with a range of partners – the success of the initiative will depend on the productive collaboration with stakeholders in different related sectors.  An Advisory Board, with representation of key partners, will meet regularly to provide strategic guidance, extend networks, and share expertise.

The qualified candidate for this exciting position will have strong skills and demonstrated experience in project management, open data / information management, data warehousing and integration, community engagement, IP policy / negotiations, and contract management.  Outstanding communication skills and ability to lead in a collaborative environment are critical attributes.

Key Responsibilities

  • Provide overall leadership and management through all elements of project planning and execution including:
  • Building and managing the project team and working with the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation to refine the project scope of work, activities, resources, and timelines
  • Developing the governance structure of ReSRC including the development and engagement of an Advisory Board to guide and Working Groups to drive the project
  • Leading and managing all Request for Proposal (RFP) processes and providing oversight and management of technology implementations (including relevant collaboration portal, data warehouses, and integration with legacy systems and data provider systems)
  • Building and managing negotiations and trusted relationships with key data providers, with respect to IP, privacy, data sharing and level of access, fee-for-service offerings, and support / value add services
  • Providing consistent project updates to MaRS and the extended project team, select community stakeholders, and the Ministry of Research and Innovation
  • Managing the overall decision-making processes and proactively identifying, analyzing and resolving issues
  • Managing the allocation of funds, project budget and ensuring adherence / compliance to Ontario procurement legislation
  • Managing the development of a brand and marketing strategy
  • Developing a best in class on-line portal for ReSRC; launch and maintain strong community engagement with the assets of the entity
  • Managing rollout strategy and maintaining documentation / lessons learned on project implementation to support future ReSRC launches in other Ontario regions
  • Demonstrate industry knowledge and leadership regarding innovation trends, emerging market shifts, economic development models, current events, major corporate and government initiatives, public policy, regulatory issues etc.
  • Effectively maintain key contacts related to open data, community engagement, and data integration
  • Leading the development of original thought leadership related to the project scope including open data, community engagement, data integration, GIS

Educational/Experience Requirements

  • Minimum Bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of relevant project management and/or business experience in information sciences, market research, management consulting, data management, or related sectors.
  • Demonstrated project management experience delivering complex technology or other projects; experienced in project management methodologies and the ability to apply them in a flexible manner; PMP certification considered an asset
  • Demonstrated effective approach to problem solving, understands the context and impact of problems and demonstrates an extensive knowledge of available resources and content
  • Strong understanding of open data, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), collaboration portals and wiki’s, data integration, IP / privacy, and market research
  • Familiar with the “language” and terminology of industry, finance, government and the tech/data community; deep knowledge business development process, including an extensive network of business contacts
  • Highly developed analytical and interpretive skills, conceptual thinker, able to solve complex problems
  • Demonstrated passion for leading successful, creative, and engaged teams
  • Strong capabilities in: MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel

Personal Requirements

  • Self-starter, creative thinker, and strong team player
  • Strong communications and organizational skills – oral, written, and presentation skills
  • Superior interpersonal skills; ability to influence others without formal authority
  • Ability to impact and influence key project participants and stakeholders (including strong negotiation skills)
  • Strong partnership development capabilities with an array of stakeholders including government, public sector, non-profit, academe, and the private sector
  • Ability to multi-task, comfortable working in a fast-paced, high energy environment
  • Consummate professional, able to represent the organization in all circumstances
  • Personal accountability and commitment to achieving and exceeding goals and objectives

How To Apply: Interested candidates should forward their resume to Elizabeth Pojedyniec at epojedyniec@marsdd.com by Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Visualizing how everything in Beijing is built at a Las Vegas scale

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One of the things that struck me most about Beijing was the sheer size of everything. Beijing, it often seems, is built at a Las Vegas scale – the buildings, the roads, the airport – it’s all huge.

The size can be deceptive when looking at a map, it is not unusual for a city block in Beijing to be 500 meters long, so you might look at a map and say: “hey look that’s only 3 blocks from here! let’s walk over there.” A kilometer and a half isn’t a long walk – but it is if you were expecting to walk 3 or 4 hundred meters.

Of course, there are lots of small things in Beijing, lots of weaving alleys (indeed, it sometimes felt like there were only two types of streets in Beijing 6-10 lane super roads, or tiny alleyways and side streets) but the grandiose parts of it dominate the experience. More interestingly, this is not a recent thing. The Forbidden Palace – world famous and which I first remember being introduced to while watching the visually stunning The Last Emperor in elementary school – is perhaps the best example of how big has always been a part of Beijing. The complex – which was home to China’s emperor since its completion in 1420 – spans an area of  178 acres. If, like me, you find that number hard to assign meaning to, I thought I’d visualize it against an American and Canadian landmark that would make it easier to understand.

All of these images are taken from Google Map at the same scale. The top left hand image shows the Forbidden Palace in Beijing, the lower left shows the same area super imposed over Stanley Park in Vancouver and on the right super imposed over Central Park in New York.

FP-vs-SP-vs-CP

What’s amazing is you could literally pour all of Stanley Park into the Forbidden Palace and have room left over, while the complex consumers around 40% of Central Park. Mind boggling.

I also hope this blog post demonstrates how a simple visualization can be much more powerful than numbers, even using common tools like Google maps and keynote (powerpoint for Mac).