The Perils, Pitfalls, and Promise of Open Government – a Geothink Interview with Daniel Paré

By Drew Bush Earlier this month, Public Sector Digest’s first Open Cities Index ranked Canada’s municipalities according to their openness in supplying municipal data online. The index examined the number of data sets available in three areas of accountability (e.g. elections or budget data), innovation (e.g. traffic volume or service requests), and social policy (e.g. crime rates or health performance) … Read More

An Expert's View on Civic Participation on the Geoweb

By Naomi Bloch As an early warm-up to our November 23 Twitter chat — What does meaningful civic participation on the geoweb look like? — we asked Geothink Head Renee Sieber to share her perspective. Here are a few highlights. More access, more communication I think we’re in an environment where we’ve really broadened opportunities for citizens to participate through social media, through … Read More

Geothoughts 7: Unpacking the Current and Future Value of Open Civic Data

By Naomi Bloch Geothink co-applicant researcher Peter A. Johnson is an assistant professor of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. Johnson and his students have been working with Geothink government partners across the country to examine the state of civic open data projects in Canada. In our latest podcast, he discusses how the seemingly desirable ethos of open data … Read More

Geothoughts 1: What’s in a Plan? Innovation at the Cost of Democracy in Canada

By Drew Bush We’re very excited to present you with our first Geothink.ca Podcast in our series, Geothoughts. You can also subscribe to this Podcast by finding it on iTunes. Our first podcast delves deeper into the opinions of Tracey Lauriault, a researcher at The Programmable City project who specializes in open data and open government in Canada. We explore … Read More

Torts of the Geoweb: (or the liability question) Part I

By Tenille Brown, PhD student in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa Recently, on March 3rd as part of the continuing Geothink Project, I hosted a Twitter chat about tort liability with Mapping Mashups. This online forum was joined by Geothink partners and friends and the primary topic discussed was the role of tort law and how … Read More

Canada Action Plan on Open Government 2.0: Much Still To Do?

By Drew Bush Introduction For the savvy traveller headed over Canada’s border this holiday season, Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2.0 holds promise. A visit to the site in December 2014 yielded a multi-media list of steps to follow when travelling abroad and even an iOS “Travel Smart” application. Drafted after a June 2013 G8 Summit, Canada’s plan results … Read More

Re-identification Risk and Proactive Disclosure of Data for Open Government: Lessons from the Supreme Court of Canada?

By Teresa Scassa One of the challenges with the proactive disclosure of government data, and with open data more generally, is the obligation that governments have to not disclose personal information. This challenge is made more acute by the fact that the definition of “personal information” is, generally speaking, “information about an identifiable individual”. Courts in Canada have said that … Read More

Canada’s Open Government Licence V2.0 Is Released

    Written by Teresa Scassa Read more posts by Teresa @ http://www.teresascassa.ca/ With little fanfare, the Canadian government has released its much awaited, newly revised Open GovernmentLicence. The previous version that had been available on its Open Data site was a beta version on which public comments were invited. The government has also published its Open Government Licence Consultation Report, … Read More