[Okfn-ca] Fwd: [CivicAccess-discuss] Open Data Census Methodology - how to compare federations with centralized Gov. systems?

Wed Jun 12 17:22:56 UTC 2013

-------- Message original --------
Sujet: 	[CivicAccess-discuss] Open Data Census Methodology - how to 
compare federations with centralized Gov. systems?
Date : 	Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:25:19 -0400
De : 	Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com>
Répondre à : 	civicaccess discuss <civicaccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca>
Pour : 	open-data-census at lists.okfn.org
Copie à : 	civicaccess discuss <CivicAccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca>

Greetings all;

First, the initiative should be lauded for its efforts.  It is a great 
initiative.

However, I do think that if we are working with data, and we wish to do 
evidence based decision making based on the results of the census, 
census methodology and data comparison issues need to be made obvious to 
ensure accuracy and comperability.

For example, the Canadian census results are problematic, not because 
the information submitted is inaccurate, but because it is grossly 
incomplete.  Canada is a federation, with explicit divisions of power 
(http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/aia/index.asp?lang=eng&page=federal&sub=legis&doc=legis-eng.htm) whereby 
jurisdictional responsibilities between the Federal government, 
provinces and territories and cities are constitutionally set. 
  Jurisdictional divisions therefore dictate divided responsibilities 
which translates in different things being administered  resulting in 
many kinds of administrative data residing in multiple governments under 
different rules.

Natural resources for instance are managed by both the federal and 
provincial and territorial governments, and the data associated with 
pollution will differ depending on the resources in question and where 
they are located.  Data reside in 14 jurisdictions & innumerable 
departments and access to these data and how they are collected will be 
determined by each of these.  A citizen would have to contact each 
jurisdictional or department separately to access these.  This is not an 
insignificant task.

In addition, cities are governed by provinces and territories and there 
is no real incentive for cross jurisdictional collaboration across 
provinces and territories, although it does happen.  Canada is a big 
place and what happens on the west coast is not the same as the east, 
the prairies, or Quebec, Nunavut or Ottawa. Cities do not have 
jurisdiction over some of the items listed in your census, and even 
though, they are the innovators in Canada on the Open Data front, they 
would score low on the census as they just do not produce the data 
sought after in the census.

Also, even though Canada has a federal Open Data Program, there are 
other assaults on knowledge, the Census of Canada was cancelled, Library 
and Archives has been decimated, there is muzzling and control of 
government scientists, access to information requests are slow and 
contentious, scientific monitoring stations are being closed, think 
tanks lost their funding, surveys on vulnerable peoples cancelled and 
data releases carefully controlled, databases like the gun registry 
being destroyed.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The Federal 
gov. may have open data, but if knowledge and data producing 
institutions are being decimated, does it really matter?

Of the 13 provinces and territories, only 3 have open data programs, the 
data produced by these are the juicy ones however, this is health, 
population health, education, social welfare, resources, roads, etc. 
  These are the institutions that deliver services to Canadians, and 
these are the ones we want to have data from, but these are the late 
bloomers in terms of data sharing, transparency, disclosure, access to 
information and so on.  It is nice to have federal data, but we really 
want admin data from provinces and territories.  Also, business 
registries are federal, and there are also provincial and territorial 
ones.  The open data census does not capture this nuance.  The results 
from Canada would be much lower if this nuance was taken into consideration.

There are thousands of cities and municipalities in Canada, currently we 
have 36 with open data pilots or catalogs 
(http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/#Open Data Cities 
<http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/#Open%20Data%20Cities>).  The data 
they contain are cute, it is generally  parks, recreation, monuments, 
and so on.  There are a few with restaurant health inspections and so 
on. This is the jurisdiction that manages city infrastructure, where we 
live, and they do not have demographic data and so on.  I would love to 
know more about brown fields, dump sites, waste management, boil water 
advisories and smog alert days, but these are not in the open data city 
portals.

Thus, when the question of public transportation comes up under the Open 
Data Census, it is problematic as the national/federal government does 
not have jurisdiction over transit unless a system crosses provinces and 
territories, but that is not transit per say, it is airlines, the 
national rail lines or Greyhound buses.  Transit is administered at the 
level of the municipality, and that picture differs in each city.  There 
is no way to give an overall mark, and then of course, there is the 
issues that Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, 
are big cities (for Canada), they have larger transit systems, smaller 
cities would not have the resources necessarily to release their transit 
data if in fact they even had gps on their buses and so on.  So how to 
compare these?

In other words, the picture is complex, and we may get good marks for 
one jurisdiction, but that mask the reality of the others.  Which brings 
us to the open government partnership, I know not a Census topic, but it 
only allows for national government representation, in Canada, this is 
very problematic for the reasons discussed above.

My question then, is how will the Open Data Census capture the differing 
governance issues between the nation states compared?  How will a user 
of the results be advised of the comparative caveats?  Can countries 
really be compared? Is there recognition that this first census may in 
fact be the first to understand the differences and that this one will 
find out the methodological issues and the next one will aim to address 
these?

Sincerely
Tracey

-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
Post Doctoral Fellow
Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
http://datalibre.ca/
613-234-2805

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