[Open-data-census] government nuances and standard options

Fri Oct 4 21:15:28 BST 2013

I agree, Richard. I think the solution is either (A) to allow the country editors/reviewers to mark this category as "not applicable" (although VIA Rail exists, it's not sufficiently relevant) or (B) to allow country editors/reviewers to change the weights assigned to each category. In this case, a very low weight would be assigned to Transport Timetables to avoid it having an overly large impact on Canada's global score.

Each province, territory and municipality would have different answers to each question, so it's not possible to produce an aggregate answer for "Transport Timetables". If the Census is interested in that granularity, we need to add those jurisdictions as distinct from Canada's entry in the Census.

James

On 2013-10-04, at 3:57 PM, Richard Akerman wrote:

> I have to say when I first saw the census I assumed "Transport
> Timetables" for Canada meant at any level of government.
> 
> By designing the survey to measure national-level, with the language
> "Timetables of major government operated (or commissioned)
> *national-level* public transport services (specifically bus and
> train)." the census is rewarding countries with a strong
> centrally-directed national transportation infrastructure.  There
> doesn't seem to be a "not applicable to government structure" option.
> The messaging around what the Census is measuring needs to be really
> clear.
> 
> It's great that the Census now has editing and review options, but I'm
> not sure what would apply to Canada.
> I could argue exist yes, digital yes, public yes, free unknown, online
> yes, machine-readable no, bulk yes?, open unknown, up-to-date yes.
> http://www.viarail.ca/en/plan-your-trip/customize-your-train-schedule
> 
> But in Canada the national train service is an independent crown
> corporation.  Is that "government operated"?  The distances are large
> and the trains are slow, so most people fly.  From Halifax to Montreal
> there's not a train every five minutes, or every hour.  There's one
> train once a day three days a week.
> http://www.viarail.ca/sites/all/files/media/pdfs/schedules/Summer2013/VL24458_4970-13_Timetable2013_ETE_30-31.pdf
> 
> On the other hand, Canadian municipal transit systems are well-used
> and many have open data, as in e.g. City of Ottawa
> http://www.octranspo1.com/developers
> 
> My concern is that if the Census is presented as a national-level
> summary for comparison and policy-making, it's going to look like
> Canada lags at Transport Timetables, when it's actually just because
> the most-used transportation modes where most of the open data is
> available are at a different level of government than the national
> government, or are of a different type (airlines).
> 
> --
> Richard Akerman
> scilib at gmail.com
> http://scilib.typepad.com/
> 
> Twitter: @scilib