[Open-data-census] The 2013 Open Data Census submission and review is ready to go!

Sat Sep 28 07:46:38 BST 2013

Christian!  the ever so wonderful Irina is here and we had a great talk! I
'll be spending the day with the Irish crew here, Ireland crew and we may
have some ideas.

I understand your efforts and constraints more.

Cheers
T

On Friday, September 27, 2013, Christian Villum wrote:

> Hi Tracey,
>
> Thanks as always for your input, I'll reply inline below.
>
> -Christian
>
> --
>
> Christian Villum
>
> Community Manager, Open Government Data + Local Groups Network
> skype: christianvillum  |  @villum <http://www.twitter.com/villum>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>
> *Empowering through Open Knowledge
> *http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN>  |  OKF on Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork> |
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>
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 7:30 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'tlauriau at gmail.com');>
> > wrote:
>
>> Thank you Christian;
>>
>> I just went to take a look and I can see that you provided a new comment
>> box, excellent, however, there was also a request for
>>
>> Yes No For *Some Jurisdictions* Unsure and to have a place for notes
>> right there.  For example, on the transportation question, sure you can get
>> a paper schedule for most, but for us in Canada, as previously discussed,
>> transit is not delivered by a central national authority, it is deliverly
>> by cities and municipalities.  If we decided to narrow things a bit, from
>> 3500 cities, and decide to pick all cities over 100 000 people, then we
>> would be down to about 37 cities, then we would have to assess at that
>> level.  For each of your questions.  For the time being we would have to
>> respond unsure for all, and write this big long note to you.
>>
>
> I understand, it's a complicated situation. Did you by any chance include
> this comment in the submission also? I think that would be appropriate and
> useful.
>
>
>> In addition, Statistics Canada just sent Diane and I a note requesting
>> that we up the score for Statistical Data, see the correspondence below.
>>
>
> Thanks for giving them such detailed feedback, it's exemplary Country
> Editor work.
>
>
>> Again, the way the government is structured we can say yes to some, but
>> must say no to others.  For example, might be yes for some at the federal
>> level, not all departments, but then when we get to provinces and
>> territories, then the issue becomes very problematic.  Think of Canada as
>> you would the EU in terms of federated jurisdictions with different ways of
>> doing things.
>>
>
> Yes, this is surely one of the bigger issues, as also discussed before. I
> am confident that this is one of the issues we'll be looking into post-OGP
> when addressing how to expand the Census.
>
>
>> I tried to participate in the WG remotely, but as you were aware, the
>> wifi issue was problematic.
>>
>
> Yes, I am sorry for the faulty connection - the venue of the conference
> was unable to handle the number of connections, and the remote linkups to
> sessions suffered from that. Thanks for trying though!
>
>
>> I am not sure how we can work with this new version, as wonderful as it
>> might be for those who have centralized national governments who do all of
>> these things.
>>
>> How can I help improve this with you so that we can have a more nuanced
>> picture of the results?  I would be so happy to participate in a working
>> groups of sorts.
>>
>
> That's great! Stay tuned here on the list, where we'll have the discussion
> booted after the OGP summit.
>
>
> Sincerely
> Tracey
>
> StatCan correspondence below:
>
> Andrew;
>
> Some of Statistics Canada data are under that licence, most are not.  For
> example, economic division, environment, health, crime and so on are not
> nor are population projections, death rates, birth rates and so on are not
> under that licence. If you wish to have cross tabs on the free data, that
> is at a very large cost, as that is considered a custom order, of if you
> want data aggregated to boundaries such as wards, neighbourhoods or health
> districts, that also is a very hight cost.  In addition, our current
> government cancelled the census, as you know, the free data from the
> national household survey are considered unreliable and uneven and do not
> scale down to smaller geographies due to the methodology adapted.
> Statistics Canada made the census data free, real census data as they had
> recovered the costs from earlier sales, what they made free were these NHS
> which are of much less quality and ealier census data only.
>
> What is available via the portal is a small sample of what the statistical
> agency holds, and in fact, for real data practioners and users, we do not
> go to the portal as the search functionality is terrible.  The system in
> place does not scale well.  Most people still go to the statistics canada
> website as you have the data with the methodological guides, the surveys
> and so on, the information surrounding the data.  In theory a centralized
> portal seems nice, but the reality is, in the case of Canada anyway, there
> is a distance created between the data producer and the user when the data
> are centralized in this way, which means you loose context and access to
> the specialists who can answer questions.  Also, the geographic search for
> the data are lost in this centralized portal.  So it is not the best way.
>
> Furthermore, that is only one agency, there is citizenship, hrsdc,
> industry, and so on who all produce statistical data as well as
> administrative data and their data are not in the portal as they should be
> nor are they available from their site.  The ranking is not just for
> Statcan it is for statistical data in general.
>
> I think the score should remain the same, and in fact, if we actually had
> access to the inventory of datasets produced by the federal government, we
> may consider lowering this score even more, as only a small sample of
> actually produced federal data are in that portal.  Finally, with the
> decimation of Library and Archives Canada, access to historical data are
> now impeded.
>
> Until which time that all data are open, I think this score has to stay.
>
> Thank you for bringing it up howerver.
> Sincerely
> Tracey
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 4:58 PM, <Andrew.Smith at statcan.gc.ca> wrote:
>  Hello Diane, Tracey and Patricia,
>
> As you are listed as editors for Canada for the OKFN Open Data Census, we
> are contacting you regarding updates to the OKFN website.
>
> The National Statistics section for Canada in the G8 OKFN Open Data Census
> has a mark of 3/6. The reasoning for that mark is that Canadian national
> statistics are not openly licensed and free.
>
> This is outdated information, the data on the Statistics Canada website is
> free and openly licensed since 2012. The licence is available here:
> *http://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/licence-eng*<http://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/licence-eng>
>
> Also the data is freely available through the Open Data portal data.gc.cafor all federal statistics and is also covered under the Open Government
> Licence found here: *http://data.gc.ca/eng/open-government-licence-canada*<http://data.gc.ca/eng/open-government-licence-canada>
>
>
> Would you contact or update the OKFN website to reflect these changes and
> increase the mark?
> *http://census.okfn.org/contribute/* <http://census.okfn.org/contribute/>
>
>
> Thank you,
> Andrew
>
>
> Andrew Smith
>
>
>

-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
http://datalibre.ca/
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