[open-government] mapping the world's open data catalogues

Wed Oct 12 13:18:54 UTC 2011

In terms of mapping;

The idea of polygons is really interesting.

In Canada there are 4 levels of government, Federal, Provincial/Territorial
and City/municipal, and in Ottawa we have the National Capital Commission
(NCC).  Because of divisions of power each level has different
responsibilities and therefore oversees different types of projects and
programs resulting in different types of data.  I all cases we have not yet
see administrative data except for CIDA.

Currently, if you are trying to put together an indicator project such as
the one the Federation of Canadian Municipalities does, a researchers has to
contact all of these different governments and then try to deal with
definitions, formats, data models, etc.  I have done this work and it is
ridiculously painful.  For example health & education is administered by P/T
and then another level of government for education is school boards, etc.

So far, the Federal Government has initiated a beta catalog, however Canada
does not quite yet have of an open government policy and it is not all
government departments who contribute data and the data contributed were
data already available.  Natural Resources Canada and The Canadian
International Development Agency and the Treasury Board Open Data Beta are
really the leaders.  So it is a truly Federal initiative or just some
departments and a TBS catalog that aggregates what is out there?  Would the
polygon shade of Canada be lighters as it is not a fully comprehensive open
data strategy?  What are the criteria and how do different jurisdictions do
this work.

There is currently only one Province of the 13 P/Ts that has adopted open
data and that is British Columbia.  Again I am not sure if it is truly
comprehensive and that it includes administrative data along with geomatics
type of data.  BC then would have a shaded polygon within the federal
polygon.

We do have quite a few towns and cities that have implemented open data
catalogs, again, the data are low hanging fruit, nothing controversial - the
location of parks some have transit data, but no administrative or public
health data as of yet.  At the scale you are showing the data, I am guessing
you would represent cities/municipalities/towns as dots.

Looking at Global and National Spatial Data Infrastructures (GSDI) (NSDI)
will provide some clues as to how different countries are when it comes to
how they manage their data.  Looking at these infrastructures will also show
how well interoperability and other standards are well advanced.  Especially
metadata and catalogs.

I love the map and mapping these initiatives.

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com>wrote:

> The http://datos.fundacionctic.org/sandbox/catalog/faceted/ is really
> lovely great but it is inaccurate.  The Title is Public Data Catalogs
> however, after looking at the Canadian list there are cities that have
> citizen led open data initiatives ob the but do not currently do not
> currently have a catalog.
>
> I am happy to help with the Canadian Content and wonder what the criteria
> for inclusion is.
>
> Sincerely
> Tracey
>
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