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

[Jan Willem van Eck]

As a cartographer, I would love to contribute to mapping open data. Let me know what I can do.

Cheers,
Jw.

From: open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Tracey P. Lauriault
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 3:19 PM
To: open-government at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [open-government] mapping the world's open data catalogues

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<mailto: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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