Articles by Tracey

I like data and think it should be shared at not cost! Especially public data!

Data Humanitarianism during a Pandemic

March 31, 2020 in COVID-19, health by Tracey | Permalink

TracingCOVIDbanners-08Across the country adhoc open data groups are meeting, holding hackathons online, they are making all sorts of apps, they are asking for data and want current data channels improved, they are making maps and deploying platforms, but also they are concerned about tracking and surveillance. These groups involve people from all levels of government, civic technology, open data, and the private sector. People are involved for all kinds of reasons and what is notable is that these are people who have agency, knowledge, and power combined with the capacity to act – the key ingredients for what Andrew Feenberg would call, technological citizenship. Doing technological citizenship is one way for people to engage in a technological society such as Canada, and in a very sophisticated and complicated information and technology situation such as a pandemic.

People’s intentions are good, but as the saying goes ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ and caution and level headedness is required.

People involved in humanitarian work know this, and we have much to learn from them, and Patrick Meir is one of these great people. He shares in Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response what he learned during the 2010 Earthquake disaster in Haiti, and in other contexts. He is not alone, there is much to learn from the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Responsible Data project and the Protection Information Management (PIM) initiative.

It is time to bring this overseas humanitarian crisis work home!

This is an exceptional time and right now we are witnessing the erosion of basic rights in exchange public good, as the situation is ‘evolving’, while a new form of data politics emerges with little or no discussion of data governance. The changes comes with an increase in surveillance and control, which might stay longer than we had thought and hoped for.

This too is not new, and the Signal Code work was developed precisely for this type of situation. These researchers advocate for a rights based approach for humanitarian information activities (HIA) work during a crisis, a pandemic is arguably a crisis, and they refer to the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response that starts with an understanding of dignity as being:

…more than physical well-being; it demands respect for the whole person, including the values and beliefs of individuals and affected communities, and respect for their human rights, including liberty, freedom of conscience and religious observance.

They also argue for a duty of care to be operationalized during the crisis, and I would argue that this should be done by us and our governors and administrators, so that we do not use this pandemic as reasoning to violate rights, to circumvent the law and to be negligent in our data and technology work. The COVID-19 pandemic is temporary, but the data collected and the technologies built will live beyond the crisis. There therefore a duty to be responsible now and to develop data governance strategies for the future.

The goal of the Signal Code is to develop ethical obligations for humanitarian actors including minimum technical standards for the safe, ethical, and responsible conduct of humanitarian information activities (HIAs) before, during, and after disasters strike. They provide the following five rights when conducting HIAs:

1. The Right to Information

Access to information during crisis, as well as the means to communicate it, is a basic humanitarian need. Thus, all people and populations have a fundamental right to generate, access, acquire, transmit, and benefit from information during crisis. The right to information during crisis exists at every phase of a crisis, regardless of the geographic location, political, cultural, or operational context or its severity

2. The Right to Protection

All people have a right to protection of their life, liberty, and security of person from potential threats and harms resulting directly or indirectly from the use of ICTs or data that may pertain to them. These harms and threats include factors and instances that impact or may impact a person’s safety, social status, and respect for their human rights. Populations affected by crises, in particular armed conflict and other violent situations, are fundamentally vulnerable. HIAs have the potential to cause and magnify unique types of risks and harms that increase the vulnerability of these at-risk populations, especially by the mishandling of sensitive data.

3. The Right to Privacy and Security

All people have a right to have their personal information treated in ways consistent with internationally accepted legal, ethical, and technical standards of individual privacy and data protection. Any exception to data privacy and protection during crises exercised by humanitarian actors must be applied in ways consistent with international human rights and humanitarian law and standards.

4. The Right to Data Agency

Everyone has the right to agency over the collection, use, and disclosure of their personally identifiable information (PII) and aggregate data that includes their personal information, such as demographically identifiable information (DII). Populations have the right to be reasonably informed about information activities during all phases of information acquisition and use.

5. The Right to Rectification and Redress

All people have the right to rectification of demonstrably false, inaccurate, or incompletedata collected about them. As part of this right, individuals and communities have a right to establish the existence of and access to personal data collected about themselves. All people have a right to redress from relevant parties when harm was caused as a result of either data collected about them or the way in which data pertaining to them were collected, processed, or used.

These are important to consider. I will come back to these in the coming days and I will point to insight provided by other who have first hand experience of doing data work during a time of crisis. I hope this is food for thought.

COVID-19 Cell Phone Tracking Data – A Health Surveillance Privacy Paradox?

March 25, 2020 in COVID-19, health by Tracey | Permalink

TracingCOVIDbanners-0814 days later!

Both Hugh and I agree, that it is time to use this platform again.

COVID-19 and cell phone data tracking is a Privacy Paradox par excellence! The the concept originally encapsulated how we were willing to trade-off the sharing of one’s data for the use of a ‘free’ social media platform.  We kinda’ knew that our data were being sold off to third parties, and traded by data brokers, and we sorta let it go, so we reacted by setting up some add blockers, adjusting our settings, using VPNs, or changing our browsers to things like DuckDuckGo. As imperfect as that situation was and is, that is what we did and it is what we do.

But cell phone tracking is something quite different.

Helen Nissembaum‘s Contextual Integrity (CI) is a very useful framework to think this through, for her “privacy, defined as CI, is preserved when information flows generated by an action or practice conform to legitimate contextual informational norms; it is violated when they are breached“. There are four CI theses as follows:

  • Thesis 1: Privacy is the Appropriate Flow of Personal Information
  • Thesis 2: Appropriate Flows Conform with Contextual Informational Norms (“Privacy Norms”)
  • Thesis 3: Five Parameters Define Privacy (Contextual Informational) Norms: Subject, Sender, Recipient, Information Type, and Transmission Principle
  • Thesis 4: The Ethical Legitimacy of Privacy Norms is Evaluated in Terms of: A) Interests of Affected Parties, B) Ethical and Political Values, and C) Contextual Functions, Purposes, and Values.

In terms of norms, social media is one thing, we do get upset when we find out that our photos are being used for facial recognition by our law enforcement institutions, when behaviour is tracked for targeted marketing purposes by data brokers or worse when scurrilous actors use our data to disrupt democracy. But our cell phone data, that is another level! We also know about UBER and smart phone provider transgressions but we seem to know very little about the Murkyness of Telecom Surveillance.  Furthermore, we are beginning to realize, that we cannot Privacy By Design (PbD) our way out of this, nor is cybersecurity enough, and that institutional and technological solutionism, falls short! We need to figure out how to govern these data practices right now.

These are exceptional times, circumstances are exceptional, the stakes are high, and the norms they are a changin’ . CI helps frame our thinking, although, Nissembaum also realizes that her thesis may need to reconsider how technology is an actor, while Teresa Scassa in Private Sector Data, Privacy and Pandemics and Michael Geist both warn us about the new normal, they also define and categorize types of data in a pandemic situation to help us out, frame their analysis with issues pertaining to law, policy and governance, and provide ways to circumscribe how these data might be shared to serve the public good or interest at this time.

But, who will govern this, and for long will this ‘sharing’ & tracking go on for?

What is for sure, just like 911 set new benchmarks in terms of what kind of surveillance we wound up ‘living with’,  COVID-19 will change data and technological monitoring norms. This may also be a time where we might change the course what surveillance we will accept, as presumably we are smarter now! There are perils and there are opportunities. How will we govern ourselves and our data during and post the pandemic era!

Below is a smattering of news articles on the topic:

The Long Form Census is restored! The Recensement long est rétablis!

November 5, 2015 in canada, Census by Tracey | Permalink

LF_Census   Recensement_Long

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Reinstatement of the Long-Form Census – Bill C-626

November 6, 2014 in canada, Census, Uncategorized by Tracey | Permalink

MPs will be debating Bill C-626 which proposes amending the Statistics Act this Friday November 7 to:

Reinstate the long-form census and expand the authority of the Chief Statistician of Canada.

The first reading of the text of An Act to Amend the Statistics Act / Projet de Loi C-626 Prèmiere Lecture was done on Sept. 22, 2014.

It was tabled by Ted Hsu, Liberal Member of Parliament for Kingston.

Here are some resources:

  1. Fortunately, Evidence for Democracy has taken this on as a campaign, and the
  2. Save The Census folks are also keeping us up to date on this issue with their Facebook page.
  3. Ted Hsu also has some excellent information resources in the Bill C-626 Blog
  4. the Datalibre.ca blog has a number of resources, which you can search
  5. The Civicaccess.ca list also keeps an archives of all of its posts, and you can search find excellent resources there as well.
  6. OpenParliament.ca has the essentials about the Bill
  7. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – All the latest on the census long-form debacle

Some recent articles:

ACTIONS:

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Programmable City: Mapping Openess and Transparency

June 4, 2014 in Access, canada, government, open access, Open Data, openmovement, policy by Tracey | Permalink

Below is and excerpt from a blogpost on the Programmable City website.  I work there now, and post quite a bit of open data, big data, data infrastructure posts there.  Most do not include any CanCon so I do not always put them here.  The Open Government Partnership is big for the Federal Government in Canada, and the OGP Independant Reporting Mechanism report by the Independant Reviewer Dr. Mary Francoli, was not particularly kind to our Action Plan, and rightly so.  The OGP is however not that big a deal on the ground or with civil society in Canada.  It is however really important elsewhere, in Ireland for example, the EU and the OGP are leveraged as a way to bring and promote progressive practices, regulation, laws, and so on.  In developing countries, it is a way for civil society organizations to have a voice and meet officials they would otherwise not get to interact with at home, and again have a transnational organization promote change.

I will try and post here more often!  Took me time to adjust to my new home.  Rest assured though, that I have not forgotten you nor do I not pay attention to the data shenanigans ongoing in Canada!

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I attended the European Regional Meeting of the Open Government Partnership at the Dublin Castle Conference Centre in May of this year.  The meeting was a place for performance and evaluation wonks to show their wares, especially at the following sessions: Open Government Standards and Indicators for Measuring Progress, The EU’s Role in Promoting Transparency and Accountability and Engagement with the OGP, and Open Contracting: Towards a New Global Norm.  I did not attend the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) sessions, but having read the IRM report for Canada, I know that it too is an emerging performance evaluation indicator space, which is affirmed by a cursory examination of the IRMs two major databases.  The most promising, yet the most disappointing session was the Economic Impact of Open Data session.  This is unfortunate as there are now a number of models by which the values of sharing, disseminating and curating data have been measured.  It would have been great to have heard either a critical analysis or a review of the newly released Ordinance Survey of Ireland report, Assessment of the Economic Value of the Geospatial Information Industry in Ireland, the many economic impact models listed here in the World Bank Toolkit, or the often cited McKinsey Global Institute Open data: Unlocking innovation and performance with liquid information report.  Oh Well!

While there I was struck by the number of times maps were displayed.  The mapping of public policy issues related to openness seems to have become a normalized communication method to show how countries fare according to a number of indicators that aim to measure how transparent, prone to corruption, engagemed civil society is, or how open in terms of data, open in terms of information, and open in terms of government nation states are.

What the maps show is how jurisdictionally bound up policy, law and regulatory matters concerning data are.  The maps reveal how techno-political processes are sociospatial practices and how these sociospatial matters are delineated by territorial boundaries.  What is less obvious, are the narratives about how the particularities of the spatial relations within these territories shape how the same policies, laws and regulation are differentially enacted.

Below are 10 world maps which depict a wide range of indicators and sub-indicators, indices, scorecards, and standards.  Some simply show if a country is a member of an institution or is a signatory to an international agreement.  Most are interactive except for one, they all provide links to reports and methodologies, some more extensive than others.  Some of the maps are a call to action; others are created to solicit input from the crowd, while most are created to demonstrate how countries fare against each other according to their schemes.  One map is a discovery map to a large number of indicators found in an indicator portal while another shows the breadth of civil society participation.  These maps are created in a variety of customized systems while three rely on third party platforms such as Google Maps or Open Street Maps.  They are published by a variety of organizations such as transnational institutions, well resourced think tanks or civil society organizations.

We do not know the impact these maps have on the minds of the decision makers for whom they are aimed, but I do know that these are often shown as backdrops to discussions at international meetings such as the OGP to make a point about who is and is not in an open and transparent club.  They are therefore political tools, used to do discursive work.  They do not simply represent the open data landscape, but actively help (re)produce it.  As such, they demand further scrutiny as to the data assemblage surrounding them (amalgams of systems of thought, forms of knowledge, finance, political economies, governmentalities and legalities, materialities and infrastructures, practices, organisations and institutions, subjectivities and communities, places, and marketplaces), the instrumental rationality underpinning them, and the power/knowledge exercised through them.

This is work that we are presently conducting on the Programmable City project, which will  complement a critical study concerning city data, indicators, benchmarking and dashboards, and we’ll return to them in future blog posts.

1.       The Transparency International Corruption by Country / Territory Map

Users land on a blank blue world map of countries delineated by a thick white line, from which they select a country of interest.  Once selected a series of indicators and indices such as the ‘Corruption measurement tools’, ‘Measuring transparency’ and ‘Other governance and development indicators’ appear.  These are measured according rankings to a given n, scored as a percentage and whether or not the country is a signatory to a convention and if it is enforced.  The numbers are derived from national statistics and surveys.  The indicators are:

  • Corruption Perceptions Index (2013), Transparency International
  • Control of Corruption (2010), World Bank dimension of Worldwide Governance Indicators
  • The Bribe Payer’s Index (2011), Transparency International
  • Global Corruption Barometer (2013), Transparency International
  • OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (2011)
  • Financial Secrecy Index (2011), Tax Justice Network
  • Open Budget Index (2010), International Budget Partnership
  • Global Competitiveness Index (2012-2013), World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index
  • Judicial Independence (2011-2012), World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index
  • Human Development Index (2011), United Nations
  • Rule of Law (2010), World Bank dimension of Worldwide Governance Indicators
  • Press Freedom Index (2011-2012) Reporters Without Borders
  • Voice & Accountability (2010), World Bank dimension of Worldwide Governance Indicators

By clicking on the question mark beside the indicators, a pop up window with some basic metadata appears. The window describes what is being measured and points to its source.

The page includes links to related reports, and a comments section where numerous and colourful opinions are provided!

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View the rest at Programmable City.

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2014 Open Data Summit Top 10 Most Wanted Municipal Datasets

May 20, 2014 in Open Data by Tracey | Permalink

Participants at the 2014 Open Data Summit in Vancouver this year put their heads together to come up with a list of desired open data datasets.  The ever so wonderful Herb Lainchbury then:

  • consulted with open data enthusiast on the Civicaccess.ca list to narrow it down and refine it;
  • created an online survey;
  • solicitied people across the country to vote on it;
  • and then shared the survey results.

The final list is as follows:

  1. Rezoning permit applications
  2. Land use changes
  3. Financial data (revenue, expenses, liabilities, equity, etc..)
  4. Locations of things (fire hydrants, drinking water fountains, public toilets, bike parking, …)
  5. Transit data
  6. Development permit applications
  7. Crime information
  8. Road construction (511 data)
  9. Political financing
  10. Real time traffic flow data and daily road usage patterns
With #1 being the most desired.

 

Canada Post report, data analytics & direct marketers win, and the public loses?

December 17, 2013 in Uncategorized by Tracey | Permalink

As discussed here, and here, the folks on the CivicAccess.ca list are doing some digging into the numbers behind this Canada post announcement to cancel home delivery of the mail.  In addition, Armine Yalnizyan’s Globe and Mail Article Canada Post’s vow to ‘protect taxpayers’ needs a reality check which questions the validy of reported losses in financial reports.  As part of that digging some of the following links are being made.  And of course the following National Post Article Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra is a board member of the think-tank that urged mail changes revealed that:

Chopra is also paid the highest salary range among so-called governor-in-council cabinet appointments, with potential earnings of more than half a million dollars a year as Canada Post CEO. Chopra is paid at the CEO 8 level, meaning he receives between $440,900 and $518,600 a year in salary to head an organization that has nearly two dozen presidents and vice-presidents.

Here are some findings about the CEO, his relationship with the Conference Board of Canada and also with Pitney and Bowes which runs a private sector mail service:

reorganized the postal business into two distinct business units: a Physical Delivery Network, which offers highly competitive mail and parcel delivery to every household; and a Digital Delivery Network, which is responsible for the epost electronic delivery solutions, online properties and consumer experience while supporting the Direct Marketing industry with location data analytics.

The report, L’Avenir du service postal au Canada / The Future of the Postal Service included some numbers and references to some interesting data shops as follows:

  • The econometric analysis discussed in chapter 1 of this report was done by ZenithOptiMedia is also a media agency with shops in Toronto and Montreal. The algorithms were not provided nor the data sources. It is a big data analytical shop
  • Dunn and Bradsheet supplied some corporate data.  According to them, they are “the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses”.  They also do credit scores.
  • Genesis Public Opinion Research Inc did the public opinion research. Not much is available about this company, they do however have a standing offer with the Government of Canada to do this this type of research.  And if this link to them is correct they are a shop based in Chelsea, QC with one employee? s http://www.salespider.com/b-143469756/genesis-public-opinion-research-inc, one employee?

The data from which it was decided that Canada Post should change its direction was not provided in the report, the following was:

  • “The target sample included approximately 500 customers who get mail delivered to their door (DTD), 300 who use group mailboxes (CMB), 250 who receive mail in their lobby or common area (LBA), 100 who have mail delivered to the end of their driveways (RMB), and 60 who have postal boxes in Canada Post or private buildings (DFLB). This roughly mirrors the current distribution of customers by delivery category, with an oversample of rural driveway customers”.
  • “A total of 1,212 residential customers, 18 years of age or older, were surveyed by telephone from September 26 to October 10, 2012. The results are considered accurate to within +/- 2.8 per cent, 19 times in 20.”
  • “Genesis explored the views of small businesses through a two-stage process. The first stage was a series of five focus groups, held in Moncton, Montréal, Mississauga, Brandon, and Calgary. The second stage involved a telephone survey of individuals in small businesses who make decisions on postal products and services within their company.”
  • “The interviews were conducted with 800 businesses selected randomly from among a nationwide pool of businesses with more than 1 but fewer than 100 employees. The sample was generated using data from Dunn and  Bradstreet. The source data for the sample were stratified by employee size, region, and Standard Industrial Classification (SIC). Only businesses with 2 to 100 fulltime employees were eligible for inclusion in the final sample. The sample was then randomly drawn from businesses across the full range of over 1,000 SIC codes, but it excluded Canada Post, print and electronic media, hospitals, educational institutions, and all three levels of government”.

To summarize, this unbiased report was produced by an organization, who has as its board member, the proponent of the research who also happens to be the CEO of the Crown Corporation which is proposing the radical changes, furthermore, this CEO was also the president and CEO of a company that has a private sector mail service that may benefit from these changes, and he is paid close to 520K per year by the Crown / governor in council who appointed him, of an organization that is fasely reporting losses.  In addition the data sources and algorithms behind the reports are not made available, while the sampling of the population is small and primarily urban and even these small numbers were also misreported.

Maybe it is just me, but it would seem that something is a little off here. And, there seems to be a pattern, the cancelation of the census in 2010 was announced just before the summer holidays, the cancelation of home delivery of the post was announced just before the Xmas holidays of 2013, and we have a Prime Minister who seems to have an aversion to evidence based decision making.

It would be good to know who stands to gain with this Canada Post decision, a quick glance tells me that the Canada Post Digital Delivery Network, Direct Marketing industry with location data analytics gain, and that would include companies like Pitney and Bowes, while the Physical Delivery Network which is the one that serves the public, loses.

The myth behind the “2/3rd of Canadians already don’t receive home delivery” number

December 16, 2013 in Access by Tracey | Permalink

A member of the Civicaccess.ca list, Ted Strauss, was perplexed about  a Canada Post data point frequently reported in the media!  It has oftern been repeated that “2/3rd of Canadians already don’t receive home delivery” which seemingly justifies the cancellation of mail delivery to the doors of Canadians.  In a sense this is manufacturing concent for the cancellation! Another member of the list, Jean-Noe Landry pointed us to the following ‘unbiased’ report  by the Conference Board of Canada: The Future of Postal Service in Canada. On page 3 of that report, Ted found the following table:

p3_ConferenceBoardofCanada_FutureofthePostalService

Here is what it reveals:
  • 40% get mail to their door.
  • 20% get mail in the lobby of their building.
  • 5% get mail at the end of their driveway.
  • That’s a subtotal of 65% that most sane people would define as “to their door”.
  • 29% get mail at a group mailbox in the neighbourhood.
  • 5% get mail at the post office.
Accroding to this data, two thirds of Canadians actually DO get mail delivered to their domicile, even if said mail is not directly touching their front door.

Ted was good enough to also share several examples where this two thirds figure has been cited.  While a complicated issue, the focus on this one number is helpful.

“Over the next five years, the one third of Canadian households that receive their mail at their door will be converted to community mailbox delivery. This change will provide significant savings to Canada Post and will have no impact on the two thirds of Canadian households that already receive their mail and parcels through community mailboxes, grouped or lobby mailboxes or rural mailboxes.”

Canadians are being deceived, and once again the devil is in the details of the data!

UPDATE: Another member of the list, Karl Dubost went further.  Karl elicited a to do list of follow up questions that I parphrase as follows:

  1. These data were collected by Genesis Public Opinion Research Inc.
  2. What is the sample size?
  3. What regions did they sample from?
  4. Did they sample secondary households (i.e., cottages and so on)
  5. What are the stats by different areas across Canada with the labeling and the density of the area?

You can follow the discussion on the Civicaccess.ca list, by all means join, or look into the stream of the discussion archived here.

 

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The Record: the ‘unbiased’ report: The Future of the Postal Service in Canada

December 16, 2013 in Access by Tracey | Permalink

Here we go again!

The Conference Board of Canada, well, they just don’t seem to get this unbiased reporting thing straight. For instance, a member of their board, Deepak Chopra who is the President and Chief Executive Officer Canada Post Corporation, well, need I say more? How does one produce an independent unbiased think tank report, when… This is not the Conference board of Canada’s first little oopsy, on this front, recall the The Conference Board of Canada’s Deceptive, Plagiarized Digital Economy Report, as meticulously deconstructed by Michael Geist.

The report was downloaded and reposted in slideshare for posterity’s sake. Should you wish your own copy, by all means go to the Conference Board of Canada’s website and download: The Future of the Postal Service in Canada. We all want informed decision making, but really?

I also screen captured the list of the Conference Board’s board members and composed the following png. I captured these images from the following link, today, 16 Dec. 2013, http://www.conferenceboard.ca/about-cboc/bod.aspx. I recommend you do the same before this too disappears from the record!

ConferenceBoardCanada_Board_16122013

Thank you friends on the CivicAcces.ca list for pointing me to these!

Voici le rapport en Francais, qui est disponible ici du Conference Board of Canada.

CODATHON – Open Data for Development Challenge / Données ouvertes pour le développement

December 16, 2013 in canadian projects by Tracey | Permalink

OPEN DATA FOR DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE

January 27-28, 2014 – Montreal, Canada

The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) is pleased to announce an international aid transparency event will be held in Montreal (Canada) on January 27 and 28, 2014.

The event, which will take the form of a “codathon”, will focus on data, policy, and technical questions related to aid transparency. It will bring together technical experts and practitioners to generate new tools, approaches and ideas in the fields of open data and aid transparency in order to address development issues.

Technical challenges will involve building on open aid data, development-related datasets (e.g. national indicators, trade flows) and other data to build applications that help deliver better development results. Proposed topics for the policy stream include the use of open data in decision-making, the impact of open data in developing countries and an in-depth look at geospatial data.

Canada is committed to open data, aid transparency and accountability, as demonstrated through its engagement in key initiatives such as the G8 Open Data Charter, the Open Government Partnership and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The Open Data for Development Challenge will build on DFATD’s commitment to aid transparency and its efforts to make data on Canada’s international development assistance open and accessible.

The Open Data for Development Challenge will take place in the same venue as the IATI TAG event (which will be on January 29-30, 2014). Participants in the TAG event are encouraged to plan to attend the Challenge as well

Details on the program and the registration process will be available shortly.

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Données ouvertes pour le développement

27 et 28 janvier 2014, à Montréal.

Affaires étrangères, Commerce et Développement Canada (MAECD) est heureux d’annoncer la tenue d’un événement sur la transparence de l’aide internationale les 27 et 28 janvier 2014, à Montréal.

L’événement prendra la forme d’un « codathon » portant sur les données, les politiques et les questions techniques liées à la transparence de l’aide. Il réunira des experts techniques et des praticiens, qui auront l’occasion de générer de nouveaux outils et de nouvelles approches et idées dans les domaines des données ouvertes et de la transparence de l’aide, dans le but de s’attaquer aux enjeux du développement.

Les participants devront relever des défis techniques, p. ex. s’appuyer sur des données ouvertes relatives à l’aide, des ensembles de données liées au développement (comme les indicateurs nationaux et les flux commerciaux) et d’autres données, afin de concevoir des applications permettant d’atteindre de meilleurs résultats en matière de développement. Parmi les sujets proposés pour le volet sur les politiques, soulignons l’usage de données ouvertes dans la prise de décisions, l’incidence des données ouvertes dans les pays en développement, et un examen approfondi des données géospatiales.

Le Canada a pris un engagement à l’égard des données ouvertes, de la transparence de l’aide et de la responsabilisation, comme le montre sa participation à des initiatives clés comme la Charte du G8 sur les données ouvertes, le Partenariat pour un gouvernement transparent et l’Initiative internationale pour la transparence de l’aide. Le défi Données ouvertes pour le développement fera fond sur l’engagement du MAECD à l’égard de la transparence de l’aide et sur ses efforts pour rendre ouvertes et accessibles les données sur l’aide canadienne au développement international.

Le défi Données ouvertes pour le développement aura lieu au même endroit que la réunion du Groupe consultatif technique de l’Initiative internationale pour la transparence de l’aide, laquelle se déroulera les 29 et 30 janvier 2014. Ainsi, les participants à la réunion du Groupe consultatif technique sont également invités à prendre part au défi Données ouvertes pour le développement.

Les détails sur le programme et le processus d’inscription seront diffusés sous peu.

Michael Roberts – Groupsia
skype: mroberts_112

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