Zipskinny.com … enter a (US) zip code, get census data, and other goodies. Very nice. Does anyone know how much would it cost to pay statscanada for a license to do something similar in Canada?
From ie.blognation.com:
In a recent competition for the best idea for a webapp with an Irish focus, I was surprised to find several submissions were about citizen interaction with the public service and the Government. This set me thinking that we should not encourage the public service to build applications and sites but to build APIs for our data.
The key word is “ourâ€. There is still a strong belief in the public service that somehow they own our data whether that is a hospital telling me I can only get my son’s x-rays through the Freedom of Information act, the Ordnance Survey keeping an iron-grip on GIS data or local government publishing data in proprietary Word docs and PDFs….
[thanks for the pointer, mat]
Well!
The SPNO crafted a spreadsheet that is circulating for error detection and it inspired me to go looking for the results.
Elections Ontario has a rather crude interactive map that lacks a certain information and cartographic aesthetic Je ne sais quoi. Infographic standards aside you can click on a red, orange, green or blue section of the map and get results in a small pop up window.
You can go below the map and select from a drop down box , your riding or your candidate and get the results.
You can also scroll way down and see the voter turnout – an appauling 52.8 percent, a record low according to CBC News. You cannot however YET download a spreadsheet with the Riding name, Riding #, Party Name, Party Candidate, # of votes, total # of voters, % of the vote so that you can do your own global analysis. For instance which parts of the province voted more and others less and then try and figure out why from a public policy or communications process. On Election Night the Elections Ontario 2007 site was unavailable due to over demand! 🙁
Elections Ontario however lets you download the electoral district (ED) boundary maps, the ED Names and codes list, the Postal Code File by ED (.zip + .xls),
As for other coverage on Election Night – October 10, 2007. I got my results from Globe and Mail Ontario Election 2007 and CBC Ontario Votes since the Elections Ontario was down.
The Globe provided a MP postal code look-up tool, and a by first and last name of your candidate look up. What I loved best however were the riding stats. They have both 2007 and 2003 riding results. At a glance on Wed. I guessed right away that the turnout was really low which was later confirmed. It also provided me with some context. It did not have an overall map, nor could I see a full provincial picture but I pretty quickly got to see who my new MP was and then go chase my son around who scared me when I got home by telling me that the party I loathe got in!
The CBC Ontario Votes site was not as shnazzy as the Globe’s reporting but it provided much more context, particularly at the riding level. It is also where I first read about the tragic results of the poorly marketed referendum on electoral change – MMP.
The CBC also provides an excellent page called Ontario by the Numbers, which is loaded with data and information on voter turnout, changes overtime etc. It is doing a great job as a public broadcaster.
The Site that surprised me the most was an independent called Nodice.ca. It came up first in all searches on Election night and still today. It also did not crash as did the Elections Ontario site. It is
an independent website which contains educational resources and links for Canadian teachers and students, and information about federal, provincial and territorial elections in Canada. The site gets its information from a variety of sources, including news articles (print, televised, or otherwise), party websites, candidates, as well as from information received through online contact forms. While the accuracy of the information received cannot be guaranteed, the majority of information is sourced before it is posted. Nodice.ca is owned and operated by David A. MacDonald.
The site contained the winners per riding, only the top 4 parties though! The seat projections, opinion polls, results, a list of leaders by party overtime, links to all the parties, and so on. This is an example of an excellent citizen led initiative. Funny, because I did not know who and what this site was about I had to validate what I read with other news and data sources that I trust and which have clear accountability structures. All the sites did have disclaimers on the results they posted!
This is all I looked at. At home I listen to Radio Canada, and their coverage was not the best and the windup toward the elections was also not superb. I guess Ontario is also not the province of their target audience. The best windup I got was from my son, whose grade 8 English teacher had them follow articles in the Globe and write up the issues everyday. He kept me up to date. The Issue that got me talking the most was Religious Private School Funding. I do not read the French press so missed it to!
From a data, information and news perspective democracy won out. The MMP issue lost out however as the public education component was near nil! Wonder who got the communication’s contract for that one! Yikes!
Would really like to know what you followed if not covered here, more from the French Press and other grassroots blogs or sites that provided good coverage. For instance in Montreal Ile Sans Fil, Zap Québec with CivicSense RSS fed the blogs, sites, you tube video’s etc. to their portal pages during the Québec elections. Very cool!
The Green Party, reports Michael Geist, put out it’s policy document.
Have not looked thru it yet, but there’s support for network neutrality:
Supporting the free flow of information
The Internet has become an essential tool in knowledge storage and the free flow of information between citizens. It is playing a critical role in democratizing communications and society as a whole. There are corporations that want to control the content of information on the internet and alter the free flow of information by giving preferential treatment to those who pay extra for faster service.
Our Vision
The Green Party of Canada is committed to the original design principle of the internet – network neutrality: the idea that a maximally useful public information network treats all content, sites, and platforms equally, thus allowing the network to carry every form of information and support every kind of application.
Green Solutions
Green Party MPs will:
* Pass legislation granting the Internet in Canada the status of Common Carrier – prohibiting Internet Service Providers from discriminating due to content while freeing them from liability for content transmitted through their systems.
and free/open source software:
Open source computer software
As computer hardware improves, it is important that software programs are readily modifiable by the people who buy and use them. Developing alongside the proprietary software sector is Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). This software is generally available at little or no cost, making it very popular in the developing world. It can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed with little or no restriction. Businesses can adapt the software to their specific needs.
Under the free software business model, vendors may charge a fee for distribution and offer paid support and customization services. Free software gives users the ability to work together enhancing and refining the programs they use. It is a pure public good rather than a private good.
Our Vision
The Green Party supports the goals and ideals of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and believes that Canada’s competitiveness in global information technology (IT) will be greatly enhanced by strongly supporting FLOSS.
Green Solutions
Green Party MPs will:
* Ensure that all new software developed for or by government is based on open standards and encourage and support a nationwide transition to FLOSS in all critical government IT systems. This will make Canada’s IT infrastructure more secure and robust, lower administration and licensing costs and develop IT skills.
* Support the transition to FLOSS throughout the educational system
I’d say it would be worth asking them what they think of civic access to canadian government data.
It is a small world! Especially in Ottawa where the degree of separation is about .0005 degrees! Feels like that anyway!
Zzzoot is definitely a kindred blog to datalibre.ca. The Sept. posts are excellent reviews of International data access and preservation technologies, RFPs and initiatives. All my faves’ are discussed there – Cyberinfrastructure in the US, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) UK DataShare project and CODATA Open Data for Open Science Journal and a whole bunch more.
I think like I, he wishes there would be some uptake from these innovations & initiatives here!
The Guardian UK Tech Section has an ongoing campaign to free UK government data, with an associated blog: freeourdata.org.uk/blog.
Their campaign inspired a response from the Ordnance Survey titled:
These maps cost us £110m. We can’t give them away for free. The response argues that the maps cost money, that the OS needs money to operate, and that by charging for the maps they can continue to provide a valuable service. Among other things:
It cost Ordnance Survey £110m to collect, maintain and supply our data last year, but we are not “paid for by taxes”, as the campaign often claims. Instead, we depend entirely on receipts from licensing and direct sales to customers for our income – we receive no tax funding at all.
If we are successful, we can cover our costs, encourage widespread licensing through partners, and stay focused on providing value for users. Under licence, there are many examples where our data is free at the point of use. This does not mean there is zero cost.
[Interesting to note that the OS’s clients, much like statscan clients, are “users,” not citizens].
The Free Our Data people responded to response in their blog, noting the key reason for their campaign:
We believe [making OS data and maps free] would set off an explosion in private-sector use of the data, and lead to more companies which would create more jobs and generate more taxes. That would offset any extra taxation required to fund OS. Making the data free would also get rid of onerous and inefficient licensing schemes that tangle up central and local government departments, which wonder if they can reuse something or even display it on the web. (Search this blog for NEPHO.)
And that was followed by further response from Tom Steinberg and Ed Mayo, the authors of the Power of Information, who say:
The key issue about charging is whether the UK would benefit more in net terms from the more vibrant information market that more open information would bring than it would lose through having to find an additional £60m per year. This is a serious question that the Treasury is currently looking into, having accepted the recommendation in the independent review we co-authored for the government earlier this year.
Which garnered some further feedback from the Free Our Data.
And in the end this is a compelling case, perhaps the compelling case: a case that ought to convince you whatever your political leanings, right or left or circular. There are moral and social and philosophical reasons to support free government data. But the one that’s most likely to win converts is the case that free data makes for more innovation. The innovation can be commercial, social, socioeconomic – touching on health, environment, planning, equality etc, but also just good old-fashioned economic vitality.
But all of it, we’d argue, will “make Canada a better country” not just morally, but in our ability to solve important problems, and, yes, make some people more money in the mean time. Which means, in the end, more tax receipts, which means that it should offset any lost revenues Statscan and other Canadian agencies now receive for excluding all but big companies and institutions from their datasets.
The issue of public access to government data has a number of components: availability (is it available?), format (is it in a usable/open format?), cost (is it free?), and copyright (do I need permission to use it, may I do with it what I wish?).
The City of Toronto has recently launched a campaign to get more money for cities from the Federal government, asking for one cent from the GST. The campaign is called: onecentnow.ca, and uses the Canadian penny in ads and on their web site.
They’ve received a retroactive bill from the Royal Canadian Mint for $47,000+ for use of the image of the Canadian penny, and for use of the words “one cent” (!).
There are political/moral issues here about how government agencies use (or abuse) existing laws. Notably, the Royal Canadian Mint is a crown corporation that answers to the federal government, and the federal government is a target of the onecentnow.ca campaign, so this retroactive charge could be interpreted as politically motivated. Perhaps not.
And of course there are policy issues about how Crown Copyright ought to be used, or whether it should exist at all. In the USA, for instance, federal government documents, designs and publications are de facto in the public domain.
But other than these abstract concerns, there is a more crucial point: the Mint appears to be on the wrong side of the Canadian Copyright Act. As Howard Knopf points out in Excess Copyright, Canadian copyright law provides copyright protection until 50 years after the death of the creator. Crown Copyright extends 50 years after date of publication.
The Canadian penny was designed by G.E. Kruger Gray in 1937. He died in 1943, meaning that the design for the Canadian penny went into the public domain 50 years later, in 1993. Which means that no one, including the Royal Canadian Mint, can claim ownership of the image, much less charge for its use.
He notes further that it seems unlikely that any court would agree with the Mint that they own a copyright or trademark on the words “one cent.”
So it seems possible that the Royal Canadian Mint has developed an Intellectual Property policy that is claiming – and charging for – ownership where none exists.
The World Freedom Atlas is:
an online geo-visualization tool that shows a number of freedom indicators so to speak. For example, you can map by a number of indexes such as raw political rights score, civil liberties, political imprisonment, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or torture. If I’ve counted correctly the data comes from 42 datasets divided into three categories:
[from the wonderfully-named blog, flowingdata.com]
One of the big worries about access to government data are issues of privacy. Here’s a video of Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner, taking to engineers at Waterloo, about the importance of designing for privacy:
Globally, issues about information privacy in the marketplace have emerged in tandem with the dramatic and escalating increase in information stored in electronic formats. Data mining, for example, can be extremely valuable for businesses, but in the absence of adequate safeguards, it can jeopradize informational privacy. Dr. Ann Cavoukian talks about how to use technology to enhance privacy. Some of the technologies discussed included instant messaging, RFID tags and Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC). Then Dr. Cavoukian explained the “7 Privacy – Embedded Laws†followed by a discussion on a biometrics solution to encryption.
So nice! I am a big fan of Charles Arthur and he has done it again in – See how the information garden grows: Visualising data can help us to better make sense the world.
via: TEDBlog Data at Play post.
And while we’re discussing data, play and art, here is another fine data art installation at the US Statistical HQ! The mind boggles!
All form and color are derived from US state and county information, 1790-2000. More details here.
Jason Salavon has produced some incredible light & data visualizations!
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