Notes from 2003-02-23 Open Data Day in Calgary

[Grant Neufeld]

I've posted my (minimal) notes from yesterday's Open Data Day meet in Calgary to the Open Data Day wiki:
http://wiki.opendataday.org/Calgary2013

Other participants who were there are encouraged to add their recollections.

Thanks to all who came out!


Here's a copy of what I posted:


We ended up having a fairly unstructured discussion that started with introductions about why we were each interested in Open Data.

We discussed the state of Open Data in Calgary and Alberta, with the conclusion that both are quite behind.

The point was raised that it would be good for the City to connect with developers — building some back-and-forth to better connect their projects back into the City.

The value of metrics — measuring things like usage — was discussed. It was suggested that it would be good to survey businesses who use Open Data, or Open Data-derived systems, to try to determine what sorts of cost savings they get, and what kind of opportunities are created or expanded.

While not specifically about Open Data, the issue of government held “intellectual property” being limited from reuse was brought up. We discussed a little bit about the challenges of getting governments to adopt Creative Commons licensing.

The point that the Government of B.C. has a department of Citizen Services came up a couple times. They have responsibility for moving the Government of B.C. to Open Data.


Desired data sets

The participants made suggestions of data sets we would like to see prioritized for release as Open Data:
* Open311 (this was the clear favourite, being brought up many times during the discussion).
* Complaints issued about parks.
* Traffic accidents.
* Financial data (City expenditures broken down to pretty fine levels).


Outcomes & tasks

Questions that were asked that need followup include:
* Who owns 311 at the City?
* What are their plans?
Grant took on the task of finding out and reporting back.

Grant is trying to start up a project to build our own Open Data portal for Calgary, independent of the City (at least for now) as a way to push the City to better adopt Open Data. (Inspired by the citizen-built project that was archiving video of City Council meetings which prompted the City to start doing that themselves.)