Recap: CityCamp Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · April 13, 2011 at 12:00pm

Canada’s first CityCamp was held here in Edmonton on Saturday at the Robbins Health Learning Centre downtown. Roughly 50 people attended the unconference focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. We had a nice mix of municipal employees, developers, journalists, and citizens.

We started the day off with this timeline of Edmonton’s open data journey (click for a larger version):

It was a joint effort to create this. Jess put it together with input from myself and Ashley, and Raffaella created a Prezi for us. I was struck by two things when reflecting on the timeline:

This journey really didn’t start that long ago. I guess two years in the technology world is a long time, but it’s pretty quick in the world of municipal governments.
I was instantly reminded of London’s tube map when I looked at the timeline, which is fitting as so much of our open data journey in Edmonton has been based around transit. It was the GTFS feed that ETS made available to developers that really kicked things off back in 2009.

With that foundation in place, we invited everyone to pitch their topics for the day. There was a nice range of topics suggested, everything from “Modeling the Value of Open Gov” to “Increasing Awareness of Apps Among Edmontonians”.

Raffaella and Ashley acted as our gridmasters, and arranged the topics into the day’s agenda. We broke into groups and the discussions began!

The sessions I participated in looked at the media’s role in open government, the importance of archiving and digital preservation, and the benefits of open data in small municipalities. I really enjoyed the discussions and I think everyone got something out of them, even if it was just inspiration or motivation to go away and do something!

In the session on small municipalities, I thought Devin made a really great point. He said that open data adoption today is kind of like website adoption was 15 years ago or so. At the time, having a website was a new concept, and municipalities approached it much like they are approaching open data now – with uncertainty, hesitation, and even resistance. Today every municipality has a website. How did we get over those initial roadblocks? Devin suggested that tooling has a lot to do with it, which echoed some of the discussion we had in the media session earlier in the day. Tools like FrontPage really opened up the floodgates and made it easy for people to create a website. We have since moved on to better things, of course, but it was an important enabler early on. Perhaps we need the open-data-equivalent of FrontPage for open data to really take off as well. In the media session we identified tools as one of the things holding up wider adoption of open data by journalists.

A session I didn’t participate in but which looked like a lot of fun was the modeling open government one. Jess was determined to have at least one session that wasn’t sitting around in a circle talking, and he succeeded!

The space we were in was great, with lots of natural light (which I think is really important), though it was somewhat difficult to find in the morning. Everything worked out though!

Though we did have a discussion about actions arising from the day’s sessions, I think drilling down on collective actions is always difficult at events like CityCamp. For me, the day was an opportunity to connect with other people thinking about the same issues and topics. That said, here are a few things you can do to take action right now:

Look at the open data catalogue, and start using the data. Share the things you’re doing with it!
As you come up with ideas that require data sets that aren’t currently available, add them to the UserVoice. I will take an action to clean that site up a bit!
Notes from the day will be going up on Civic Commons, so that’s a great place to capture and share your thoughts on open government in Edmonton.

Thanks to everyone who participated on Saturday! You can see my photos from the day here, and Jess’ photos here.

First look at Canada’s new Open Data portal: data.gc.ca

By Mack D. Male · March 18, 2011 at 7:14pm

Yesterday the Government of Canada launched its open data portal at data.gc.ca. Open Data is one of three Open Government Initiatives, the other two being Open Information and Open Dialogue. Stockwell Day, President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, issued a statement today on the launch:

“Today, I am pleased to announce the next step in our government’s commitment to enhancing transparency and accountability to Canadians. The expansion of open government will give Canadians the opportunity to access public information in more useful and readable formats, enable greater insight into the inner workings of the Government and empower citizens to participate more directly in the decision-making process.”

He goes on in the statement to say that Canada has historically led the way in providing information to citizens. Lately though, we’ve definitely fallen behind. I’m glad to see us moving forward once again. This development is no doubt the result of lots of work by many passionate Canadians, such as David Eaves. Here’s what he posted yesterday:

The launch of data.gc.ca is an important first step. It gives those of us interested in open data and open government a vehicle by which to get more data open and improve the accountability, transparency as well as business and social innovation.

David does a good job in that post of highlighting some of the issues the site currently faces, such as some problematic wording in the licensing, so I won’t repeat that here. Instead, I figured I’d do what I always do when I get new datasets to play with – make some charts!

The open data portal says there are 261,077 datasets currently available. Just 781 of those are “general” datasets, the rest are geospatial. That’s an impressive number of geospatial datasets, but they are somewhat less accessible (and perhaps less interesting) to the average Canadian than the general datasets. It looks like you need to be able to work with an ESRI Shape File to use most of them.

There are lots of general datasets you might find interesting, however. For example, here’s the Consumer Price Index by city:

Here’s another dataset I thought was interesting – the number of foreign workers that have entered Canada, by region:

Have you ever wondered how much of each type of milk Albertans consume? You can find that out:

There’s actually a fairly broad range of datasets available, such as weather, agriculture, economics, and much more. As David said, it’s a good first step.

I’m excited to see more ministries get involved, and I hope to see the number of datasets available increase over time. I’d also love to see the licensing change, perhaps by adopting the UK Open Government License as David suggested. Exciting times ahead!

Recap: Open City Workshop

By Mack D. Male · March 8, 2010 at 11:00am

Saturday’s Open City Workshop at the Art Gallery of Alberta was a fantastic event! Excellent turnout, great discussions, and lots of enthusiasm for the open data/open government movement here in Edmonton. We started the day with some opening remarks from Councillor Don Iveson, CIO Chris Moore, and FusedLogic’s Walter Schwabe. I really liked Don’s key values: transparency, empowerment, and collaboration.

Next up was the panel, featuring David Eaves, Nick Charney, Mark Kuznicki, and Alayne Sinclair. They talked about what open government meant to them, took an odd detour into voting, and took some questions from the audience as well. Here are a few of the key things that stood out for me:

The idea of government as a platform is not new!
It’s about empowering citizens to make the city their own, enabling them to go after their passions.
Engagement is often a sign that you need to do something differently, not necessarily that you’re doing something right.
Civil servants are citizens too!
Open government is part of a broader cultural shift, and citizens have a responsibility to become participants.

I really enjoyed the panel – it was the highlight of the day for me. It was great to finally meet David, Nick, and Mark in person too.

After some forced networking and a break for lunch, the unconference part of the day got underway. We broke into smaller groups to discuss things like the role of journalism and storytelling in open data, the digital divide, thinking beyond technology solutions, and timelines/deliverables.

I attended the role of journalism and storytelling first, and we seemed to reach the consensus that storytelling is vital for open data/open government to succeed. We need everyone to tell stories, so that we achieve a diverse range of views. We also felt that journalism has a role to play in bridging the gap that exists between those who “get it” and those who don’t. The second session I attended was on engaging residents not familiar with technology. We ended up talking a lot about deliberative dialogue, and I was left with a lot to think about – how will access to open data affect the way a citizen looks at the world? We’re naturally selective, does open data change anything in that regard? For some thoughts on the other two sessions, check out Stella’s recap.

Another really great aspect of the day was that it was streamed live online by FusedLogic in both English and French. There were dozens of people participating virtually, from Edmonton and around the world! I understand that they even held their own breakout discussion in the afternoon! Kudos to the FusedLogic team for taking on such a big task, and making it work so well.

At the end of the day, Chris Moore took the stage once again to make a few announcements:

An RFP has gone out for the design and implementation of the next generation of productivity technologies at the City of Edmonton.
The City of Edmonton is partnering on open311.org, to bring open standards for 311.
On April 19, the City of Edmonton is planning to launch an iPhone app called CityWatch, developed by local company Touchmetric.
The City of Edmonton is calling for the creation of a “Code for Canada” organization, modeled after Code for America.
There will be an Apps4Edmonton app contest in the near future, with the prizes and winners to be showcased at GTEC2010 in October.

Exciting stuff! Congrats to Chris and his team for putting on a great event.

Stay tuned to the #openyeg and #yegdata hashtags on Twitter for updates, as well as the City of Edmonton’s open city page. You can see the rest of my photos here, and you can see the City’s photoset here. You can see a list of the attendees on Twitter here.

I’ll leave you with this TED video of Tim Berners-Lee talking about open data:

Bring on the data!

Open City Workshop & Participation Inequality

By Mack D. Male · March 5, 2010 at 10:00am

The City of Edmonton is hosting a workshop tomorrow at the Art Gallery of Alberta called Building Community through Open Information (on ShareEdmonton). It’s a follow-up to the open data workshop that happened last year and the conversations that have taken place since, but is focused on connecting stakeholders, increasing a shared understanding of Government 2.0, and planning the way forward. Devin wrote some great thoughts on the workshop here.

I’m really looking forward to seeing a diverse local crowd, representing a variety of agencies and interests. I’m also looking forward to meeting special guests David Eaves, Mark Kuznicki, and Nicholas Charney in person. All three are key players in Canada’s open government space.

And while I’m hopeful that we’ll see some new data released tomorrow, I’m mindful that data is not the focus. The three objectives listed on the event details page are about establishing Edmonton as a leader, and then lots of talk. I think the way you establish yourself as a leader is by actually doing things, but I’ll keep an open mind tomorrow

One thing I do want to talk about at the workshop is the divide that a number of people have picked up on. It’s great that Edmonton and other places are making progress on opening up data, but how does that impact the average citizen? There’s definitely a perception that only techies understand and can use open data. I don’t think that gives the average citizen enough credit, but I’m willing to concede that open data is not as accessible today as it needs to be. There’s lots of room for improvement.

Having said that, I think it’s important to keep participation inequality in mind:

All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don’t participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background.

If we think of open data (and open government) as a large community, then we should absolutely expect that a small subset of that community will be responsible for most of the activity. In the context of the 90-9-1 rule, 90% of the community won’t participate (they just observe or read), 9% will occasionally participate, and 1% will participate a lot.

Here’s one way to visualize the open community:

I’m sure there are other ways to break it down, but this makes the most sense to me at the moment.

Goverati: these are government employees, folks from related agencies, non-profits, etc.
Creative Professionals: these are people such as myself, developers, designers, etc.
Business: for-profit organizations.
Citizens: ultimately, the beneficiaries of all this open government stuff!

Of course, this picture is somewhat misleading, because all goverati, creative professionals, and business folks are also citizens, but let’s set that aside for now. I think the goverati and some creative professionals fall into the 1% category, the rest of the creative professionals and business fall into the 9% category, and citizens account for the 90% category.

The 90-9-1 pattern can be seen in action all over the web, perhaps most notably on Wikipedia. A tiny percentage of Wikipedia’s user base is responsible for the vast majority of all content produced. I think we can do better with open data/open government, however. Through applications, interactive visualizations, and the other interesting things that the goverati, creative professionals, and businesses build, I think more and more citizens will move from the 90% category to the 9% category.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that considering how the average citizen benefits from open data is important, but we shouldn’t let that hold us back from making progress at this point. We need to empower businesses and creative professionals to build things that the average citizen will ultimately benefit from. As we do that, there’s an opportunity to educate citizens if they want to be educated!

There’s only a few hours left to register for the event. Hope to see you there!

What would make you attend the Open Data event on March 6?

By Mack D. Male · February 11, 2010 at 1:45pm

As you might have seen on Twitter, the City of Edmonton is planning another open data event for Saturday, March 6, 2010 at City Hall. If you haven’t already, block that day off in your calendar! It’ll be a great opportunity to connect with others who are interested in open data and open government, as well as a chance to provide feedback to the City on its data catalogue and plans for the future.

And who knows, if we’re lucky, there might even be some new data to play with! For more information on the data catalogue, which launched last month, click here.

The details for the event will go up on the website soon I’m sure, but first we need to have a better idea of what everyone wants to get out of the event. Here are some ideas:

An unconference, followed by a hack night. Maybe a keynote to kick things off, then time for unconference-style discussions about open data and open government. The hack night could take a variety of forms, and the discussions could be wide-ranging.
Discussing how to frame open data in terms of citizen benefit might a potential topic. Why would my parents or grandparents be interested in open data?
One idea for the hack night is to get some developers together to try to improve the tooling around OGDI. This might be writing custom formatters (CSV, plist, etc) or perhaps something else. All of this would be contributed to the community.
Another idea is to hold a competition – what can you build in just one evening?!
Or a twist on that, a competition where teams produce mockups & ideas, not necessarily a working app.
Or the hack night could be as simple as a walk-through of how to use the open data catalogue, etc. Or maybe it’s a longer “hack day”.

What do you think? What would make you attend the open data event on March 6? Either leave a comment below, or email opendata@edmonton.ca with your suggestions.

It would be great to have representatives from a variety of organizations too, not just the City and developers. If you’re at all interested in open data or open government, please join us. Hope to see you there!