Tag: open data

Getting wise about waste in Edmonton

We currently divert more than 52% of our waste from landfill here in Edmonton and the goal is to increase that to over 90%. That’s going to take multiple approaches and a lot of hard work. Recycling is key, so it’s great that more than 90% of Edmontonians currently use the blue bag recycling program, according to the City. But sometimes we put the wrong things in the bag! That’s where the City’s new app called WasteWise comes in.

WasteWise

A launch event with a friendly waste sorting competition was held on October 26 at City Hall and I was excited to participate along with Councillor Andrew Knack, former Oiler Andrew Ference, and the kids from City Hall School. We each received a few bean bags with items on them and we had to determine whether that item should be recycled, taken to an eco station, or put in the garbage. We could guess, use the poster, use the app, or ask the audience for help. We got one point for getting that right, plus another point for tossing the bean bag through the right hole. It was more challenging than it sounds!

Edmonton WasteWise

You can see some video highlights from the event at the Journal. Somehow I managed to win the competition, even though I made a big mistake!

Edmonton WasteWise

My mistake was apparently a common one among Edmontonians. One of the items I got was shredded paper, and I thought “aha! paper! surely that’s recycle!” Needless to say I got no points for that incorrect guess. Unlike sheets of paper or newspapers, shredded paper should be put into the garbage because “it clogs machinery at the recycling sorting plant, causing damage and plant shutdowns.” Because it is already shredded, it composts well. So, it was an educational event!

Some other commonly mistaken items include pizza boxes (they go in the recycle, even if a bit greasy), compact discs (CDs go in the garbage, or to the Reuse Centre), and plastic shopping bags (they get recycled too). If it has a cord, it should generally be taken to the Eco Station. You can challenge yourself by playing the WasteWise game What Goes Where?

WasteWise App

The new WasteWise app is powered by a service called ReCollect. Other municipalities in Canada have gone with the same system, including Vancouver, Victoria, and Ottawa. The City was happy to point out that using an off-the-shelf tool was cheaper than building a brand new app, not to mention they get to take advantage of having the kinks largely worked out by others. In addition to being able to quickly look up whether an item should go in the garbage, recycle, or to the Eco Station, you can also get reminders about your waste collection day.

As of this week, the app has been downloaded more than 6,000 times and users have searched more than 67,000 times! The most commonly searched items are pizza boxes, styrofoam containers, and plastic containers. A little over half of app users have signed up to receive reminders.

You can download the Edmonton WasteWise app for iOS or Android, or you can access it via the web widget.

WasteWise Open Data

In addition to making the new app available, the City has released all of the data that powers it via the open data catalogue! In particular you can access:

These datasets are all fairly new so we’ll have to see how developers take advantage of all that data. I think an augmented reality app would be cool – imagine just pointing your mobile phone’s camera at an item to have it recognize the item and tell you where it should go. Would make all those de-cluttering challenges that seem so popular lately a little more interesting!

You can learn more about the City’s waste management programs & services here.

The last 25 years of wildfires in Alberta

Like all of you I have been watching the images and stories coming in from Fort McMurray and elsewhere in the province with horror and fascination. Horror because of the incredible devastation caused by the wildfires and fascination because of the incredible response of Edmontonians and Albertans to help all those affected.

The wildfire that is wreaking havoc in Fort McMurray grew very rapidly and is approaching 200,000 hectares in size. It has been nicknamed The Beast by officials. Wildfires are not a rare thing in Alberta of course, we have our fair share every year. I found myself wondering how this year compared to previous years and how this fire compared in size. I was pleasantly surprised to find all of the data readily accessible in the federal and provincial open data catalogues.

Here’s a look at the number of fires and the number of hectares burned in Alberta from 1990 through most of 2015:

alberta wildfire stats

A large number of fires doesn’t always mean more area burned – some fires are just more destructive than others, weather conditions play a role, etc. The worst year in the last 25 years in terms of area burned was 2011 when more than 806,000 hectares burned. One fire that year, the Richardson Fire, was nearly 600,000 hectares in size, the second largest in Alberta history (after the 1950 Chinchaga fire).

The average size of a wildfire in Alberta from 1990 to 2014 was about 120 hectares. There have been a few years with fires over 100,000 hectares in size, but the largest is about 70,000 hectares on average. Here’s the largest fire size by year (for 1990-2014):

YEAR SIZE (HECTARES)
1990 11,810
1991 1,559
1992 475
1993 7,820
1994 13,138
1995 132,679
1996 452
1997 2,800
1998 163,138
1999 10,349
2000 2,147
2001 104,534
2002 238,867
2003 29,936
2004 107,829
2005 43,000
2006 18,204
2007 63,000
2008 11,600
2009 11,506
2010 33,075
2011 577,647
2012 134,603
2013 8,819
2014 4,173

Another thing I was curious about was the cause of these wildfires. The data shows that for the 25,000+ wildfires that burned during the 1996-2014 period, lightning causes about 43% of them and residential or recreational activities cause about 38%.

alberta wildfire causes

This year isn’t the first time Fort McMurray has been significantly affected by wildfires, though there’s no question the damage this year is unmatched. A large fire in 2002 caused a number of evacuations of communities near Fort McMurray and threatened Highway 63 before it was eventually contained. The highway was shut down in 1995 when a large fire caused more than 500 people to flee their homes.

Alberta Wildfire Data

If you’d like to dig into the data yourself, here are the relevant datasets:

Updates

For the latest updates on the current wildfire situation, here are the official links:

Also note that a province-wide fire ban is in place. If you’d like to donate to the cause, you can do so at the Red Cross online.

Maybe next time Elections Alberta can spend $1 million on something useful

Well there’s $1 million down the drain. Voter turnout for the 2015 provincial election here in Alberta ended up being 53.7%, down from 54.4% in 2012. The flashy ad campaign that Elections Alberta ran probably had very little impact on those numbers, if it had any impact at all. I’d wager than anger against the PCs and enchantment with the NDP’s orange crush did more to impact voter turnout than #ChooseYourAlberta did.

choose your alberta

They could have spent that money on things that would have actually, measurably impacted turnout. Like more voting stations. Or better educational resources on how to vote. Or online voting. Or, as I will argue for in this post, on a better website and on open data. Let’s start with the website.

Is a functional, reliable, up-to-date website too much to ask for in 2015?

The Elections Alberta website is an unmitigated disaster. It’s garish, uses tables for layout, and is horribly unfriendly to use on a mobile device. Worse, there’s not just one website, but many. Here are some of the subdomains I’ve come across:

There are probably others that I haven’t even found yet, too. Each of those sites has a different navigation menu even though they share a similar design, which makes them very disorienting. Worse, they change seemingly on a whim. Links are removed or change, redirects are put in place, and there is no revision history.

I suppose you could argue that we don’t have elections very often so it’s not worth putting a lot of money into the website. But I’m not talking about a fancy, complicated, expensive redesign. I’m talking about a simple, responsible, and trustworthy website that is actually useful.

I think being trustworthy is especially important. Elections Alberta is the authority on elections in Alberta – I would expect to be able to go their website to find accurate, reliable information. But it’s hard to trust a site that is constantly in flux, with information appearing for a few days and then disappearing again, or links that look like they were added almost as an afterthought.

For instance, I downloaded a list of candidates in the 2015 election in Excel format a few weeks before election day, as I was building my results dashboard. It was somewhere on the WTV site. Today that page is gone, and the WTV site redirects to results. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I can see that a completely different site used to be there, with the link to the Excel document I had downloaded. Why remove that?

It seems they have removed nearly all of the previous information and functionality now that the election is over. Searching for your candidates has been replaced with finding your MLA. Which kind of makes sense, except that you’re on the Elections Alberta site, not the Legislative Assembly website. I expect to find election-related information at Elections Alberta, thank you very much!

A small fraction of the $1 million ad campaign budget would have gone a long way toward addressing these issues with the Elections Alberta website.

It’s time to get on board the open data bandwagon

I really like building things for elections. Whether it’s a results dashboard, a where-to-vote tool, a sign management system for a campaign, or something else entirely, I enjoy it all. These projects generally need data. Sometimes you crowdsource the data (where did volunteers drop all of the signs) but often you want official data from the election authority. In the case of the provincial election, I wanted to build a site that was useful before and after the election, with a where-to-vote feature, information on all of the candidates, and a results dashboard. I needed some data from Elections Alberta to make it happen. Here’s a rough overview of what I wanted:

  • A list of all parties (ideally with contact info)
  • A list of all candidates (ideally with contact info, their electoral district, etc.)
  • A list of all electoral districts (ideally with returning officers and other info)
  • A list of all polling stations (ideally with addresses and contact info)
  • The geographical boundary data for each electoral district
  • The geographical boundary data for each polling station
  • Results data for the 2015 election
  • Historical results data

Each of those datasets would allow me to build additional features, especially when combined with my own data. All of them are fairly straightforward in my opinion, and should be things that the authority on elections would have. Once I knew which datasets I needed, I set about finding them.

My first stop was the Alberta Open Data Portal: “The portal makes data the provincial government collects on behalf of citizens publicly available in machine readable formats with an open licence.” Like the City of Edmonton’s data catalogue, the Alberta Open Data Portal should be a one-stop shop for open data. But unfortunately, it contains no election-related data. I of course submitted a dataset request, but knew it wouldn’t be actioned in time. I still haven’t heard anything back about it.

I knew at this point that I’d have to hunt each dataset down individually, likely on the Elections Alberta site. And given what I wrote above about the website, I knew that was likely to be problematic.

As mentioned I found the list of candidates in Excel format. I also managed to find the electoral district boundary information and the polling station boundaries here. I ended up scraping nearly everything else, including the list of electoral districts. Just four days before the election, after repeated requests that went unanswered, they added an Excel document of all the polling stations (which you can see here via the Wayback Machine).

I’m pretty happy with the way the results dashboard turned out, but again it was all scraped. Instead if making a results feed available, or any kind of structured data, Elections Alberta only provides a static HTML page (which of course does not validate correctly making scraping even more difficult). Now that the election is over, I see they have added the resultsnew site, which appears to provide an option to download the results in Excel. Too little, too late.

One quick note on historical data. You can get PDFs here, but that’s pretty useless for anything other than manual lookups. I couldn’t find anything else. The only reason my results dashboard is able to show results data from 2012 is that I had saved copies of the static HTML results files that year.

This situation is untenable. Scraping data, hunting around a constantly changing website, and pleading for more complete datasets is not my idea of an open and accessible government. Open data is not a new concept, and the Province already has an open data catalogue. All Elections Alberta needs to do is make their data available inside of it.

There’s plenty of time to fix this before the next election!

I know that election time is crunch time, and that the folks at Elections Alberta were probably incredibly stressed out and constantly faced an uphill battle. And I know there are smart, dedicated Albertans who work there. Keila Johnston, Director of IT and Geomatics for Elections Alberta, was particularly helpful. But now the election is over, and I’d really like to see some positive change.

It would be an incredible shame if we got to the next election here in Alberta and found ourselves in the same position: with a website that’s out-of-date and unreliable, and a lack of open data to power new tools and experiences for voters. Elections Alberta has the talent and ability to fix both of those issues, if they prioritize it. And the best part? It shouldn’t cost $1 million to do so.

Edmonton wants to tap into local creativity with labs

The City of Edmonton is hoping to tap into the creative ideas and energy of Edmontonians with two new lab initiatives. Open Lab aims to “create unique technological solutions for municipal challenges” while CITYlab will “advance conversations around urban planning.” Both initiatives, if successful, will change the way the City does business. The hope is that a healthy dose of innovation will be injected into the organization to ultimately result in better, more efficient outcomes for citizens.

Open Lab

The program room at Startup Edmonton was packed yesterday for the launch of Open Lab. Mayor Don Iveson, Startup Edmonton’s Ken Bautista, a few other speakers shared an overview of what the program is and what they’re hoping to achieve with it.

Open Lab Launch

So, what is Open Lab?

“A physical and virtual space where City employees and Startup communities can work together to create innovative solutions to municipal challenges. It is a unique continuous innovation program that combines local government, open data, smart creatives, and lean startup culture to build new products that improve the citizen experience.”

Open Lab is part of the Open City Initiative, which launched back in June. It’s also a partnership with Startup Edmonton, and that’s what makes it different from previous attempts at this same idea.

Startup Edmonton believes there are three main ingredients for a thriving entrepreneurial community: people & innovation, community & collision, and leadership & growth. They believe in the importance of thinking bigger, valuing community, and building to scale.

  • “Smart creatives solve big problems.”
  • “Entrepreneurship is a team sport.”
  • “Entrepreneurial leaders grow & scale companies.”

One of the ways Startup tries to implement these principles is via the lean startup approach. The goal with Open Lab is to add some of that lean startup culture into the City. There are three main components to the initiative:

  • Collision Days – Deep dive events where startups and SMEs discuss technologies, tools, and issues impacting a particular industry or community.
  • Open Lab Accelerator – Helping teams learn how to use lean startup methodologies, customer development, and validate what products to build in the first place.
  • Leadership Program – Developing product managers and leaders inside the city who build and test ideas like startups, using prototyping, behaviour science, and design thinking.

The Open Lab Accelerator is not unlike Preflight, the successful Startup Edmonton program that has helped local success stories like Poppy Barley.

Open Lab Launch

Michael Strong, a planner with the City of Edmonton, was one of the speakers at yesterday’s launch events. He was sort of the guinea pig for Open Lab, and he described how the approach helped his team think about new ways of achieving one of their objectives, which is to get people using and thinking about LRT in a different way. They have mocked up an app that would combine the “get me from A to B” and “what’s around me” approaches to help people more effectively use the LRT.

As I indicated above, this isn’t the first time the City has tried to tap into the local startup community. I am reminded somewhat of the lackluster Leveraging Technical Expertise Locally program, for instance. I think what’s different this time is that everyone involved recognizes the biggest hurdle is culture. And certainly Startup Edmonton has demonstrated success with getting people to think differently in a way that gets results.

Another big difference from the past is that the City has continue to embrace open data and there’s a lot more to work with now than there was six years ago. There’s a greater understanding of what open data is, what the benefits are, and how the City can work together with citizens to get things done. Indeed the news release highlights the recently launched 311 Explorer as one example of “how City data can be useful to everyone.”

So I am optimistic about Open Lab. If you want to find out more in person, Startup Edmonton is hosting a series of Open Lab Meetups on the last Thursday of the month from 2pm to 5pm. Open Lab representatives will be there to hear your ideas and visions and to help guide you.

CITYlab

I have been hearing about CITYlab for months now, but no one could give me a clear description of what it was. In retrospect, that’s probably because no one knew! They had an idea but weren’t sure where to take it. Now CITYlab has found an anchor, in the Open City Initiative, and the City is ready to start experimenting with a new approach to placemaking.

citylab

From the news release:

“CITYlab will partner with groups and individuals on projects and events that test or support the City’s urban planning goals. CityLab will serve as a resource for Edmontonians with creative and new urban planning ideas.”

The aim is to be a “laboratory to support and create small, temporary projects, activities and events to advance conversations around urban planning.” They want to make urban planning fun, as difficult as that might sound!

You might expect a project like this to rely heavily on techology, but CITYlab’s first experiment is decidedly analog. Starting on March 7, CITYlab will be distributing self-addressed stamped postcards across the city. If you get one, they want you to write down your urban planning ideas or projects and send it back. All of the returned postcards will be used to make a temporary art installation, and CITYlab is committing to undertaking at least one of the ideas or projects suggested. If you’re so inclined, you can also submit a project idea online.

citylab

One of the folks behind CITYlab is Jeff Chase, a senior planner who you might know from Edmonton’s NextGen or #yegsnowfight. He is a big supporter of Make Something Edmonton and understands the value of a different way to engage citizens on urban planning. “These creative new approaches to planning will help us meet the challenges that our city faces as it grows,” he said in the news release.

CITYlab still feels a little nebulous to me, but at least it’s out in the open now. If citizens are willing to get involved, it feels like there’s an opportunity to help shape and define the initiative further.

You can follow @PlanEdmonton on Twitter for updates, or check out the #yegcitylab hashtag. You can also email citylab@edmonton.ca if you want more information or two request a postcard.

Taking steps to become an Open City

Here’s what I wrote about the Open City Initiative back in June:

“I like the direction outlined in the Open City Initiative, unfortunately I just don’t have much confidence that it’ll go beyond a report and lots of talk.”

I questioned whether the report would sit on a shelf or if its goals and objectives would be resourced and actioned. With the launch of Open Lab and CITYlab, I’m now a bit more confident that the Open City Initiative will have a real impact. These are tangible projects that I think will make a difference.

I’m excited to see how this unfolds!

Open Data in Edmonton is exciting again

After a few years of stagnation, I feel like open data in Edmonton is exciting again. This has been a great year for open data and open government in our city! Here’s an update on what’s been happening.

International Open Data Day really kicked things off back in February with a hackathon hosted by EPL at the new Makerspace. It was a great opportunity for developers to come together to take a fresh look at the municipal, provincial, and federal data catalogues, all of which have grown considerably in the last year or so.

International Open Data Day Hackathon

In May, a group of interested citizens organized a hackathon called HackYEG. Mayor Iveson spoke at the event which was a great success and led to a number of really interesting projects. The event also led to a new citizen meetup, called Open Edmonton. The group was started by Lydia Zvyagintseva and David Rauch and meets at Startup Edmonton on the third Wednesday of every month. Follow them on Twitter for the latest events and other “open” news.

The City of Edmonton unveiled its Open City Initiative in June, which highlighted a number of principles, goals, and objectives that will help to make Edmonton an Open City. It’s heavy on talk and light on action, but it signals a renewed effort on the part of the City to support open data and related initiatives. Importantly, it also opened the door to a policy on open data and open government, which would change the dynamic inside the City from “we could support this” to “we must support this.”

open city framework

The federal government began a series of consultations in February this year to gather input on Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2.0. Edmonton was included in those consultations, with a roundtable event that took place on August 27. Treasury Board President Tony Clement hosted the session that was attended by representatives from the City of Edmonton, Province of Alberta, industry, and the community at large.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement
Treasury Board President Tony Clement

MP Clement was also in Edmonton talking about open data last year, gathering input for the 1.0 verson of the plan. The draft 2.0 plan will be available for review and comment starting October 6.

At the end of August, I think open data scored a small but important victory when the results of the 2014 Municipal Census were made available. For the first time, the data was in the open data catalogue at the same time as it was released to the public in PDF and via the media. A sign that the Open City Initiative is being taken seriously, perhaps?

Earlier this month Edmonton hosted a stop on the cross-Canada motorcycle tour on open government undertaken by Richard Pietro. The whole idea behind the tour was to “ignite conversation about open government and open data” and to “encourage citizens to become more civically engaged.” A number of local advocates spoke at the event, which highlighted some of the success Edmonton has had with regards to open data. Here’s a recap from Richard himself.

Open Government Tour
Photo by Richard Pietro

Last week I was one of five speakers at the Lunchalytics event focused on open data. Chris Moore, Eugene Chen, Mark Diner, and Michael Parkatti also spoke about open data and analytics. The room was packed and some really great projects and initiatives were highlighted, such as the Alberta Economic Dashboard. There’s clearly a growing interest in such visualizations and tools.

Later this week I’m speaking at the Right to Know Forum, hosted by Alberta’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Jill Clayton. The event will feature presentations on right to access, information management, open data initiatives, and the benefits of open data. It’s a sign of just how far open data has come that OIPC is hosting a forum on the topic!

Throughout the year, the various data catalogues have been growing. And it’s not just Canada, Alberta, and Edmonton that are making datasets available. Other communities in the Edmonton Region are getting behind open data too, like the County of Strathcona which now has more than 100 datasets available to citizens. Even St. Albert has started experimenting with open data, through its Property Search tool (which allows you to export the data).

I know that some Edmontonians, like Matthew Dance, Chris Moore, and Mark Diner, have always been local open data advocates, even and especially during the years I’m calling stagnant. But lately it’s refreshing to see an entirely new group of Edmontonians getting involved. Just this evening I was at a meeting in which the City’s open data catalogue was referenced (and not by me!). There’s a growing awareness and interest that is encouraging.

If you’ve been on the fence about open data or have been thinking about learning more, now’s the time. Check out Open Edmonton and get involved!

International Open Data Day in Edmonton

Today is Open Data Day around the world, and here in Edmonton we celebrated with a hackathon at the Edmonton Public Library’s new Makerspace. A few dozen people came out to learn more about open data, to hear ideas from others, and to start exploring and building.

International Open Data Day Hackathon

The day started off with “speed data-ing”, where anyone who wanted to could pitch an idea to the room. Once the pitches were done, there were a lot of great conversations taking place as everyone figured out how they wanted to spend their time for the rest of the day. Teams slowly self-assembled, and then everyone got to work.

International Open Data Day Hackathon

At the end of the day, teams had the opportunity to show off the progress they had made throughout the day. One team worked on visualizing open datasets so that they could be more easily accessed and used by educators. Another team looked at visualizing how many dogs there are and which breeds are most popular in different areas of the city. The winning idea was a visualization of tree data in Edmonton. Hackathons are typically longer than just a few hours, so it was impressive to see what everyone was able to come up with given the time constraints!

International Open Data Day Hackathon

There has never been a better time to be an open data developer in Edmonton. The City of Edmonton’s open data catalogue now contains more than 400 datasets, and the Citizen Dashboard that sits atop the catalogue recently won a national public-sector leadership award. The Government of Alberta’s open data catalogue also has more than 400 datasets now, and it only launched last May. The Government of Canada recently expanded and updated its large open data catalogue. And just this week, Strathcona County launched its own data catalogue featuring more than 60 datasets.

International Open Data Day Hackathon

Many other cities around the world hosted hackathons today too. Here’s what Open Data Day is about:

Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments.

Open Data has come a long way over the last few years. It has been adopted by governments around the world both large and small, and even organizations like the G8 have adopted an Open Data Charter. Countless apps and services have been developed to take advantage of all that information, and I think the best is yet to come. If you’re looking for an open data primer, check out the Government of Canada’s Open Data 101 or check out the Apps Gallery.

Thanks to the City and EPL for hosting a fun and creative day at the Makerspace! You can see more photos from the day here.

Talking open data in Edmonton with Minister Tony Clement

Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board of Canada, was in Edmonton today as part of a cross-country tour to gather feedback from the Open Data community. The federal government is preparing to launch a revamped Open Data Portal, and Minister Clement has been given the mandate to make it happen. After stops in the morning at Startup Edmonton and TEC Edmonton, Minister Clement was at City Hall for an Open Data Roundtable, hosted by the one and only David Eaves.

"Open Data is a global movement that is really gaining momentum across the country. Our Government wants to ensure we are making it as accessible as possible so that innovators and enthusiasts can harness this rich resource," said Minister Clement. "We are getting ready to unveil the next generation Open Data Portal and the input we received from Edmonton’s vibrant Open Data community will help us build a user-friendly site that will allow users to capitalize on this opportunity."

In addition to holding face-to-face meetings, Minister Clement also hosted a Google Hangout on Open Data last month. You can watch the whole thing here:

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the roundtable today, along with roughly two-dozen other Edmontonians interested in open data. We had a very limited amount of time to chat, but I think we still discussed a wide range of topics. I hope the information gathered was indeed valuable for the team in charge of the new portal.

As host, David organized our time around a series of questions. The first was to suggest ideas for what the next generation open data portal should be. We broke into small groups and then shared ideas back with the larger group.

The first thing I suggested was that it should not look like it was designed in 1995. I find all of the Government of Canada websites lacking in the aesthetics department! Certainly there’s something to be said for consistency, and I understand there’s an initiative underway to reimagine the entire GoC web presence. On the flip side of consistency though are the preconceptions that you may not want to be carried forward. If I look at the Open Data Portal today, it looks like every other government site, which makes me think it’ll be a mess of weird hierarchies and PDFs buried away. It’s not very welcoming or inviting!

Another theme was based around the idea that we can’t build a data portal that serves all possible audiences. But, we can do more than we are currently. So my group discussed the idea of intent-based profiles. The idea is you’d login, set some criteria like whether you’re a developer or not, and maybe your location, and the portal would then give you a personalized view. Of course, anonymous access should be preserved, so it shouldn’t be a requirement that you need to login.

Three other themes that emerged included: historical data and the realization that any data we create now will at some point become historical, articulated well by Heather and Maureen; the notion that the portal should facilitate the two-way movement of data, so that citizens can publish data into the catalogue as well as get data out of it; and the fact that documentation about data is important, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be created top-down.

The second question was related to datasets, both specific datasets that we’d like, but also criteria that make datasets valuable and/or interesting. The first thing that came to mind for me was geography. I’d love to be able to see all of the datasets related to Edmonton, or to municipalities, or to Alberta, or to provinces. Right now you have to really hunt to find datasets that compare cities, for instance.

I think Matt‘s two suggestions in response this question were spot on. The first was that the data he finds interesting is the data that makes the government uncomfortable. Minister Clement jumped in to assure us that there’s no conspiracy preventing certain datasets from being released. That would suggest a level of organization that most governments just don’t have, he joked. The second suggestion was that geographical data should be a key foundational dataset. Let’s see a base map of the country, zoomable to the neighbourhood level. Or to whatever smaller regions exist, whether it’s postal code, census district, garbage collection zone, or something else. I love this idea, and my only add-on suggestion was that geographical data doesn’t necessarily have to mean maps. Knowing the list of neighbourhoods or postal codes can be incredibly valuable outside of a map as well.

A few other themes that emerged about datasets were trends and historical data (I personally love the idea of a revision history for any datasets), some sort of metadata (the first dataset any portal should have is the list of datasets it contains, David suggested), and the notion of a data management plan.

We finished up the roundtable with a brief discussion on data standards, followed by a few minutes of open time. I spoke up on data standards along with Ben and Eugene, and suggested that data standards fall squarely under the "nice to have" category. It would be great if different datasets shared a common format, but we’d rather just have the data and worry about the differences with an abstraction layer.

Final thoughts mentioned by the group included dogfooding (the government should actively use its own data portal and datasets), the idea that everyone carries a phone and could be contributing data back into the catalogue, and the future world described by Devin that I think can be summarized as the Internet of Things. "The idea that we searched a catalogue of datasets will seem just as quaint as when we searched the web using Lycos," he said.

I really enjoyed the roundtable today, and I appreciate Minister Clement and David Eaves taking the time to listen to what we had to say. Thanks also to Chris and Ashley from the City for providing the venue and helping to facilitate.

Reflecting on it now, I think what I enjoyed most about the roundtable was the opportunity to chat with people in the local open data community. I haven’t given open data as much public attention lately as I should, and when you shift your gaze elsewhere it’s easy to miss all of the incredible people doing great things.

Edmonton’s new official population is 817,498

This morning the results of the 2012 Municipal Census were released, and Edmonton’s new official population is 817,498. That represents annual average growth of about 12,000 since 2009 when the last census was conducted.

Mayor Mandel seized on the numbers related to age – the largest proportion of residents are in the 25-34 demographic (about 14.5%):

“The growth in population indicates that Edmonton is a city of opportunity,” said Mayor Stephen Mandel. “It is gratifying and exciting to know that so many young people are calling Edmonton their home. This reinforces the appeal of Edmonton, and the value of what our City has to offer; opportunity, culture and quality of life.”

Here’s what our growth curve looks like:

Here’s a look at the population by age group:

One of the new questions asked this year was about mode of transportation from home to work. The results are not incredibly surprising – roughly 80% of Edmontonians get to work by automobile:

You can see all of the results here, including PDFs for each ward and neighbourhood. Unfortunately I can’t do a detailed comparison by neighbourhood, because the open data catalogue has not been updated and I’m not going to sift through 375 PDFs to get the data I need. A note on the website reads: “2012 results will be added to the Open Data Catalogue in early August.” While I suppose it’s a positive that the data will in fact be uploaded to the catalogue, there’s absolutely no excuse for it not already be in there. I feel like I’m fighting the same fight, three years later.

I was most interested in Downtown however, so I did look at the PDF. The population increased far less than I had anticipated, rising to 12,199 from 11,572 (growth of about 5.4%). In other words, just 1.8% of the city-wide population growth occurred in the Downtown neighbourhood. Clearly we still have work to do (perhaps surrounding neighbourhoods grew more, will wait for the open data to analyze that).

Last year City Council passed a new Municipal Census Policy which states that a census will be conducted every two years starting in 2012. Throughout the month of April, census workers knocked on doors asking Edmontonians a variety of demographic questions. The results are important because many grants from other orders of government are calculated on a per capita basis. Additionally, the City needs updated numbers to effectively plan services, and to ensure ward boundaries result in fair representation by population.

The next Municipal Census will be held in April 2014.