[oclug] CBC: City of Vancouver embraces open data, standards and source

[alayne at twobikes.ottawa.on.ca]

Sounds like a project for OCLUG to follow up in Ottawa. Anyone else 
interested?


http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/22/tech-vancouver-open-source-standards-software-city.html

City of Vancouver embraces open data, standards and source
City videos could be more widely available soon: Reimer
Last Updated: Friday, May 22, 2009 | 2:46 PM ET Comments44Recommend47
CBC News

Vancouver city council has endorsed the principles of making its data open and 
accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data 
and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.

"So it's great," said Andrea Reimer, the city councillor who proposed the 
motion that passed Thursday afternoon. "The local online community was all 
very, very happy, and now we just have to look forward on implementation and 
figuring sort of the order with which we do that."

Reimer had argued that supporting the motion would allow the city to improve 
transparency, cut costs and enable people to use the data to create new useful 
products, including commercial ones. She had also noted that taxpayers paid for 
the data to be collected in the first place.

The motion, which specifies that the city will respect security and privacy 
concerns while supporting openness, went through as proposed, Reimer said, even 
though one councillor did try to "water it down" and voted against parts of the 
motion.

About 15 members of the public signed up to speak about the motion. All who 
spoke were in favour, Reimer said.

"The only sort of negative [comment] was 'Can't you go further? Can't you do 
more?'"

She added that some felt open-source software should be favoured, rather than 
just be put on equal footing with proprietary software.

"But I think the city would want to know how it works first before it jumps 
into that."

Some immediate changes likely: Reimer

She added that many city staff are excited about the policy, as they had tried 
to implement more openness in some areas before, but didn't have a policy 
framework to work from. She expects staff to report back on an implementation 
plan in the fall, but thinks some changes will begin to happen immediately.

For example, she said, videos made at city hall, including videos of council 
meetings, are currently in a proprietary format that cannot be posted on 
YouTube. They can only be viewed on the City of Vancouver website by people who 
have the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. She expects that to 
change.

"They're tiny little things, but they have so much ripple effect in the 
community," she said. "There's probably a few more thousand people that we 
could be talking to out there if we could send them videos [instead of written 
material.]"

According to Reimer, only a few other cities such as Washington, D.C., San 
Francisco and Toronto have started moving toward this kind of increased 
openness.

As far as implementation goes, the motion suggested that Vancouver's city 
manager be asked to:

     * Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data.
     * Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing 
open standards, interfaces and formats.
     * Develop a plan to digitize and distribute archival data to the public.
     * Ensure that data supplied to the city by third parties such as 
developers, contractors and consultants are unlicensed, in a prevailing open 
standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal 
considerations.
     * License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such 
that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses and the public 
without restriction.

The motion also proposes that Vancouver develop a plan to share its information 
with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS). The non-profit group 
already shares mapping information among the B.C. provincial government, 
utilities and municipalities. Vancouver is "one of a few" cities in the 
province that is not a member of ICIS, Reimer said. The motion also suggests 
that ICIS be encouraged to share its data with the public.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Text of the central portion of Coun. Reimer's motion:

Be it resolved that the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:
     * Open and accessible data: The City of Vancouver will freely share with 
citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data 
possible while respecting privacy and security concerns.
     * Open standards: The City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to 
adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps and other formats of 
media.
     * Open source software: The City of Vancouver, when replacing existing 
software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an 
equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles.

-- 
Alayne McGregor
alayne at twobikes.ottawa.on.ca

"In Canada we are developing a pattern of life and I know something about 
one block of that pattern. I know it for I helped to make it, and I can 
say that now without any pretense of modesty, or danger of arrogance, for 
I know that we who make the patterns are not important, but the pattern 
is." -- Nellie McClung, _The Stream Runs Fast_