What data should be included in the City of Calgary’s Open Data Pilot Project
The City of Calgary’s Open Data Pilot Project is set to begin this summer. (Despite recent attempts to quell the future of the project at a council committee meeting. More on that in a future post.)
As the project is being mapped out moving toward a launch date, it’s important to note that it will only be as successful as the usefulness of the data included in the catalogue. Poor design or minor mistakes can be overcome and corrected, but a lack of useful data almost certainly will lead to a failure of the pilot project. This more than anything will determine how many developers and academics make the choice to get involved and try to create something out of the information provided in the data catalogue. If there isn’t much data, or the data provided isn’t very useful, the project will crumble.
So in the interest of helping things get off on the right foot, I’ve put together a list of the data I would like to see included in the initial pilot catalogue this summer.
1. Community and Ward Boundaries
Most of the conversations I have had with people about open data revolve around being able to mashup City data, or data they have accumulated themselves, with mapping data of Calgary to be able to show a visual representation of their data set. Specifically what is required is information about areas of the City that programmers may want to segregate their data by. (For example, creating a map where neighbourhoods with the lowest income appear light yellow, those with the highest appear dark yellow.) In order to be able to do almost ANYTHING useful with any data the City might provide, programmers will NEED to have the GIS created data outlining the boundaries of neighbourhoods and wards. Without providing this information I’m confident the entire open data project will be nothing more than an interesting internal exercise for the City. This will be the tell-tale sign how serious they are taking transparency and accountability: if the City publishes the mapping data for neighbourhoods and wards they have given the pilot project a reasonable chance of success, if they don’t, then it’s fair to think they’re not taking it seriously.
The next three data sets I think are required because of the first two Laws of Open Government Data:
- If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
- If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
- If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower
2. Community Statistics
The City of Calgary produces and posts on it’s website statistics for every community in Calgary. There is a ridiculous amount of interesting and immensely usable data contained in these reports that are updated every few years after a census is completed. However unfortunately you can’t do much with the documents because they are PDFs. You can read each one individually and that’s about it. Right now it is impossible to do comprehensive comparisons because the information is not open and machine readable (and therefore doesn’t engage as much as it could). To make this data available in CSV format would greatly increase its usefulness and potential. The City has made it available to the public for a reason. Making it available as part of an open data catalogue would go a long way to fulfilling that reason.
3. Transit Schedules and Stops
Wow do Calgarians like to complain about Calgary Transit schedules and the Calgary Transit website. For the most part I disagree on the former, but I too find the website’s trip planning functionality cumbersome. You know what though? I say if whiners like me want to complain, then let them try to make something better. There are hundreds of applications online and on smart phones that do what the City is trying to do, but better and cheaper. This might be the conservative side of me coming out, but I say it’s time the City got out of the way and let these small business people show us why they are so good at what they do. If the City were to make transit schedules and stops available I’m confident that within a month we will see current app providers add Calgary to their rosters, thereby giving Calgaraians dozens of new – and more than likely better – ways of planning their Calgary Transit trips. (And yes, if they wanted to, Transit could even eventually partner with ones they liked, shut down their site, and save some major money this way.) They’ve already done this with Google so let’s give the small guys a chance too.
4. Crime Statistics and Locations
Again, all this information is available online for free to the public, but it is behind a proprietary wall. The City of Calgary Police I’m confident spent a lot of money making their “Crimes Web Mapping Application” that they didn’t need to. There are many crime map providers out there that would be happy to do this job for them, if only they made the data available in a machine readable format. The other – and more important reason – this data should be made available in a machine readable format (instead of only via the map application where it can only be read and not used) is so it can be mashed up with other data sets. If someone were to, for example, mash it up with the community statistics or locations of services we might be able to see some patterns emerging and create an even more effective police presence where potential crimes might occur in the future. The police do this currently using anecdotal evidence and personal/personnel experience, but open data allows for all kinds of potential permutations to be created by others that the police may not have the time or money to undertake. We already allow for this kind of work to happen via the most successful public engagement initiative undertaken by police of all time: 911. If they trust us to report the crimes, they should trust us to do something useful with the data too.
5. Fire, Police, Recreation Centre, Community Centre and School Locations
This one is almost a no-brainer. This information is surprisingly hard to find, yet it is so basic. I can only imagine how much more useful it would have been to have this information when we were house hunting a few years ago. (I’d love to see this info and the crime data mashed up with the Canadian Real Estate Association’s MLS.) But I can’t imagine how many other fantastic mapping systems may be created if this data were available in a consistent format. Simply listing the name of the building, it’s street address and it’s longitude/latitude coordinates should be more than enough, and easily put together by anyone at the City in an afternoon.
6. Development Permit Locations and Contact Information
It baffles me that the City publishes crime data in a map but not development permit locations on a map. Any citizen can go down to City Hall and get a copy of the permit for any construction occurring in the City, but this information isn’t published online for some reason. I would have thought it would be a privacy concern of some kind, but that doesn’t make sense either considering the name and phone number of each permit applicant is published on a blue board out front of every location during a two-week window before construction begins. (I think it is also included in the newspaper advertisements during this window too.) This would be great information to have available in a useful format like CSV and KML instead of just a document file at the planning office and on a sandwich board on the street. As a community association president, this would certainly cut down on phone calls at the very least! And would be helpful in keeping track of all development going on in our neighbourhood.
It is important to note that ALL of these suggestions involve ONLY data that is already publicly available, but just in a format that limits the data’s usability and usefulness (such as PDF or proprietary software solutions). The good news about this is there will be many less hoops to jump through in order to get the data included in a pilot. I can think of many other data sets I’d like to see available, but let’s start with the low hanging fruit.
There is one data set that is not currently available to the public that I would like to see included in the initial data catalogue however that is not currently. It’s not really “data” per se, but I think it is something, which should be made available:
7. City of Calgary Contracts
I outline my rationale for this request in this blog post. It probably won’t be in the initial data catalogue, and that’s okay, but the conversation and process required to make this data available in the very near future should begin now. Otherwise it could be years before we see something so simple made available to citizens.
There is one other thing however that must be sorted out before a Pilot Project can go live: the terms of use. I’m sure the City of Calgary’s lawyers have been working overtime on this one, but I would like to suggest the City uses the same terms of use the City of Toronto and City of Edmonton are using. There’s are identical. (Seriously, click those links and read them side-by-side.) Clearly if it is good enough for BOTH of those cities, some major investigation has been done to arrive at that wording. At the very least it should be used as a starting point. We should build on the work of others rather than starting from scratch. I like these terms of reference for many reasons, not the least of which is the following section of the license which alleviates much of the concern I’ve heard from some aldermen:
The City now grants you a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, modify, and distribute the datasets in all current and future media and formats for any lawful purpose. You now acknowledge that this licence does not give you a copyright or other proprietary interest in the datasets. If you distribute or provide access to these datasets to any other person, whether in original or modified form, you agree to include a copy of, or this Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for, these Terms of Use and to ensure any such person agrees to, and is bound by, them but without introducing any further restrictions of any kind.
I’m confident if we can get each of these items included in the Pilot Project, the City has done everything in it’s power to ensure it’s success.
If any readers have suggestions for other data you would like to see, you’re welcome to put it in the comments below, but you should probably send it directly to the City. (I’m just an interested citizen with no direct connection to the pilot project.)
How open data came to be in Calgary
At this today’s Regular Meeting of Council, Calgary City Council passed their Open Data Motion.
Obviously I’m beyond excited about the City of Calgary transitioning into a period of openness and accountability. Passing an open data motion should be seen as a gigantic step forward in rethinking how a government interacts with citizens and who really runs ‘the show’. The people.
I thought I’d take advantage of this moment to shine the light on how this motion came to be.
On May 27 I saw something come across the CBC Spark Twitter feed that caught my eye. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, in writing this post I am able to go back and see exactly what it said: “Just posted full interview with @andreareimer about open data, open source, and cities that think like the web: http://bit.ly/129Cox “. It was that bit about cities thinking like the web that interested me. What did it mean? So I clicked the link.
After listening to Nora Young’s interview with Vancouver city councilor Andrea Reimer I thought to myself, “Why can’t Calgary have something like that? What’s stopping us?” The next day on May 28 I had a coffee meeting with Calgary Alderman Joe Ceci and the former president of my community association. Following the meeting Joe offered me a ride to work downtown. We got to chatting and I mentioned the project Vancouver is undertaking. He was interested but it was nothing more than a conversation during a car ride. On June 6 I was having a coffee with Ald. Brian Pincott on Olympic Plaza to talk about ward boundaries and how things had gone so wrong. Hoping to introduce something of a little more hopeful tone to the conversation I mentioned the Spark interview and the Vancouver Open Government project. He too was interested.
Somewhere in there I came up with the ludicrous idea that I should get these two aldermen to talk with their Vancouver counterpart. And it just so happened that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities was meeting in Whistler the next week. Knowing both Ald. Ceci and Ald. Pincott were attending I contacted Cllr. Reimer via Twitter. She too was attending. So I sent the three an email saying they should get together while in Whistler. (I also attempted to include Cllr. Don Iverson of Edmonton, but as he just had a baby he told me he would not be attending. We talked more about the project however when I drove up to Edmonton to attend TransitCamp on May 30. Edmonton, as it turned out, followed Vancouver and Calgary’s lead and actually got their open data motion passed months ago.)
After a couple friendly emails over the next couple weeks I found out they did not get a chance to meet up with Cllr. Reimer in Whistler but Ald. Ceci met with another Vancouver councilor. Toward the end of June Ald. Ceci and Pincott had met with the city’s IT department and the text of a motion was being drafted.
On November 17 I heard from Heather Reed-Fenske, the City’s Manager, eGovernment Strategy with some of the direction they were heading with the research for the report. She wanted to chat to update me and gain any insight I might have around the issue. On December 18 we met for coffee; where she joked she had been in her job for all of one week when City Council passed the notice of motion I recommended, she’d been working on almost nothing since, and thus hated me. We talked about several different things that other jurisdictions have done and I’m happy to see much of our conversation was incorporated into the final report.
The Report was being prepared for December 2009, but Heather and her team asked for an extension to the February 10 meeting of the Standing Policy Committee on Finance and Corporate Services where it was to be debated, edited and (hopefully) recommended to move to Council for a full vote. They needed the extra time to do more research. As I told Heather at the time: “It’s okay. It’s not a race, it’s a marathon. Just finishing is what’s important.” As February approached Ald. Pincott and Ceci realized they would both be in Ottawa for a conference that week and so asked for another delay until March 10 because, as the movers of the original motion, all agreed they should be in attendance.
The March 10 meeting was painful for me to watch. I had to be at work that morning and could only get away from my desk for an hour from 10am to 11am. This meant I missed the public input window and arrived in time for the last two thirds of the debate and the vote – which passed with only Ald. Chabot, Connelly, and Hodges against. It was painful because I just wanted to jump up and answer all the aldermen’s questions. Instead I had to rely on the answers of Heather and her boss – both relative newcomers to the issues surrounding open data. I knew I couldn’t answer questions about the City’s implementation of open data nearly as well as they could, but there were many other questions about what other jurisdictions have done and what the purpose of open data was that I could have answered that would have helped. (For example, one major issue brought up by more than one alderman was around the risk of hackers. What they did not understand is that open data eliminates the need for the majority of hacking because open data is giving the information away. Not to mention open data 1.0 does not open a portal to actual databases. All the information pulled for a data catalogue is exported information with no additional danger of a hacker access to the database.) I wished I would have been able to give them a streamlined version of the open data presentation I did at DemoCamp on January 26.
After all that the motion came to council today and following another debate, which I understand was once again fraught with misunderstanding about what open data is and what it does, it passed with a vote of 10 to 4 with Ald Hodges, Connelly, Fox-Mellway & Chabot voting against it. (Mar was absent.)
I know this might sound a little corny, but I’m elated at this moment. After almost one full year of work, today a motion brought forward by a single citizen passed City Council. A motion that could be the beginning of forever changing the way the City of Calgary thinks about the way it interacts with citizens and how democracy can work in Cowtown.
THAT is a big deal.
And I’m happy to have been able to play my small part in the process.
I can’t wait to play a part in the next steps of the process too.
A collection of my previous posts on open data coming to Calgary:
Open Data presentation at DemoCamp
Calgary open data report delayed
Open Government starts to expose what’s in the shadows
Brian Pincott on Open Data at Calgary City Hall
Help ensure Calgary’s “Open City” initiative is framed in the right light
Comparing Budget 2010 to Budget 2009
Did you know you can download the ministerial business plans from Alberta.ca? With today’s Budget announcement and everything available at budget2010.alberta.ca, I thought, “I wonder if budget2009.alberta.ca looks anything alike?”
Well it turns out not only do the sites look and function the same, they have much the same information. Meaning it is VERY easy to compare one year to the next. (Open government FTW!)
As a result, here is a quick PDF comparison I just did of the Ministry of Culture and Community Spirit business plans from 2009 and 2010: Acr1649115.tmp. It makes for a quick side-by-side comparasion that shows you exactly what has changed. I may do a little more research into this, but for now, I thought I’d write a quick blog post inviting others to do the same with other departments and, with perhaps a little re-formatting, make the comparasion even easier.
I makes it very easy to see that on page 5 the vision and mission for the department have changed. There is also the addition of a “Clients and Stakeholders” section. To me however, the most interesting part is to see how the performance measures have changed. For example in 2007-08 “participation in arts activities or events by adult Albertans” was 87.4%; for 2008-09 it had gone up to 91%. In 2007-08 “Level of community volunteerism by adult Albertans” was 68.6% with a goal for 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 of 69%; for 2008-09 it had blown past it’s targets for the next 3 years and was already up to 81.4%!
See? Fun with numbers! I invite you to do the same. Go, enjoy; hold your government accountable and expose their successes and failures.
Year-End Blog Review
Filed under: Alberta, Arts, Calgary, Marketing, Politics, Technology
As 2009 comes to a close I wanted to take a look back. It was a good year for me personally and I think this blog shows some of the highlights that come to my mind when I reminisce about the last year of the decade. I could simply select my favourite posts, but I decided why not not just let the readers “select” by highlighting the most popular posts on this blog for 2009.
So without further ado, the most popular djkelly.ca Blog posts of 2009:
14. What kind of bridge will $25 million get us?
May 22, 2009
This was my first blog post about the soon to be built Calatrava bridge. I decdided I would take a look at the design limitations given to Calatrava and try to predict what the bridge might look like. While, I was right about it not being white with soaring cables, I wasn’t even close to the guessing the Chinese finger trap design, which is much more ornate than I was expecting.
13. Conversing with Alberta politicians on Twitter
June 4, 2009
A useful post that should probably be updated given how many more Alberta politicians have joined since June!
12. New Ward Boundaries Demystified
February 21, 2009
A simple post created by laying the old ward boundary map with the new map that was being proposed by the chief electoral officer. (Showing off my Photoshop skills.) It turned out to be a post that proved it was sorely needed.
11. Loving or hating Calgary’s new bridge is not as easy as it sounds
July 29, 2009
This is probably one of my favourite posts of the year, as I went through what I observed to be each of the areas of complaint about the proposed Calatrava bridge and outlined which were fair game and which were not. It was my attempt at adding clarity to an issue extremely misunderstood by Calgarians. While it landed at number 11 on the most popular posts, I don’t think I was overly successful because people still complain about the price with little understanding of “why”. If you’re one of those folks, it might be worth a re-read.
10. Calgary City Council saves face by embarrassing themselves: ward boundaries solved!
July 14, 2009
The last blog post on the old blog template! It holds a special place for me for that reason, but most people probably just appreciated it for what it talked about – as outlined in the post title. This is the most proud I was of our council this year. They painted themselves into a terrible corner, but admitted their mistake and righted their wrong. I wish they would have done this more times during 2009.
9. Vanessa Porteous, ATP Artistic Director Designate
January 14, 2009
I am shocked an arts related post ranked so high on this list! (And it’s not even the highest one!) Is it because of the lack of local entertainment reporting resources? I think it might be, because non-Hollywood entertainment news tends to take a couple days to make it into the papers. Maybe I should take up Metro Calgary on their offer to blog about Calgary arts for them… It could prove to be a very successful blog that maybe long overdue.
8. Doug Elniski: how to do it right
June 24, 2009
This post – along with number 5, which I wrote a day earlier – simply outlined where things went wrong in MLA Doug Elniski’s mini-Twitter scandal. This particular post provided follow-up and greater context to comments I made in several media interviews on the subject. (You can say SO much more on a blog than in a media interview!)
7. University of Calgary cutting 200 jobs
July 14, 2009
Out of all the posts in this list I think this is the closet to “regretting” one as I come. Unlike all the other posts (save the honourable mention) this post was “breaking” news instead of my usual commentary on the news. I didn’t mean for it to be however! Here’s what happened: the UofC sent an email to all staff saying they were cutting 200 jobs. I heard about this and asked the individual if it was okay I mentioned it on Twitter. They said yes, because it was sent to all staff and thus obviously public info now. The problem was, UofC never sent a press release. So when I posted it on Twitter I was inundated with media requests for more information. The result was I had another source send me the text of the email and I posted it on this blog. That night the television and radio news lead with the story and it was front page news in the papers the next morning. I’m not sure if the lesson here is about the power of Twitter, or to always keep your communications department in the loop when making major announcements. Maybe both.
6. Progress and respect
November 30, 2009
In the aftermath of the first Reboot Alberta conference I summarize my thoughts on the participants themselves.
5. Doug Elniski: now just another walled off politician?
June 23, 2009
(See number 8 first.) This is the blog post that started it all. I’m not sure why no one else was talking about Doug Elniski’s comments in context of his use of social media. It still baffles me that people think social media is some sort of special entity instead of what it actually is: just another way to talk to people. It’s nothing special, but is highly effective. This post was also was popular enough to result in me being invited to talk about his comments on CBC Calgary’s The Calgary Eyeopener, CBC Edmonton’s Edmonton AM and for a feature article in the National Post.
4. The #AskEd Accountablity Window ends tomorrow
December 3, 2009
Just like number 5 this was me talking about Alberta politicians and their failures with social media tools – although this time Mastermaq got the press coverage a week later 
3. How to fix Ed’s communications problems
December 14, 2009
After number 4 I felt like I had to address the Premier’s communications problems appropriately. It’s bizarre how he’s lost the media and the public so thoroughly by a simple failure to communicate. He’s our premier and I want to see him, and thus us, succeed. This is my attempt to throw the premier a bone. We’ll see if he and his team take my advice or if they continue to fumble their way through 2010.
2. Look out Alberta, you’re about to get “rebooted”: First Impressions
November 28, 2009
I honestly think the Reboot Alberta movement – along with the Wildrose Alliance’s rise – is the single most important thing to happen in Alberta politics since the creation of the Progressive Conservative party. This post outlines my initial thoughts after the first day of the conference. The fact so many people read it gives me hope that Reboot Alberta is on the right track in their discussions. You can expect more thoughts from me on this movement in the very near future.
1. Jeffrey Spalding, CEO of the Glenbow and cultural rockstar, unexpectedly steps down
January 9, 2009
Yes, an arts story made it to number one on the list! And for such a short blog post?! The people spoke.
Honourable Mention: “Open Government” coming to Calgary?
July 21, 2009
Usually you expect to see an honourable mention at the bottom of the list, but I think this one deserves to be at the top of the list. July 21 had more people visit my website that any other day in it’s history. By a LONG SHOT – almost twice as many as any other day. There was only one post written around that period of time, and it was written on that very day. I think what happened was the main URL of this site was circulated and shared rather than the actual URL of this paticular post. Therefore I don’t have accurate numbers on exactly how many people visited this particular story, but the numbers are just so overwhelming I had to include it.
I wrote this post during the morning hours in a business centre of a hotel in Portland, Oregon. I had been given permission from Ald. Pincott and Ald. Ceci to announce the open data notice of motion the day before it became public when the council agenda was released. People from all over North American immediately sat up and took notice and did so by reading this post. Amazing. Look for a lot more on outcome of this notice of motion in early 2010.
Calgary open data report delayed
I heard about this a couple weeks ago but didn’t get a chance to look into it any further until recently.
It looks like the City of Calgary’s Open Data report from Administration to Council originally scheduled for December has been delayed. Apparently it has taken a lot more work to put the report together than originally anticipated. I hear from the City’s eGoverment section of IT (who knew they had such a thing?!) that the plan is now to have the report come to the February 10 meeting of the Standing Policy Committee on Finance and Corporate Services. So mark your calendars.
This shouldn’t be too surprising given the way the open data suggestion came to the City of Calgary. (I suggested it to two Alderman.) I imagine there was a steep learning curve that resulted in a delay in the ball really getting rolling. I think of this like the Ironman: it doesn’t matter if you win the race so long as you cross the finish line it’s a victory.
One good thing to come of this is I have a meeting scheduled with the City’s IT department. It may not seem like much, but the fact they reached out to me is unusual for the City of Calgary’s Administration, in my opinion. Admin’s modus operandi in many areas is in strong contrast to what we’ve seen from the City of Edmonton’s IT department in regards to open data, who, being heavily involved in the Edmonton’s tech community, were the ones to bring forward the open data initiative there.
In fact, thanks to the Open Data Workshop put on by volunteers from the City of Edmonton’s IT department on November 21, I can officially say I’ve met more of their IT department than I can even name in Calgary. Hopefully my coffee meeting is a sign of a changing way of the City interacting with citizens. No pressure, right?
In other Calgary open data news, I think it’s time to get the Calgary tech community on board! The data won’t be very interesting if there aren’t coders out there willing to work with the data. To that end, I’ve enquired about presenting on Open Data, what other jurisdictions have done, and what kinds of apps we could build for Calgary at the next Demo Camp. I’m not sure when the next one is, but it’d be great to have some community support heading into February.
All-in-all, things are heading in the direction. Slow and steady. Stay tuned for more.
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