Open Data
The City of Edmonton is committed to openness and transparency. Recent examples of this include 311 ONLINE, the video streaming of City Council meetings, and the enhanced For Residents section of the City's website. The Open Data initiative is the latest demonstration of this commitment.
The open data initiative will develop an online open data catalogue for data managed by the City. The initiative will also develop an open data strategy for the City along with an associated administrative directive to guide the release of open data. Confidential and sensitive information held by the City will continue to be handled in accordance with existing protocols, and provincial and federal law.
Open data allows the City to leverage the expertise available in the community to creatively use existing information. Open data enables Edmonton's research and IT communities to create innovative and sustainable solutions. MyStops and Route 411 are iPhone applications developed by local IT companies for Edmontonians using Open Transit data released less than one year ago.
Edmonton is among the Canadian cities at the forefront of open data. The most active Canadian municipalities are Nanaimo, Vancouver and Toronto. Edmonton has and will continue to provide leadership in open data through it's innovative approach - by engaging residents and the global open data community to develop our strategy and design our catalogue; and, by being the first North American municipality to use Microsoft's open source Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) solution to host the data catalogue.
Program Plan
21 November 2009 - #yegdata Open Data workshop
The City of Edmonton IT Branch hosted a public workshop to start the open data conversation and gain insights from the community. Over 45 people attended the workshop to discuss activities in other jurisdictions and develop ideas for use within Edmonton's initiative.
January 2010 - Open Data catalogue
Community preview release of the Open Data Catalogue to make our data more accessible to Edmonton's residents and research and IT communities. Microsoft's open source OGDI solution allowed rapid deployment of the catalogue with minimal cost and infrastructure.
January 2010 - Utility and Partner sessions
Sessions with our utility, organizational and vendor partners with which we already have relationships for data procurement and sharing.
February – April 2010 – Open Data workshop / Applications competition
Official release of the City of Edmonton open data catalogue at our next workshop. The workshop will also launch our applications competition which will be used to prioritize additional data sets for release.
March - April 2010 - Open Data strategy
Development of the open data strategy for the City of Edmonton with public involvement.
May 2010 – Open Data administrative directive
Development and approval of the open data administrative directive to provide guidance for the release of open data.
May – June 2010 - Open Data Road Show
Citizen and vendor sessions to present the open data strategy.
For more information:
Stephen Gordon
| Title | Director, IT Strategy & Innovation and Deputy CIO |
|---|---|
| Telephone | 780-495-4171 |
