In Canada:
  • Vancover’s Open Data site launched last month to wide acclaim. The city recently completed a survey to help prioritize which data sets to open up next.
  • The City of Toronto will be hosting an Open Data Lab to engage the developer community around the city's soon-to-be-launched data portal at http://toronto.ca/open. The event, featuring a talk by Peter Corbett of Apps for Democracy, will be part of ‘Toronto Innovation Showcase’ on November 2. See details here.
  • I was happy to participate as a panelist at the National Town Hall on 'Citizens' Engagement and State Accountability’ hosted by the Office of the Information Commissioner in Ottawa on Sept. 28th. A video webcast of the panel is here.
Elsewhere:
  • The National Association of State Chief Information Officers has released “A Call to Action for State Government – Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data”. The report gives recommendations to help state governments get started with data transparency portals.
  • The cities of Portland and Seattle have announced open data initiatives.
  • The w3C has released a draft guide to "Publishing Open Government Data", which features a list of "Staightforward Steps to Publish Government Data".
  • The UK’s Cabinet Office has asked for help from citizens in designing its open data portal. From the Cabinet’s Digital Engagement Blog: “With over 1000 existing data sets, from 7 departments (brought together in re-useable form for the first time) and community resources, we want developers to work with us to use the data to create great applications; give us feedback on the early operational community; and tell us how to develop what we have into a single point of access for government-held public data”. Read the full announcement here.
  • In a move diametrically opposed to open government initiatives elsewhere in the UK government, the UK’s national postal service has threatened legal action against a citizen website providing free postal code lookups. The website, called Ernestmarples.com after the British postmaster general who introduced the postal code system, allowed other websites to circumvent the 4000 pound fee the postal service charges for this information. In the short time Ernestmarples.com was available an ecosystem of non-profit and other websites providing location-based lookups flourished around it – all of whom are scrambling to find other options. As many of the websites are volunteer-based public services, the 4000 pound fee is not affordable. The BBC quotes Jim Killock, a digital rights activist: "It is easy to see that large numbers of small business ideas and not for profit services are being blocked by these licence fees," he said. "It is in effect a tax on innovation." Canada’s postal code boundary definitions are locked down by similarly prohibitive access fees.