Posts by tag: Open Data

Open Data and the City of Hamilton – getting there?
Posted by
27 March

Open Data and the City of Hamilton – getting there?

Are we making progress on open data at City Hall?

Looking at the City website’s open data page, the answer is a resounding no. The policy was suppose to be sent to Council this week, but it is now delayed again – this time until June 10, 2013.

Behind the scene, the answer is yes, albeit slowly.

We will have open data this fall, and with continuing public advocacy at City Hall, we can have encourage City Hall to properly launch open data with an apps contest and dedicated open data office focused upon supporting Hamiltonians in building a better city.

Slow change at City Hall

Internally at City Hall, staff are buying into the concept of open data. Social media workshops are occurring – open data is grouped into these workshops. City Council is supportive of open data, the City Manager continues to make statements of support for open data, and importantly, Mayor Bratina has begun championing the cause.

The foundation for open data success is being built – slowly, successfully.

Open Data can’t exist in isolation

Open data cannot exist in isolation from other open government concepts. Our municipal government is significantly deficient with its online presence and its open government practices.

The city is finally hiring its first ever dedicated web staff. Until now, City Hall treatment of the internet as a platform seemed to reflect a belief that the web was a fad that would somehow go away. Only last month, the city finally posted for a web coordinator to help manage the redesign of the city’s embarrassing website.

The Hamilton Street Railway is promising to release real-time transit location data in an open format this year. The importance of this shift cannot be understated, the HSR represented the greatest opposition to open data within City Hall.

These are good first steps. Council could’ve passed open data in January 2011. Without the cultural changes underway at City Hall, the policy would’ve been a false promise. The bureaucracy would ignore a policy and no implementation would occur.

Steps taken during the past two years mean that when Council – finally – passes open data, it would be another dust-collecting policy, there will be implementation.

Advocating for open data – at City Hall and Police Headquarters

During the past few weeks, I spoke to both City Council and to the Police Services Board to encourage them to adopt open data.

I presented to the Police Services Board asking them to release crime data as open data. Hamilton City Council asked the Police Services Board to implement a public crime map after the Halton Police Service signed a deal with CrimeReports.com to show activity.

CrimeReports data harvests information about citizens viewing crime information and sells that data to make its profits – the service is not the crime map, it’s anonymized data about citizens. Hence, Halton Police only pay $2,000 a year for the “service”. I outlined this in a letter to Hamilton City Council in February.

I delivered the same message to the Police Services Board. The Board and Police Chief DeCaire were receptive to the message. Meetings will be held between the Board, Chief, and Open Data community to move forward with police open data.

Later in the week, I made a public budget delegation presentation calling on City Council to budget for open data in 2013. I spoke for five minutes calling on City Council to invest in an open data license to drive transparency, engagement, and encourage economic growth by implementing a “City as a Platform” concept to its new website and online services.

During my presentation, I used Gavin Schulz’s Bus Ticker app to show City Council what is possible with open data. (Unfortunately, the city is spending an undisclosed amount of money to build their own bus schedule app to compete with Bus Ticker instead of investing in citizen engagement)

Councillors asked numerous insightful questions about open data implementation and expressed support for creating an open data office. There is support for holding an open data contest similar to Ottawa’s Apps4Ottawa initiative.

Mayor Bratina impressed me with his question about data standards, noting the current state of open data is similar to the early railroads – we need to create standards to ensure communities can exchange data and developers can easily adapt their applications in other jurisdictions.

City Manager Chris Murray confirmed that his office is committed to open data and the city’s Senior Management Team will find the resources within the current budget for an open data office.

How Hamilton fits into Provincial and Federal Open Data initiatives

The province is moving forward with their open data plans. Many of the province’s major municipalities – with the exception of Hamilton – have staff dedicated to open data. These municipalities and the province have been meeting on a regular basis to plan joint initiatives and share resources.

Federal Treasury Board President Tony Clement met with municipal open data staff and citizen advocates in Toronto a few weeks ago to launch the federal governments public consultation on open data. I attended to represent Open Hamilton.

I made two requests of Minister Clement.

The first is for the federal government implement a cloud-infrastructure for their open data initiative and offer this infrastructure to municipalities at or below cost. The second request is for the federal government to provide grants to smaller municipalities (population of 125,000 or less) to assist them with creating open data offices and grants for summer employment of students by municipal governments.

The Minister was receptive to both.

Hamilton needs to hire an open data coordinator to be at the table provincially. We are the fifth largest municipality in Ontario, our absence is noticeable and unacceptable. It should not be left to private citizens to fill this void.

Next Steps for Open Data in Hamilton

Hamilton City Council needs to ensure the City Manager’s office has the resources need to complete the open data policy for June. Open data is delayed each time the City Manager must manage a crisis. If these resources include more staff, then the city should hire its open data coordinator now.

Citizens can assist by emailing their Councillor stating you support open data and want to see it passed in June. RaiseTheHammer provides a handy list of Council email addresses to make it easy to email all of Council.

Most importantly, start thinking about what data you want from the City and what you want to see done with it.

0 0 27 March, 2013 more
Posted by on 07 March

My latest FIPPA request: Hamilton park and open space boundaries

I filed a FIPPA request with the City of Hamilton for city parks and open spaces GIS data. I’ve also informally requested the data outside of the FIPPA process.

My FIPPA request is numbered: 12-026.

I filed a FIPPA request for this data to ensure I have the option of pursuing an appeal to the IPC if the City is unwilling to release the data.
It also places a timeline for the City to respond to my informal request.
I make the request for journalistic purposes and it is no way related to my involvement with Open Hamilton.
At present there are no rulings that I can find from the IPC on GIS data. However, writings by the IPC on GIS emphasis the need for the public to have access to these records similar to other information.  As I can clearly link my request to pursuit of informing the public and can reasonably argue there is no other reasonable method of obtaining this data, I feel I have a strong case for appeal if necessary. Further my use is not for commercial profit, further strengthening any appeal if the City refuses my request under section 11 (a).
The FIPPA request is merely a fall back position in the event that I need to use that route.
I do not see any reasonable grounds for refusing the request and I believe the City is headed in the direction of providing most GIS products when open data is passed.
I will publish the GIS files if I succeed in getting the files.
0 0 07 March, 2012 more
Posted by on 25 January

The Dieppe project – mapping the 197

I’ve been working on a framework for mapping the home addresses of the 197 soldiers of The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry who died during or because of the infamous Dieppe Raid of 1942.

The goal is to map the home addresses of the dead on a map of the Hamilton area in 1942.

To make the map, I’m reaching out to the local OpenStreetMap network to see if we can build upon that platform using maps from the Hamilton Public Library Special Collections.

A decade ago, when I was attached to the RHLI, I access the regimental archives to find the addresses of Westdale High School alumni who died at Dieppe. With that information, I took a walking tour of Westdale to look at the houses they came from. It was a moving experience and helped me to understand more fully the impact of the raid upon 1942 Hamilton.

One could not avoid knowing someone that died or their family in 1942.

I hope that mapping on a 1942 map of Hamilton will convey what I felt walking in Westdale to a wider audience.

It should be an interesting project and a fun challenge.

Note: this post was somewhat inspired by seeing The Hamilton Spectator Dieppe Raid casualties front page on Jim Poling’s blog – The Newsroom Insider

0 0 25 January, 2012 more
Posted by on 04 January

Hamilton Labs: A modest proposal for open data innovation at City Hall

The following is my column from the January 2012 print edition of Urbanicity in which I briefly propose the creation of a new city department – Hamilton Labs – to innovate while improving community assets and skills.

It’s time for Hamilton Labs – a new department within the City of Hamilton solely focused on experimentation with citizen collaboration to build better solutions to the problems facing our city.

Think of Hamilton Labs as a city department that’s measured not by the amount of paperwork completed and the aesthetic appeal of its crossed “t”’s and dotted “i”’s. It would be a city department measured by how much it uncrosses “t”’s in the process of creating disruptive innovation that benefits the city and its citizens.

Disruptive technologies surround us. The mobile phone in your pocket is a disruptive technology – Superman can no longer find a telephone booth to change in. Wikipedia is a disruptive technology – there’s no need to go to the library to find encyclopedic information.

Let me give you an example of a disruptive innovation that could benefit the city’s financial bottom-line while investing in community development and improving civic life.

The Hamilton Street Railway is looking to buy electronic signs for the MacNab Terminal to display real-time next bus arrival information.

The traditional process for purchasing is: pay an expensive consultant to recommend what they think the HSR needs (ensuring to never consult citizens), find a company to supply the signs, hire a software consultant to program the signs, and then finally, after many delays, have by-then-outdated signs installed in the terminal. All at a much higher cost than necessary.

A disruptive innovation solution looks to communities for solutions first.

The local community includes many youth serving agencies looking for opportunities to give socio-economically disadvantaged youth learning opportunities that bridge the gap between them and higher education.

The open-source community provides many examples of signage and programming available at no-charge online.

We have three high-quality post-secondary institutions in Hamilton; two of which have engineering faculties with students looking for local employment.

We have all the ingredients to produce the signs locally at a lower financial cost with the added benefit, immeasurable in budgetary terms, of building capacity in our community.

The City approaches a youth serving agency such as the Downtown Youth Centre which is conveniently enough located beside the MacNab Street Terminal. The City brings Mohawk College to the table and puts a call out to the community for open-source hardware and software ideas.

While bringing together (stirring) these community partners, the City adds a bit of funding (spice) to hire Mohawk College students to coordinate the project and sets simple guidelines for the project. In this case, that the hardware and software be open-source, display next bus information, transit announcements, and be capable of displaying other information as necessary.

The guidelines are the minimal requirements. The students and youth are then set free to create.

For a couple of extra dollars per sign, the signs could have wireless transmitters to create a mesh network in the transit terminal. This provides wifi coverage for waiting passengers and decreases the cost of infrastructure for the signs.

As the signs and hardware are open-source, local businesses can easily afford to offer real-time transit information signs at their businesses. They’ll need to hire someone to configure the signs and that can easily be the local youth that have worked on the project.

Over time, as the City expands the number of signs, we could have wifi coverage throughout the City.

In the end, we create employment for a couple of Mohawk College students, the youth receive honorariums (which could be funding to take Mohawk College evening courses in electronic engineering to grant them advance placement for college studies), the youth build self-esteem and confidence towards pursuing higher education in either engineering or software, and the City receives superior signage that doesn’t require expensive consultants when time changes for daytime savings.

In short, disruptive innovation that replaces the consultant with community building.

Hamilton Labs is the perfect project to fulfill the mandate of our new Director of Neighborhood Development Strategies (Poverty Czar) at City Hall.

What do you say Council, let’s be ambitiously innovative together?

0 3 04 January, 2012 more