Calgary2013

Event Details
Saturday, February 23, 2013

1:00pm—3:00pm MST

at Good Earth Cafe at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre (1213 - 4 Street SW). Wheelchair access.

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Notes from the event
''These notes are incomplete. Other participants are encouraged to add their recollections and thoughts on the event here.''

We ended up having a fairly unstructured discussion that started with introductions about why we were each interested in Open Data.

We discussed the state of Open Data in Calgary and Alberta, with the conclusion that both are quite behind.

The point was raised that it would be good for the City to connect with developers — building some back-and-forth to better connect their projects back into the City.

The value of metrics — measuring things like usage — was discussed. It was suggested that it would be good to survey businesses who use Open Data, or Open Data-derived systems, to try to determine what sorts of cost savings they get, and what kind of opportunities are created or expanded.

While not specifically about Open Data, the issue of government held “intellectual property” being limited from reuse was brought up. We discussed a little bit about the challenges of getting governments to adopt Creative Commons licensing.

The point that the Government of B.C. has a department of Citizen Services came up a couple times. They have responsibility for moving the Government of B.C. to Open Data.

Desired data sets
The participants made suggestions of data sets we would like to see prioritized for release as Open Data:
 * Open311 (this was the clear favourite, being brought up many times during the discussion).
 * Complaints issued about parks.
 * Traffic accidents.
 * Financial data (City expenditures broken down to pretty fine levels).

Outcomes & tasks
Questions that were asked that need followup include: Grant took on the task of finding out and reporting back.
 * Who owns 311 at the City?
 * What are their plans?

Grant is trying to start up a project to build our own Open Data portal for Calgary, independent of the City (at least for now) as a way to push the City to better adopt Open Data. (Inspired by the citizen-built project that was archiving video of City Council meetings which prompted the City to start doing that themselves.)

Open Agenda
This was the proposed agenda that was not strictly adhered to.


 * 1) Brief introductory overview of the what and why of Open Data if anyone comes who would like that.
 * 2) Review of the state of Open Data in Calgary.
 * 3) * How useful are the data sets released so far?
 * 4) * With the recent change to licensing terms, are the City's public data sets now "Open Data"?
 * 5) Discussion of interesting projects using Open Data in other jurisdictions around the world.
 * 6) Local development opportunities:
 * 7) * What existing open source projects are using Open Data in other jurisdictions that we could adapt to use in Calgary?
 * 8) * What new project ideas would people like to develop?
 * 9) Discussion of priorities for Calgary:
 * 10) * Which data sets should we ask the City to prioritize for release as Open Data?
 * 11) * How can we advocate for more Open Data support at the City, and what can we do to help make it happen?

Resources

 * The City of Calgary Open Data pilot project
 * Twitter hashtag: #yycdata

Organizers

 * Grant Neufeld