<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div><div><br></div></div><div><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> "Tracey P. Lauriault" <<a href="mailto:tlauriau@gmail.com">tlauriau@gmail.com</a>><br><b>Date:</b> March 8, 2010 11:34:45 EST<br><b>To:</b> CAGLIST <<a href="mailto:caglist@lists.uvic.ca">caglist@lists.uvic.ca</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[Caglist] Geographers in the News - Open Data City of Ottawa</b><br><br></div></blockquote><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Last week access to public data at City of Ottawa was in the news. So far the Cities of Nanaimo, Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton have open data strategies. The City of Ottawa is now coming into the fold - <a href="http://datalibre.ca/2010/03/02/ottawa-open-data-open-government-in-the-news/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to Ottawa Open Data & Open
Government in the News">Ottawa Open Data & Open Government in the
News</a>. A citizen who also happens to be a geographer was involved in that debate.<br><br>The Access to Data debate at the city scale in Canada, to the best of my knowledge has not been led by geographers, cartographers or geomaticians. Perhaps that is because many professionals and academics have access to data as part of their work in government, or through their map and data libraries in their academic institutions, and if they are a private sector organization, they may not have to do the purchase and acquisition part of the content that is the fuels their analysis. Perhaps there are other reasons, or I am wrong, and I hope you can correct my assumptions!<br>
<br>Open data debates at the City scale has been primarily from young entrepreneurs wanting to develop interesting applications, geeks, new media designers and IT folks.<br><br>There has been quite a bit of Open Access to publications discussions led by academics, librarians, lawyers and some in the public sector, and also access to maps by the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Achives (ACMLA). Other library associations have also done some stupendous work and of those I know of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and OCUL (Ontario Council of University Libraries) come to mind. The Data Liberation Initiative folks have also done some stupendous work. Lest we forget, NRCan has done some great work at making most of their data freely accessible with innovative unrestricted user licenses via Geogratis, Geobase, GeoConnections, Atlas of Canada and the Discovery Portal.<br>
<br>Where are the cartographers, geographers and geomaticians in the public debate? <br><br>Soon the Canadian Geographer will publish an article by lawyers from the University of Ottawa participating in a GEOIDE study. That is exciting, however, it is not about access to data but about copyright and maps and not really about the complex online web maps that are being created at the moment.<br>
<br>If there are people on this list who are involved in access to public data discourses in any way, I would love to meet you! Please email me on or off list at <a href="mailto:tlauriau@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:tlauriau@gmail.com">tlauriau@gmail.com</a></a>.<br>
<br>Cheers<br>Tracey<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Tracey P. Lauriault<br>613-234-2805<br>
<a href="https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault" target="_blank"><a href="https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault">https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault</a></a><br>
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