[Ottawa_users] Fwd: [Caglist] Geographers in the News - Open Data City of Ottawa

[Scott Mitchell]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Tracey P. Lauriault" <tlauriau at gmail.com>
> Date: March 8, 2010 11:34:45 EST
> To: CAGLIST <caglist at lists.uvic.ca>
> Subject: [Caglist] Geographers in the News - Open Data City of Ottawa
>

> 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 - Ottawa Open Data & Open Government in the News.  A citizen  
> who also happens to be a geographer was involved in that debate.
>
> 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!
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Where are the cartographers, geographers and geomaticians in the  
> public debate?
>
> 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.
>
> 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 tlauriau at gmail.com.
>
> Cheers
> Tracey
>
> -- 
> Tracey P. Lauriault
> 613-234-2805
> https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
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