Save the Data: International Open Data Day
Editor’s Note: To celebrate International Open Data Day, join a community event or learn more about the great work happening thanks to the Data Chapter at the Ontario Digital Service.
Saturday March 7 is International Open Data Day!
Open Data Day brings together teams across the globe who are using open data to power solutions in government. Join us for the 10th annual event in cities around the world. Visit the Open Data Day page to browse the events happening near you.
The Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act
The Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act (SFBSA) was passed into law in 2019 and is part of a broader effort to make government work smarter in a digital age. It encodes digital delivery, open data principles and data sharing practices into law. The Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act also outlines the role of the Chief Digital and Data Officer (CDDO) in enabling the effective use and promotion of data for public sector organizations.
You can read more about the team who brought this law to life on Medium.
A new Open Data Catalogue
In August 2019, we released the beta version of the new Ontario open data catalogue. The catalogue provides one-window access to open data assets within government. The new catalogue was created to align with, and build on, the best practices of leading, data-driven jurisdictions around the world.
The updated catalogue makes accessing data easier for Ontarians with new features that let you visualize, filter and search datasets. We’ll continue to make improvements to the catalogue going forward.
You can tweet (using the hashtag #myOpenON) or email us at opengov@ontario.ca if you have any feedback on the data catalogue or want to keep up with future changes.
A retrospective of our data inventory
As of today, we have over 4,500 entries in our data inventory from across the OPS. Keeping track of government data assets is critical to attaining and maintaining data transparency, accountability, and the protection of data privacy.
A data inventory is useful for enabling the discovery of data for use and reuse in government operations, policy analyses, and evaluations of our initiatives. Under the Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act, all ministries are responsible for maintaining a data inventory.
We conducted a “look-back” of our data inventory expansion project to identify pain points, and work on making the process more efficient in the future.
On the day itself (March 7) we’ll be in Hamilton
For Open Data Day, the Data Chapter of the Ontario Digital Service will be presenting at the Hamilton Public Library alongside a lineup of speakers for the library’s own Open Data Day event.
The half-day event will take place the afternoon of March 7 at the Central Branch of the Hamilton Public Library (55 York Blvd). Our team will be discussing the latest provincial developments and accomplishments related to Open Data, and what to expect for the rest of 2020.
Registration and event details are available on the Hamilton Public Library site.
CodeAcross for Open Data
Later this spring the Data Chapter plans to host a workshop at CodeAcross to help Ontarians find ways to use our data more effectively.
We will use Javascript to build an application that lets users easily search for the information they need in a dataset and use this app to access the most popular dataset on our catalogue: Registered Religious Officials.
No experience is required to participate. Check out the CodeAcross website later this month for further details.
Get in touch and learn more!
Learn more about Ontario’s work on the Open Government and Open Data Initiatives at ontario.ca/page/open-government or email us at opendata@ontario.ca.
