I’ll be sharing some thoughts on why Open Data is good for Milton
Government – as a Platform
Provide the foundation, others can build on it
Weather data - $1.5 B Private Industry in the US
EU research study for Public Sector Information (PSI) represents a mean value of $39B annually across the EU alone.
Cities across Canada deploying Open Data portals
Vancouver open data
Ottawa
Toronto Open Data
Smaller cities do it too – some very well, using existing web portals – some using open source software & low cost cloud services
How does all this make sense to Milton?
Potentially to dramatically improve services at a MINIMUM cost
Providing new / extra services to citizensTheinfamous VanTrash project that transformed into ReCollect – a service to remind you of your garbage & recycling days – across multiple devicesSends you SMS, email and even calls your phone
Improving on ways to find information about city’s facilities & services:Dog Park Finder in Ottawa – built by a local company for a Dog Blog in Ottawa
Improving ways to find information across several sources:Hamilton’s Dowsing – integrating data for swimming facilities
Improving ways to access transit Information:Toronto Transit – access to HUNDREDS of applications b/c of standard format (GTFS)
Lots of opportunity for Milton
Opportunity to cut costs.
Efficiencies for EXTERNAL requests (50% less requests as reported by Dave Wallace, CIO of Toronto)
Improving data exchange between gov’t agencies.
Ways to harness / crowd-source information gathering – about fixing municipal servicesSolutions like See-click-fix that are looking to solve that – bridging citizen- and gov’t-led services
Reduce call volume and number of inquiries about services: -- FALL/WINTERProviding information, directions, etc. on region’s services
Reduce call volume and number of inquiries about services: -- SPRING/SUMMERFacilities / Field information – from BURLINGTON PILOT
Cutting costs of providing up-to-date / essential information to citizens – like during the heatwave last SUMMERMilton Splash
Lots of way to save costs on printing more frequently / website updates / flyer creation – just make the data availableIt already exists – in maps & community guides.
First – let’s talk about Open Gov as a movement – it’s WW and it’s…
Provide data for citizens to engage with their local councilors with.Important topicsCivil Discourse
Talking about finding who your councilor is – another great opportunity to enhance that experience + connect citizens.
and our own OpenHalton project WardRep.ca - It mashes up Council & City Ward informationand shows you this for an address in Guelph, London, Hamilton & Milton
This is where WARDREP (and many of the other apps) were built – local hackathons
City of nanaimo, opendatabc, nanaimo IT workers - part of Relying on citizen communities requires knowing how to:Empowering the culture of these communities (foster communities)