Minister Clement Connects With Ottawa Open Data Expertise

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - May 9, 2013) - The Honourable Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, today tapped into the expertise of Ottawa high tech innovators and municipal open data leaders during a roundtable consultation on the relaunch of the Government of Canada's Open Data Portal.

"Open Data offers truly exciting opportunities to use government information in new and innovative ways that can spur growth and improve our quality of life," said Minister Clement. "Getting input from the innovators who will turn this raw resource into user friendly applications is key to unleashing Open Data's full potential."

The Ottawa roundtable is the fourth in a series of cross-country consultations being organized by the Government of Canada in anticipation of the next generation Open Data Portal that will be unveiled later this year. Canadians, tech innovators and the Open Data community are being asked what kinds of features and content they are looking for in order to best leverage the Portal's resources.

The last of five roundtables, moderated by well-known Open Government expert David Eaves, will be in Montréal tomorrow. The tour has been very successful, with over sixty innovators and open data leaders across Canada sharing their views on how the next generation Open Data Portal can be fine-tuned to make it more useful and effective.

"We are just starting to appreciate the vast potential value that open government data will bring to Canadians," said Larry Dunkelman, developer of Ottawa's BusBuddy application. "The federal Open Data Portal demonstrates Canada's commitment to providing a reliable and trusted source of data, and challenges our innovators, businesses and entrepreneurs to turn this data into information and applications that will enhance our quality of living."

In the last year, data sets from 22 departments and agencies have been released and are free to upload through the Government of Canada's Open Data Portal. The next-generation portal, which will use an open source code platform, will feature better search capabilities, more Web 2.0 features and interactive tools.

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