Read this EFF post: Riding the Fences of the “Urban Homestead”: Trademark Complaints and Misinformation Lead to Improper Takedowns!
Urban Homestead Day of Action
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This was a message posted on Civicaccess.ca list (also see archive for other great resources) in response to a blog post written by David Eaves.
The Civicaccess.ca list, from whence this blog is inspired, was founded on the discussion of making StatCan data free along with freeing Canada Post Data back in 2005 among many other access to public data Issues. Some on the list have been working toward that goal ever since. The number quoted by David in his article is very low and only reflect a portion of the revenue cost recovered by StatCan. Revenue generated by the sale of the Census alone since 1996 has been over $10 000 000. My ATIP requests
Statistics Canada, 2010, ATIP Request A-2010-00067, Census Revenue Notes, June 29. Indicates that
StatCan recovered $13,642,959 from the 2001 Census
The cycle for 2006 is not yet complete and therefore I do not have those figures. The figure above includes license fees, the sale of standard products, Custom Products, CD Rom fees, and Geography products. For instance the Community Data Consortium alone purchases about $700 000 worth of Census data for each cycle.
David does rightly make the point that revenue figures do not reflect the overhead cost of managing those resources and collecting them.
The cost of the census for 2001 was $432,033,300 or $14.40 per person according to ATIP request A-2010-00068. The cost recovered reflects 3.16% of the actual cost of the Census. Again, we do not know the overhead cost of recovering those moneys.
Most of StatCan’s special surveys are cost recovery projects, often cost shared between federal departments. Which means we also pay for those. Many surveys on topics related to Canada’s most vulnerable were discontinued, the LF Census was canceled and we expect to see more cuts coming down the pipes. It is true, that StatCan uses the revenue generated to fund other surveys.
The real problem however is not with StatCan but with the Treasury Board and Cabinet. There was a submission to Cabinet under the current government regime, offering cost savings by StatCan in order to cover the cost of making the Census Free. The Tory government accepted the proposed cost savings and refused to allow the giving of census data back to Canadians. If the Treasury were to actually adequately fund Statistics Canada then it would be able to give the data back to us. I am still trying to dig up the paper trail on the submission, but alas, memoranda to cabinet are confidential in Canada.
Bref, political pressure needs to be on the current government and also the Treasury. StatCan has little power over its budget beyond the usual mechanics, especially these days. We also need to keep in mind, that we have already lost disability surveys, and we have lost the ability to track the country’s immigrant, ethno cultural visible minorities, the poor, linguistic groups, people with mobility issues because the Census was just Cancelled (read more about lost surveys). More cuts to StatCan will not be about helping those groups and us advocating the abolition of cost recovery and not advocating to cover the revenue lost to StatCan by the Treasury will make us complicit in further marginalizing those groups. We need to lobby for more resources to StatCan to cover the loss of cost recovered funds, and of course to return the Long Form Census and we also need to ensure that it is autonomous from political interference as recommended by National Statistical Council of Canada. (more details available here).
I have not published my ATIP requests yet as I am still trying to validate a few pieces and do the analysis. It is also part of my PHD dissertation and at some point I need to publish officially.
Watching this is a great New Years morning activity, and for Sep Kamvar I fell that data and statistics are the new black! This is worth the 1 hour of your time! dam, most online TV shows are 42 minutes and you learn way less…I should know 🙁
Merci Karl!
In between two big deliverables and a trip tomorrow with the gang of Montreal Ouvert to le Salon du Logiciel Libre du Québec I thought I would go back a little to my other love beyond open data – thinking about infrastructures. The best place to tap into the pulse on the international scene of blogging, libraries, cyberdissidents, the Internet and human rights, free speech and infrastructure, is Ethan Zucherman‘s blog My Heart is in Accra. This is where I read the best line I have I have come across in quite sometime:
Hosting your political movement on YouTube is a little like trying to hold a rally in a shopping mall. It looks like a public space, but it’s not – it’s a private space, and your use of it is governed by an agreement that works harder to protect YouTube’s fiscal viability than to protect your rights of free speech. Even if YouTube’s rulers take their function as a free speech platform seriously and work to ensure you’ve got rights to post content, they’re a benevolent despot, not a representative government. (Here I’m borrowing a formulation from Rebecca MacKinnon, who’s working on a book on this topic.) (Via blog post: Public Spaces, Private Infrastructure – Open Video Conference)
It reminded me once again why we need to think critically not just about the content on the Internet – Open Data – in the case of this blog, but also reflecting on the infrastructure that deliver those data. Open data is a practice and a philosophy, for some an ideology. I, like many others get wrapped up in the practice and forget to look up, pause and think about the political economy, principles, and grounding practice in theory.
For example, during open access week where I was giving a talk on Open Data and Research, at Ottawa U I was surprised to hear that some were dissing the City on how it delivers content while proclaiming that Google is open data. Well, Google ain’t open data! They let you play with their content, and use it as a platform to showcase yours, but make no mistake, Google can decide to close the shop tomorrow and go fishing. Ergo your content goes with them. For instance, the hydrographic community lobbied Google to remove the ice layer in Canada’s north and instead to show water features and coast lines. Good for them, except that people live on the ice more than 60% of the year and it meant that their content – home, sled & skiddo routes – were now in the middle of the ocean. Google listened to the formal scientific community while the Inuit were left stranded in the water so to speak. Climate change does not help with that either.
Open data is also not just about apps – which makes me sound scrooge like on International Hackathon day btw – it is about the data that go into these, how these are delivered, not just formats & standards, but licenses, fibre optic cables, telephone towers, radio wave signals, phone and data plans etc. It is also about the policies around access and who is at the table doing the asking, their demographics and why they are asking. Most of the apps we will see coming out of today, will be delivered on iPhones, some for iPads. Few will have regular websites, most will be around the faster and better delivery of services and few will be about critically reflecting on who gets and does not get access to those same services.
For instance, the bus apps are great for the business commuter, not so great for seniors, refugees, those who survive on fixed incomes such as disability pensions or social assistance etc. That group cannot afford an IPhone, can barely afford the cost of a bus pass and do not really care about predicting the exact second the bus will come, but, do care about bus fees, off peak hour transit times and whether or not their social housing project or suburban home is on a bus route that will take them to the grocery store in the dead of winter, school, work or library. Also, they just hope their #2, or #14 will actually show up. There will be no apps to show us where the buses do not go, where they should go, nor apps that will inform transit committees on how to better serve non commuters.
I have really liked the transparency apps, spending visualizations and those focusing on electoral accountability
- http://howdtheyvote.ca/votes.php?s=13
- http://vote.ca/#192-booth-st-ottawa-on-k1r-7j4
- http://citizenfactory.com/debates
- http://openparliament.ca/
- http://representme.ca/K1R7J4
- http://www.punditsguide.ca/
- http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/node/563
- http://gcrc.carleton.ca/cne/proof_of_concepts/elect2004/JavaVersion/feo_applet.html
I look forward to accessing demographic data, health data, environmental data, spending data, administrative data, research data, and seeing those rendered in ways where we have to rethink policy and redirect efforts (Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness or ecological footprint calculators and ideas like Random Hacks for Kindness). I was also really happy to see Apps4ClimateAction and workshops like Mapping Environmental Issues in the City. You need subject matter expertise, grounded theory, scientific models, great data and more time to develop, which makes them harder to produce, but well worth the challenge if they improve our lot just a bit more. I think I will also need to lay low for a while and think more about theory and infrastructures surrounding open data and less about the shiny tinsel and more about the intersection of society and technology.
All over the world people will be playing with lots of open data and creating new apps at the International Open Data Hackathon.
In Canada Hackathons will happen in:
You gotta love the re-mix folks! Here is a video to celebrate the no more $5 bucks for FOI request for Government of Canada information. It is a good thing too, as apparently it cost $55 bucks to process the checks!
Mark Weiler left the following message on CivicAccess.ca:
The Office of the Information Commissioner has entered a six month pilot project where the $5.00 application fee for ordering records through the Access to Information Act is now being waived. You can now order records from the OIPC by emailing the Access to Information and Privacy Officer, monica.fuijkschot@oic-ci.gc.ca. English & Fraçais.
Researchers use OpenData to inform their work, and are also producers of data and software that can be re-shared with the public. In Canada, much university research is supported by public funds and an argument can be made that the results of that research should be accessible to the public. The research at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre will be featured as will community based social policy research in Ottawa. In Canada some data are accessible, but mostly data are not, and if they are, cost recovery policies and regressive licensing impede their use. The talk will feature examples where data are open and where opportunities for evidence based decision making are restricted.
OpenData & Public Research
View more presentations from Tracey P. Lauriault.
Event: Open Access Week, Université d’Ottawa, Apps4Ottawa Showcase, October 21, 5-7PM.
Abstract: Canada’s Information Commissioners have adopted a resolution toward Open Government and part of the open government process is open access to public administrative, census, map and research data. A number of Canadian Cities, innovative government programs such as GeoConnections, forward thinking research funding such as International Polar Year have become OpenData cities, implemented data sharing infrastructures and fund data sharing science. Access to data are one part of the open government conversation, and it is argued that opendata bring us closer to more informed democratic deliberations on public policy.
View more presentations from Tracey P. Lauriault.
Event: Open Access Week 2010, Carleton University, October 21, Noon to 1PM.
1. Event: Open Access Week 2010, Carleton University, October 21, Noon to 1PM.
- Title: Open Data Initiatives in Canada: One part of the Open Government Conversation
- Abstract: Canada’s Information Commissioners have adopted a resolution toward Open Government in Canada and part of the open government process is open access to public administrative, census, map and research data. A number of Canadian Cities, innovative government programs such as GeoConnections, forward thinking research funding such as International Polar Year have become OpenData cities, implemented data sharing infrastructures and fund data sharing science. Access to data are one part of the open government conversation, and it is argued that opendata bring us closer to more informed democratic deliberations on public policy in Canada.
2. Event: Open Access Week, Université d’Ottawa, Apps4Ottawa Showcase, October 21, 5-7PM.
- Title: OpenData & Public Research
- Abstract: Researchers use OpenData to inform their work, and are also producers of data and software that can be re-shared to the public. In Canada, much of university research is supported by public funds and an argument can be made that the results of that research should be accessible to the public. The research at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre will be featured as will community based social policy research in Ottawa. In Canada some data are accessible, but mostly data are not, and if they are, cost recovery policies and regressive licensing impede their use. The talk will feature examples where data are open and where opportunities for evidence based decision making are restricted.
3. Event: Statistical Society of Ottawa 8th annual seminar – Our Statistics Community on Monday the 25th of October.
- Title: The Real Census informs Neighbourhood Research in Canada
- Abstract: Ms. Tracey P. Lauriault will discuss neighbourhood scale research using Census data. She will introduce the The Cybercartographic Pilot Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness
created at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research and will feature community based research used to inform public policy as part of the Canadian Social Data Strategy (CSDS). She will feature maps and data about social issues in Canadian cities & metropolitan areas (e.g. Calgary, Toronto, Halton, Sault Ste. Marie, Ottawa, Montreal, & others) and will focus on the importance of local analysis and what the loss of the Long-Form Census could mean to evidence based decision making to communities in Canada’s.
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