Zipskinny.com … enter a (US) zip code, get census data, and other goodies. Very nice. Does anyone know how much would it cost to pay statscanada for a license to do something similar in Canada?
You are currently browsing the archive for the datasets category.
Well!
The SPNO crafted a spreadsheet that is circulating for error detection and it inspired me to go looking for the results.
Elections Ontario has a rather crude interactive map that lacks a certain information and cartographic aesthetic Je ne sais quoi. Infographic standards aside you can click on a red, orange, green or blue section of the map and get results in a small pop up window.
You can go below the map and select from a drop down box , your riding or your candidate and get the results.
You can also scroll way down and see the voter turnout – an appauling 52.8 percent, a record low according to CBC News. You cannot however YET download a spreadsheet with the Riding name, Riding #, Party Name, Party Candidate, # of votes, total # of voters, % of the vote so that you can do your own global analysis. For instance which parts of the province voted more and others less and then try and figure out why from a public policy or communications process. On Election Night the Elections Ontario 2007 site was unavailable due to over demand! 🙁
Elections Ontario however lets you download the electoral district (ED) boundary maps, the ED Names and codes list, the Postal Code File by ED (.zip + .xls),
As for other coverage on Election Night – October 10, 2007. I got my results from Globe and Mail Ontario Election 2007 and CBC Ontario Votes since the Elections Ontario was down.
The Globe provided a MP postal code look-up tool, and a by first and last name of your candidate look up. What I loved best however were the riding stats. They have both 2007 and 2003 riding results. At a glance on Wed. I guessed right away that the turnout was really low which was later confirmed. It also provided me with some context. It did not have an overall map, nor could I see a full provincial picture but I pretty quickly got to see who my new MP was and then go chase my son around who scared me when I got home by telling me that the party I loathe got in!
The CBC Ontario Votes site was not as shnazzy as the Globe’s reporting but it provided much more context, particularly at the riding level. It is also where I first read about the tragic results of the poorly marketed referendum on electoral change – MMP.
The CBC also provides an excellent page called Ontario by the Numbers, which is loaded with data and information on voter turnout, changes overtime etc. It is doing a great job as a public broadcaster.
The Site that surprised me the most was an independent called Nodice.ca. It came up first in all searches on Election night and still today. It also did not crash as did the Elections Ontario site. It is
an independent website which contains educational resources and links for Canadian teachers and students, and information about federal, provincial and territorial elections in Canada. The site gets its information from a variety of sources, including news articles (print, televised, or otherwise), party websites, candidates, as well as from information received through online contact forms. While the accuracy of the information received cannot be guaranteed, the majority of information is sourced before it is posted. Nodice.ca is owned and operated by David A. MacDonald.
The site contained the winners per riding, only the top 4 parties though! The seat projections, opinion polls, results, a list of leaders by party overtime, links to all the parties, and so on. This is an example of an excellent citizen led initiative. Funny, because I did not know who and what this site was about I had to validate what I read with other news and data sources that I trust and which have clear accountability structures. All the sites did have disclaimers on the results they posted!
This is all I looked at. At home I listen to Radio Canada, and their coverage was not the best and the windup toward the elections was also not superb. I guess Ontario is also not the province of their target audience. The best windup I got was from my son, whose grade 8 English teacher had them follow articles in the Globe and write up the issues everyday. He kept me up to date. The Issue that got me talking the most was Religious Private School Funding. I do not read the French press so missed it to!
From a data, information and news perspective democracy won out. The MMP issue lost out however as the public education component was near nil! Wonder who got the communication’s contract for that one! Yikes!
Would really like to know what you followed if not covered here, more from the French Press and other grassroots blogs or sites that provided good coverage. For instance in Montreal Ile Sans Fil, Zap Québec with CivicSense RSS fed the blogs, sites, you tube video’s etc. to their portal pages during the Québec elections. Very cool!
It is a small world! Especially in Ottawa where the degree of separation is about .0005 degrees! Feels like that anyway!
Zzzoot is definitely a kindred blog to datalibre.ca. The Sept. posts are excellent reviews of International data access and preservation technologies, RFPs and initiatives. All my faves’ are discussed there – Cyberinfrastructure in the US, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) UK DataShare project and CODATA Open Data for Open Science Journal and a whole bunch more.
I think like I, he wishes there would be some uptake from these innovations & initiatives here!
The World Freedom Atlas is:
an online geo-visualization tool that shows a number of freedom indicators so to speak. For example, you can map by a number of indexes such as raw political rights score, civil liberties, political imprisonment, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or torture. If I’ve counted correctly the data comes from 42 datasets divided into three categories:
[from the wonderfully-named blog, flowingdata.com]
So nice! I am a big fan of Charles Arthur and he has done it again in – See how the information garden grows: Visualising data can help us to better make sense the world.
via: TEDBlog Data at Play post.
And while we’re discussing data, play and art, here is another fine data art installation at the US Statistical HQ! The mind boggles!
All form and color are derived from US state and county information, 1790-2000. More details here.
Jason Salavon has produced some incredible light & data visualizations!
There is a interesting article in the Globe today by Eric Sager a professor of history at the University of Victoria about access to the names of Census respondents of Censuses gone by and those in the future.
I consider the privacy aspects of the Census to be sacred and so does StatCan. I fill it out because I know I am anonymous and that the data will be aggregated therefore not traced back to my personal address. Many people feel the same way, recall the Lockheed Martin online Census debacle. Fortunately for Canadians we do not live in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Ukraine, or are in Idi Amin’s Uganda where Censuses were explicitly used to target, kill or expulse ‘undersireable’ populations or to mask the death tole of massive mistakes. Censuses can and have been used to trace and target people of ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, or racial backgrounds. This 2006 Census year included a question as to whether or not we would be willing to give consent to sharing our private information 92 years from now. I responded with an educated no.
Historians and genealogists argue that past census respondent’s names should be made available and that we should have future access to current censuses:
The census is the only complete inventory of our population, an indispensable historical record of the Canadian people. It’s critical to genealogy, our most popular form of history. Of all visitors to our national archives today, half are doing genealogical research. If you had ancestors in Canada in 1901 or 1911, you can find them in the censuses of those years, online from Library and Archives Canada. Your children will also be able to find their grandparents and great-grandparents in the censuses of the past century — but only after a legally mandated delay of 92 years.
Seems like our friends in the South are sharing their Census information, as the U. S. Census information is released
through their National Archives after a delay of 72 years. They apply the principle of “implied consent” — a principle well known to privacy experts. When completing their census forms, Americans are consenting to the present-day use of their information by the Census Bureau, and to its use by other researchers in the distant future. Americans do not complain about the future use of their information, and there is no evidence that public release after 72 years has made them reluctant to participate.
Spammers and telemarketers have been using “implied consent” when they send me unsolicited email garbage, drop popups on my computer or call my home to sell me stuff. I have to say there are dubious elements to this concept. I do however like the concept of informed consent and think the Census had it right by leaving it up to census respondents to decide if they wish to share their personal information to future generations of researchers or potentially less progressive political regimes (see the question and your options). StatCan even provided a very extensive section on historical and genealogical position. See the informed consent Question 8 on the short form and Question 53 on the long form. These are perfectly legitimate questions supported with a ton of explanatory texte and is a perfect compromise to the debate.
Prof. Sager makes a compelling argument for access to this private information, but he believes we should give up our right to informed consent, that we are not smart enough to understand on our own the importance of historical and genealogical research. I vehemently disagree with these points. He does however correctly point out the importance of the Census for research and decision making.
I would like to have free – as in no cost – access to the non-private Census data and maps in the same way we have free access to the forms and the methodological guides. Now that, along with informed consent, is what a democracy looks like!
Very cool! Albeit in flash and some ui issues when trying to see the map, the legend and there is no way to link to the docs or access explanations associated with the timeline at the bottom but very interesting to see an attempt at making this kind of toxic data accessible!
Superfund365, A Site-A-Day, is an online data visualization application with an accompanying RSS-feed and email alert system. Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 will visit one toxic site currently active in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We begin the journey in the New York City area and work our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii. (We will need a beach vacation by then!) In the end, the archive will consist of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund’s National Priorities List (NPL). Along the way, we will conduct video interviews with people involved with or impacted by Superfund.
I wish I could find more Canadian examples!
Check out the Statistics Canada Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators report.
It discusses three main indicators:
Air quality indicator tracks Canadians’ exposure to ground-level ozone—a key component of smog and one of the most common and harmful air pollutants to which people are exposed.
The greenhouse gas emissions indicator tracks the annual releases of the six greenhouse gases that are the major contributors to climate change. The indicator comes directly from the greenhouse gas inventory report prepared by Environment Canada for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.
The freshwater quality indicator reports the status of surface water quality at selected monitoring sites across the country. For this first report, the focus of the indicator is on the protection of aquatic life, such as plants, invertebrates and fish.
The report also has some links in the references to some of the data used to build these indicators. Also check out the methodology section to get the low down on how to use these data. Perhaps some data and ideas to play with!
But now that we know that
the three indicators reported here raise concerns for Canada’s environmental sustainability, the health and well-being of Canadians, and our economic performance. The trends for air quality and greenhouse gas emissions are pointing to greater threats to human health and the planet’s climate. The water quality results show that guidelines are being exceeded, at least occasionally, at most of the selected monitoring sites across the country.
What do we do?
From O’Reilly Radar:
Carl Malamud has this funny idea that public domain information ought to be… well, public. He has a history of creating public access databases on the net when the provider of the data has failed to do so or has licensed its data only to a private company that provides it only for pay. His technique is to build a high-profile demonstration project with the intent of getting the actual holder of the public domain information (usually a government agency) to take over the job.
Carl’s done this in the past with the SEC’s Edgar database, with the Smithsonian, and with Congressional hearings. But now, he’s set his eyes on the crown jewels of public data available for profit: the body of Federal case law that is the foundation of multi-billion dollar businesses such as WestLaw.
In a site that just went live tonight, Carl has begun publishing the full text of legal opinions, starting back in 1880, and outlined a process that will eventually lead to a full database of US Case law. Carl writes:
1. The short-term goal is the creation of an unencumbered full-text repository of the Federal Reporter, the Federal Supplement, and the Federal Appendix.
2. The medium-term goal is the creation of an unencumbered full-text repository of all state and federal cases and codes.
Good news: Elections Ontario makes the postal code/electoral riding data file available:
The Postal Codes by Electoral Districts (ED) file provides a link between the six-character postal code and Ontario’s new provincial electoral districts. It is a zip file containing three files that can be loaded and used in spreadsheets and databases. The first is a text file with the ED names; the second file contains the postal codes that have been assigned to a single ED; and the third file contains postal codes that have been found in multiple EDs. This third files repeats the postal code for each ED in which it is found.
Have not looked at it yet: any comments about formats/license etc?
(from the civicaccess.ca mailing list).
Comments on Posts