About

What is Open Data?

On this site, we use the term Open Data to refer to 'Open Government Data, as defined by these principles. Open Data is actually a much broader term, but we're using this URL because it's nice and short, and we reserved it first.

Who are you, and why are you doing this?

This site is run by VisibleGovernment.ca, a Canadian non-profit that promotes online tools for government transparency. We built this site because we wanted citizens and government employees to be able to find and share links related to open government data.

Why don't you just use a wiki? Or Delicious?

We found a wiki of links hard to organize and maintain. And while Delicious is great, we found that people had trouble using it. We wanted a tool to streamline adding and categorizing new links according to subject and geography, so we made one. It's an experiment.

Behind the scenes, this site is using a number of scripts to import links from multiple sources, like delicious and twitter, so that our editorial team can filter out the best ones.

Why is this list Canadian-centric?

We focus on Canadian links because that's where we're from. If you're an organization promoting Open Government Data in another country, please let us know -- we'd love to help you set up a sister site your area. The software for this site is open source, so you can use it how you'd like. We also have a prototype link sharing protocol we're keen to start testing other groups.

Why didn't you link to the blog post or article I sent you?

We only rarely link to blog posts, but we do make exceptions if the post contains unique insights useful to people implementing open government data websites.

We also try to keep the number of links to articles on the same subject to a minimum, so generally we only pick one or two 'best' articles for any given news event.

Why didn't you link to my project?

We generally only link to projects that are launched, and can show a minimum amount of use. If your link was overlooked by our editorial team, try again in a few months.

Credits

Thanks to:

Our users for submitting and rating links.
CityGoRound.com, for inspiring the location-based 'find' functionality.
The Rae Family of Montreal, for hosting and IT support.