- The Treasury Board of Canada announced a new pilot project to increase the ease of submitting and paying for Access to Information and Privacy requests online. So far, the new portal only allows requests to be sent to Citizenship and Immigration, the Treasury Board and Shared Services Canada. More government institutions are expected to join after the one-year pilot is complete. Modernizing this process is very important for the growth of open government in Canada.
- As we start to work with city leaders and community members on MyCityHall.ca and MaMairie.ca, we’re hearing a lot about the value of sharing information on lobbyists. To help understand what municipal lobbyist information can provide, the Sunlight Foundation created the Municipal Lobbyist Data Handbook to outline best practices for sharing this type of information.
- James McKinney, our executive director, will represent Open North at Transparency Camp on May 4th and 5th in Washington, D.C. Details for the Sunlight-hosted “unconference” can be found at transparencycamp.org.
- Also during the weekend of May 2nd, Ellie Marshall, our communications manager, will be speaking at the Participatory Budgeting Conference in Chicago about tech tools for online budgeting consultations.