Introducing Popolo, an open government data specification

Last November, we wrote about our partnership with the Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF) to lead the development and expansion of their OpenGovernment.org project to three US cities. As part of our work on OpenGovernment.org, we have researched, re-used and contributed to a number of open source, open government projects, including mySociety’s PopIt, a service for building a database of people, organizations and positions, […]

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This Week in Open Government | February 15, 2013

This week marks the launch of the Township of Langley, British Columbia’s Citizen Budget consultation. Over the past few months we’ve worked closely with the Township to provide citizens with a comprehensive budget feedback experience using Citizen Budget, and we are excited to share this tool with its more than 100,000 residents! If you’re interested in learning […]

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This Week in Open Government | February 8, 2013

This week, Canada Post released some postal code boundary data through Statistics Canada: the boundaries for all forward sortation areas (FSAs); the FSA is represented by the first three characters of any postal code. This data release, however, is different from others at the federal level. Canada Post retains their copyright and “official mark” over postal codes, rather […]

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This Week in Open Government | February 1, 2013

In a state-of-the-city address on January 29th, Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina announced his support of open data in the city. Bratina noted that open data in Hamilton will only succeed if those in power are willing to share their information and trust the citizens who elected them. The organizers of the international Open Data Day hackathon have created a […]

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This Week in Open Government | January 25, 2013

Open North is co-organizing Open Data Day in Montreal on February 23rd with Montreal Ouvert and Quebec Ouvert. Join us at the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) for a hackathon and presentations from Environment Canada, the Minister of Democratic Institutions and Civic Participation for Quebec and the City of Montreal. You can register for the event on EventBrite. The International Budget Partnership (IBP) released its Open […]

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This Week in Open Government | January 18, 2013

OpenCorporates, the open database of the corporate world, reached a major milestone this week – the site now has information on over 50 million companies! Last month, OpenCorporates released an API to improve access to this data. Open North is proud to have contributed over 2 million company records to the database. Yelp announced this week that they have partnered with […]

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This Week in Open Government | January 11, 2013

Are you looking for your own way to make a difference in your community using open tools? TakePart, an American organization that encourages citizens to take action in their lives have developed a community action tool kit to help you get started. The tool kit features resources for learning about community building, stimulating engagement and sharing your success […]

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This Week in Open Government | January 4, 2013

2013 is off to an exciting start with the announcement of several events in the open data and open government sectors. We are looking forward to these events: The Canadian University Software Engineering Conference is taking place January 17th to 19th at the Delta Hotel in Montreal. Jonathan Brun, one of our board members, will be presenting […]

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This Week in Open Government | December 21, 2012

If you are interested in understanding more about participatory budgeting and how it can work in your community, check out the Participatory Budgeting toolkit. Released by the PB Unit in the UK, these resources can help you design an effective civic engagement experience. The Atlantic Cities has posted what they think were the best open data releases in the US […]

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This Week in Open Government | December 14, 2012

We’re pleased to announce that a draft version of the Open 511 specification for road event data is now live on Open North’s GitHub account. Our Transportation Director, Stéphane Guidoin, and his team have done a great job preparing this API and are excited to receive feedback. If you would like to propose changes to the draft, feel […]

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