The City of Markham, Ontario launched their Citizen Budget consultation last week. Markham’s use of the budget simulator takes advantage of the many customizable features the platform offers. For example, the consultation’s design is matched to the City’s website for a streamlined presentation, and, for the first time, it includes custom pie charts which change for each user’s […]
Read More… from Citizen Budget launches in Markham and Yellowknife
Next week is Canada’s Democracy Week, which includes a series of nationwide discussions on topics ranging from civic engagement to international democratic aid. The events across the country are inspired by and coincide with the United Nation’s International Democracy Day on September 15th. Visit the Democracy Week events page for details to find out what events are happening near you. In March, […]
Read More… from Democracy Week events and Sunlight’s Procurement Guidelines
Quebec Ouvert is hosting their first Quebec City Hackathon on August 29th and 30th. The hackathon will be an outdoor picnic under a tent at the Place de l’Université-du-Québec in the St-Roch district of the city. Quebec Ouvert encourages developers, designers and officials to participate to demonstrate to the government the power of the open government movement. […]
Read More… from Québec Ouvert hackathon and extracting PDF data
For our first post back from hiatus, we’ve collected four top stories from the past month. If you think there is an important story we’ve missed, or want to contribute, let us know at info@opennorth.ca. We recently published a new version of the Popolo specification for legislative data. Since first announcing Popolo in March, it has been used […]
The Knight Foundation announced the winners of its News Challenge on Open Government. Eight businesses and nonprofits will receive $3.2 million in funding from the Foundation to “provide new tools and approaches to improve the way people and governments interact.” The winners include Procure.io, which aims to simplify and open up the government procurement process, Outline.com, which models and visualizes […]
It was a very eventful week in open data in Canada with the release of several interesting open government policy updates. If you are interested in learning more about these policies and reading some expert analysis of recent advancements, we suggest joining the CivicAccess.ca and Open Data Society of BC mailing lists where members of our team often share […]
Read More… from Major updates to Canada’s open government initiatives
For the recent BC election, The Tyee, an online news magazine, used our Represent service in their BC Election 2013 Map & Guide to connect their readers to electoral candidates. As regular readers already know, Represent is a database of elected officials and electoral boundaries, whose API allows other civic groups to easily lookup representatives for a given address or […]
Read More… from Interview with the creators of The Tyee’s Election Map
We are pleased to announce that the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation has awarded Open North financial support for its mission and its development as a social enterprise. This support from the Foundation’s Social Innovation Fund will allow us to more proactively engage with governments and community organizations in identifying data needs that can be addressed through the […]
Much like municipal governments – school boards, labour unions and residents’ associations must ensure that their directions match the preferences and needs of their membership. While in-person consultations and annual meetings are important and effective tools for reaching consensus, there are many limiting factors such as time, travel and knowledge that can hinder participation in […]
Read More… from How nonprofits can leverage online budget consultation
Open and transparent budget governance is a value held by many governments regardless of their size. While it is often the federal and provincial legislatures or largest municipalities that draw attention in the press for releasing financial information to the public, it is important to recognize the efforts of small towns and cities across the country. […]
Read More… from New Citizen Budget pricing for small municipalities