Making Cities Open by Default Webinar

The Open Government Office of Ontario invited us to share findings from its latest report on Making Cities Open by Default: Lessons from open data pioneers and discuss with Denis Carr how City of Toronto worked with Open North in using the Open Data Charter to frame the development of the Toronto’s Open Data Master Plan.

The report identified a series of key themes:

1. There are strong incentives for cities to implement an open data strategy, and the Charter can help them to do this
2. If ‘open by default’ is applied to a city’s broader data management systems it can allow better internal data sharing, as well as improving access to information for citizens
3. Opening data does not automatically create a data literate public
4. Open data impact requires interjurisdictional cooperation
5. Policy and standard development is not keeping up with the pace of change
6. Jurisdictions cannot be ‘open by default’ without open procurement

This open cities webinar was a pre-event for the Open Government Day event on March 26th (2018) organized by the Open Government Office of Ontario.