About Us
Montréal in Common brings together an innovation community led by the City of Montréal, whose partners are experimenting with solutions in food access, mobility and municipal regulations in a desire to rethink the metropolis. Thirteen projects are being implemented as part of Montréal in Common thanks to the $50 million prize awarded to the city by the Government of Canada as part of the Smart Cities Challenge.
The Montréal in Common program explicitly focuses on the collection, sharing and use of data to inform collective and individual decision-making. Thus, our project aims to address two main needs:
- Access to concrete resources, tools and mechanisms to understand and implement a robust data governance framework to build public trust;
- Experiments around data partnership models (indigenous, social and mobility) to unlock the value of sharing and leveraging data for the public good.
As the lead of the Data Governance Workstream within Montréal in Common, we propose a data governance journey to the innovation community and support their experimentations around data partnership models.
The Data Governance Journey
The data governance journey aims to support the innovation community in progressively operationalizing the principles of the City of Montreal’s Digital Data Charter.
Tools for building public trust
To support the innovation community in its data governance journey, we have co-developed a first version of tools with the City of Montreal.
- Data Governance Journey User Guide: We suggest you start with the user guide. It explains why data governance is important and links the tools together.
- Data Governance Framework: This framework is the heart of the data governance work. It interprets the principles of the Montreal Digital Data Charter in the context of Montreal in Common. This core resource provides you with tactics, which are the concrete actions you need to take to comply with the Charter’s principles and move towards more responsible, effective and collaborative data governance.
- Self-Assessment Tool (FR): The main purpose of the Self-Assessment Tool is to allow you to track and assess your progress in implementing the tactics of the Data Governance Framework, whether for an organization or a digital data partnership.
- Use Case Decision Diagram (FR): This tool complements the framework. It is intended to help you ask the right questions for each phase of a data use case.
- Appendix (FR): This invaluable document is home to several resources we’ve consulted to build the tools for the data governance journey.
We are still in the first version of these tools, so we want to improve them together with you. You can provide feedback by filling out this form. In addition, we are seeing an emerging interest in using these resources beyond Montreal in Common. If this is your case, please contact us and share your feedback at mec@opennorth.ca.
The Data Governance Community of Practice
The Community of Practice is a space dedicated to Montreal in Common partners to solve problems, share experiences, circulate information and knowledge, and pool useful tools on data governance. A variety of activities are offered to the community to support it in its data governance journey:
- Facilitation of workshops
- Advisory service
- Development of new tools and guides
- Community of Practice meetings
- Facilitation of a forum of discussion to share questions and thoughts
- Improvement of the existing tools of the data governance journey
- Management of the Digital Knowledge Library
- Community of Practice newsletter
Whether it’s to stay on top of the latest Community of Practice news via our newsletter or to implement Data Governance Framework tactics, email us atmec@opennorth.ca !
Experimentation with data partnership models
We support and accompany the innovation community in their experimentation with data partnership models to unlock the value of sharing data (Indigenous, social and mobility) for the public good with Montreal in Common’s data hubs.
Social utility data trust: a data governance for the common good (FR)
Whether to generate new knowledge about their environment, to adapt to the latest technological developments or to remain competitive, social economic enterprises are looking for new ways to pool their digital resources. Building on TIESS’ previous work on social utility data trusts, this project aims to apply this legal tool to the world of data in order to explore its potential for governance.
Digital data partnerships
Digital data partnerships are initiatives that bring organizations together around a common goal, which requires the sharing and leveraging of data. This report is intended to contribute to the creation and success of digital data partnerships that are aimed at the public good. To do so, we offer practical information for building collaborative data governance that is responsible, effective, and accountable and thus in the public interest.
Data governance: the human decisions that drive data and technology
This is the first article in a collaborative series between the Data for Society Hub (DSH) and Open North (ON), Montréal in Common’s data governance project leader. As such, the ON team is assisting the DSH team in its efforts to design and develop collaborative, consistent, and robust data governance frameworks. This series of blog posts will discuss the relationship between governance and technology, the specific needs of the DSH partners, and the implementation of the chosen framework.
Are you a partner of Montréal in Common?
Check out some resources to help you on your data governance journey.