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 Budget Survey noting “generally dismal” budget transparency across the globe. Only 6 of the 100 countries surveyed made significant attempts to open their budget information to the public. You can view the data collected from the survey in this data explorer.

  • The Oxford Internet Institute’s Amanda Clarke will be speaking at the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy & Governance on February 4th on the state of digital engagement. Clarke’s work challenges governments to think beyond making digital versions of traditional, offline mechanisms for citizen participation, and to think imaginatively about how the internet can transform traditional and produce new ways to participate.

  • The City of Chicago launched Plow Tracker, an app tracking snow removal in real time – and simultaneously making developers in Canadian cities extremely jealous. The data released by the city was immediately reused by civic app developers Open City in their ClearStreets project which shows what streets have been plowed during each snow storm.