McGill Librarian Deena Yanofsky presents on open data in the city of Montreal.

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Une première au
Québec! La Ville de
Montréal ouvre ses
données sur
Internet
28 octobre 2011— Jocelyn Bourbonnais
Open Data
and the City of Montreal
Deena Yanofsky
Coordinator and Liaison Librarian
W. Hitschfeld Geographic Information Centre

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what is open data?
n Open Data is a practice that makes machine-readable data
freely available by way of portals, metadata, and search tools
for reuse by governments, citizens, voluntary organizations,
and the private sector in new and unanticipated ways.
n It's about letting Canadians explore our data sets to find
information that is of value to them.
http://www.data.gc.ca

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“open”
(adj) Accessible.
Used to describe architectures or content, open means free
availability and unrestricted use.
n Open Access
n Open Source
n Open Content
n Open Data

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3 laws of open data
n If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
n If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it
can’t engage
n If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it
doesn’t empower
Eaves, D. (2009, November 29). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://eaves.ca
/2009/11/29/three-laws-of- open-data-international-edition/

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open data in government
International
n 2009 – United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand
n 2010 – Norway, Russia
n 2011 – Canada, Australia, Italy, France, Kenya, Chile
n 2012 – Brazil, Estonia

8. Rocha, R. (2012, February 03). The push for open government in quebec. Montreal Gazette.
Retrieved from http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2012/02/03/the-push-for-open-government-
in-quebec/

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open data in Montreal
The biggest challenge facing the portal, and any open data
initiative for any government, is the radical shift in culture it
entails. Bureaucrats must re-learn not only to create data in
open formats, but also to share: to break out of their silos,
socialize with other government agencies, and listen to citizens
clamoring for information.
The open data portal [is] the first step towards more
transparency, socialization, and semantization.
Rocha, R. (2012, April 28). Interview with diane mercier, montreal’s open data coordinator. The Gazette. Retrieved from
http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2012/04/28/interview-with-diane-mercier-montreals-open-data-coordinator/

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portail données ouvertes
n Population data from the 2006 Census
n 2009 Election data
n Photographs
n GIS shape files of the City of Montreal and its boroughs
n Statistics from les bibliothèques de Montréal
n Location data for fire stations, police stations, cultural sites
n Ski and skating conditions for Montreal’s boroughs

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license
n Montreal’s data is published under an open license inspired by
the Creative Commons model Attribution (BY) and Share-alike
(SA).
n Attribution-ShareAlike:
“This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even
for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their
new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared
to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works
based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also
allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is
recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating
content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.”
http://creativecommons.org/licenses

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“I heard you folks like books and eat catalogs of data for
breakfast. You beautiful people are going to scour the earth for
interesting data, helping the rest of us figure out what’s
important and generally useful.”

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some interesting links
n Canada's Action Plan on Open Government
http://open.gc.ca/open-ouvert/ap-patb-eng.asp
n Datalibre.ca – Canadian and international open data sites
http://datalibre.ca/links-resources/#International%20Open
%20Data
n Data Hub - community-run catalogue of data sets on the
Internet. http://thedatahub.org
n List of apps for Montreal using open data
http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2012/01/23/list-of-apps-
for-montreal/

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Deena Yanofsky
Walter Hitschfeld Geographic Information Centre
deena.yanofsky@mcgill.ca
514-398-6052