On September 26th, the York Regional Council approved a comprehensive Open Data program.
The official launch of comes after a year-long pilot program that made limited spatial (GIS) databases available to the public through York's open data website (available
here).
Open Data, an increasingly popular trend at the municipal and provincial level (both the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario have ever-growing open data portals) refers government-accumulated information that is released free of charge and available through online databases.
York Region, for example, currently provides an array of spatially represented census data including age and sex by census tract, hospital locations, and solid waste sites.
The Region set-up the pilot Open Data site in 2012 to gage interest and develop recommendations.
Since the launch, there have been more than 2,500 downloads.
Last's week's announcement of the program's continuation means that the information available through the York site will continue to grow and will move beyond purely spatial databases (though these databases will be expanded as well).
"An Open Data program provides the foundation for self-service access to information," stated York Region chairman and CEO Bill Fisch on the day of the the announcement. “Making York Region data accessible to the public, other levels of government, public sector agencies and the private sector raises the profile of Regional government as a reliable source for self-serve information."
A comprehensive Open Data program is expected to have positive implications for the Region's economic development (by allowing the private sector, especially the digital technology sector, to leverage the information to create new apps), for government efficiency (by reducing staff efforts and associated costs of distributing data and administering data licenses) and for residents and community researchers looking to access information about the Region.
The new program includes a guiding set of principles, an Open Data license and a process for publishing data.
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: The Regional Municipality of York