possible to look up the
spatial data of rooflines,
the most popular books
by library location, where
the most bylaw infrac-
tions are reported and
even mosquito-trapping
data by neighbourhood.
Calgary (the fourth most
open city) has detailed
Kevin Tuer
solar exposure tables for
buildings, while Toronto
(second most open) has locations of
automatic heart defibrillators and
maps of potential urban archaeologi-
cal sites.
From the mundane to the tech-
nical, this data could allow a savvy
website developer help home buyers
determine which neighbourhoods
have the fewest mosquitoes, the
snoopiest neighbours, the most
sunshine, the best-read people, the
healthiest trees, the number of dogs,
the best emergency health options,
the most haunted houses
or whatever quality-of-
life options they might
desire or superstitions
they might want to avoid.
Williams, writing in
CityLab under the head-
line “Maybe Government
Data Shouldn’t Always
Be Free” (April 16, 2017)
says that taxpayers have
a right to transparency
and to access to the information they
fund. “The democratic case is pretty
solid for public data to be uncondi-
tionally free to NGOs, the press, or
the casual civic hacktivist. But should
municipal data under all circum-
stances be free to a company looking
to exploit a free but valuable resource
like data for a profit?” he asked.
Williams argues that perhaps
governments are obligated to taxpay-
ers to charge for data that are being
used by third parties for commercial
purposes. “Cities owe it to their resi-
dents to have an honest discussion
about whether at some point they
should charge businesses for using
taxpayer-owned data.”
Kevin Tuer, managing director of
Canada’s Open Data Exchange (ODX),
isn’t convinced.
“We tend toward the side that
open data that has already been paid
for by the public should be made
available for others to use. That’s
what we are seeing across Canada
— more governments adopting the
‘open by default’ policy,” Tuer said.
It was a partnership with ODX that
made Edmonton No. 1 on the Most
Open Cities Index for the second year
in a row, Public Sector Digest noted.
Tuer and other open data propo-
nents have convincing arguments in
favour of free open data. The obvi-
ous one is transparency. There are
also advantages when third parties
develop apps or websites that add
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