Session Topic: Top 5 things government can do to be more open
Convenor: Jennifer Bell @jennifer_vizgov (visiblegovernment.ca)
Recorder: Moira Fogarty @pipesdreams
Participants: Amber, Zeena, Moira, Cullen, Mark, Matthew, Ryan Markley, Jonathan Leigh, David Eaves, Colin Chan, some guy with a camera
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Notes: 4 Ontario gov't reps; 1 Toronto rep; 1 Ottawa rep

- Z would like a Toronto city "Find a Park" Google map with a list of all amenities
- Mentioned: beerhunter.ca / appsfordemocracy (ilive.at)
- OMBwatch: adding transparency as part of the job description (problematic because public servants take two oaths of secrecy when they join the government)
- FOI requests
- consultation (easy to be cynical about transparency if someone with a political link has a say over what can be released)
- ideas change in execution; better to set the tone early on by saying that transparency will be built in at the level of political ideals and concepts, before it trickles down to the build level
- "select" openness; speaking to stakeholders
- Estonia has made their public document vaults public; (Steven Clift anecdote)
- definition of "stakeholder" needs to be redefined: currently private citizens aren't involved in early consultation if they are not associated with an association or group that has acheived critical mass and been acknowledged by government as an "official" stakeholder. Private citizens should be able to self-identify on issues that matter to them as being "stakeholders" who want to be consulted early on, during the "draft" stages of project development. (ie. if I care about transit, but am not a member of the Metronauts, I don't get contacted by the TTC or the Ministry of Transportation, even if I am very knowledgeable and involved in transit news and have good ideas
- voice of cynicism: if we release all our data, "important" or "sensitive" data sets will likely result in less public spectacle and interest than very basic data sets such as "find a bathroom" (see: City of London, England); sometimes the simplest data sets are the most useful, the most cared about, particularly mapped information (court locations, community centers, road works)
- other government examples: DC's "digital square"
- crowdsourcing possibilities? tagging data? problems of excessive data, data dumps, what do you do with ALL the data? who decides what should be released first? how to determine quality of data or relevance, public importance, etc?
- need city websites to have an open "discussion" page a la UserVoice [http://www.uservoice.com/] where citizens can post ideas, and other citizens can see those ideas and rank their importance (ie. if Bob wants a "Find a Park" google map for the City of Ottawa, he can go to the City of Ottawa website and post to the Ideas page his idea. Then Judy can go to the same ideas page and either add her new and different idea "Find a 24 Hour Health Clinic", OR add her vote/s to Bob's idea, which then gets ranked higher.
- find someone who is willing to try your idea: start with something easy, take a gradual approach
- find the weak point in governmental obligations; if the government is legally obligated to release data, and is doing so but in a seriously annoying or difficult to disseminate/parse way, then seize on that as an area to start with: go to the owner of the site and start your complaint to say that there's a problem with the way in which the data is being shared and that you have a proposed solution for a better way: one great argument is to turn the issue into an accessibility concern rather than a user preference for data presentation. If you want a more useful format, argue that data should be released directly from the database. Start with the data the government already has, and express your concern with the existing presentation.
- question being posed about who approves data release? how many people have to get involved in the process of freeing up data? (David Eaves)

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What Happens Next?