1. Topic Idea

Stimuluswatch.ca was established to track the budget and the stimulus in as close to real time as possible. Government hasn't been able to do this.

How can  we connect to Canadians? Was money spent in your community? Did it create jobs? Were there problems? Were there benefits?

Now, we need ideas for how to get real data into the database, on the website. Automatically? Manually? Access to the data?

Need it to be non-partisan and connected to other sites, other information -- SW isn't intended to be the only site for the information. 

2. Key Points

Ideas for how the site should work:

• Aggregating information online through the tag #StimCan

Where does information come from? Currently it's largely from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is providing aggregate dollars assigned to various headings under the budget. For instance, $1billion to build affordable housing. But where? when? and is it getting to the right people? We don't have that information. We need Canadians to provide that information.

Purpose is to engage the energy and local knowledge of Canadians. For instance, people could use the site to respond to how money is planned to be spent, not just to report it.

In the US, the recovery package is being distributed through grants, which will be easy to track because it will be centralized and open.

Potential sources of information and allies

• API for agencies to link data
• to track funds, ally with agencies that will distribute grants or that are affected by funding
• news releases
• ally with other sites keeping track of funding -- important to get data, not analysed information
• feature: people could link information on the site: news release to funds to result
• http://news.gc.ca has an RSS feed

outputs of the site

• Make information clear and understandable -- need design/visualization people
• Make information accessible to different communities, in languages and communities
• Education value of the information -- what is the stimulus package? why is it needed? how to figure out what it means for you
• Evaluation -- why was a group refused? What can we learn from refusals?
• Telling the story of how the budget money actually moves through the system. Is it identifiable as it flows? 
• If people could link information on the site that would provide valuable information from the site
• Planet Money podcast from NPR

http://disclosed.ca is already collecting data (contracts) scraping it from government sites. Would help if there were good technical services to help distribute data. SW needs to be easy to use but flexible. Database backend will be manual for now but needs a database backend -- help would be welcome!

3. Takeaways

Launching the proof of concept soon.

Starting point is to tell the story of a budget and how it works. Then when there are information points, they can spawn places the site to explain/display/provide that information

Visualization tools needed to display complex information well

Learning platform, making use of the technologies to accelerate the feedback loop to almost real time

As a way of explaining the value of SW: Realtime processing vs. old stlye batch processing

Information goals: Coordinate groups of volunteers to get particular needed information, on the model of Obama's phone banking

Open formats: Canada should have standards for open formats for government data -- get out in front of the government and establish best practices for open data formats. Canada has a new CIO who may be a good ally on this.

4. Next Steps/Action Items

• 6 degrees of separation: Coordinated networking to get particular data -- e.g. somebody must know somebody at CMHC who can get the data on stimulus to affordable housing.
• Telling the story of a budget and the stimulus money
• Coordinate information gathering