Open Data and the City

This session will discuss the concept of open data from a municipal standpoint. Increasingly, cities are opening up data of their own as well as accepting data from citizens, predominantly via Open 311 type systems. Whether or not they do this depends on the types of easily available data, data quality, resources, analytics to measure the value of these initiatives, apps currently being built and technology used, opportunities for citizen engagement and the general political, economic and legal regime in which cities operate. Ninety percent of municipal open data is said to be geographic. Unfortunately not a lot of it is OSM. This session will discuess the potential for OSM in municipal settings, particularly using Canadian examples from a grant on the potential for the geospatial web and open data to transform communication between cities and citizens, and for which OSM is a partner.