City Of Vancouver Adopts Open Government Policy

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Last month, City of Vancouver in Canada passed a motion mandating Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source in their government. Vancouver is the first city to adopt this strategy in Canada. This is a pretty good move and a morally right one too. A democratic government that runs on taxpayers money cannot use proprietary software or standards. It is ethically wrong. Slowly, but steadily, people are realizing the importance of having an Open Government with Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source as the foundation.

The motion passed by the City of Vancouver clearly identifies this in their motion

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:
• Open and Accessible Data - the City of Vancouver will freely share with
citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data
possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;
• Open Standards - the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
• Open Source Software - the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing
software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles;

and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT in pursuit of open data the City of Vancouver will:
• Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data;
• Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats;
• Develop appropriate agreements to share its data with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) and encourage the ICIS to in turn share its data with the public at large;
• Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public;
• Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations;
• License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

The city council has done a commendable job and I am sure they will be a good example for other cities to follow. Being one of the first few cities in the world to do this, we (open government evangelists) should do our best to offer wide exposure to this news. I urge fellow evangelists to talk about this news.

(Hat Tip: IT World Canada)

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