With governments looking to do more with less, adopting open government strategies marks an ideal way to better deliver public services and foster increased confidence in government institutions through greater transparency.

Michael Geist

‘Crowdsourcing’ puts many extra hands to work

The move toward open government is now a fact. In Canada (and specifically in Toronto) many  groups such as Visible Government, ChangeCamp, etc. are working on a multitude of new sites and services. The one I want to tell you about is disclosed.ca, a site created by a Toronto developer, Ilia Lobsanov. The site performs web scraping to capture information from government sites about contracts awarded to various contractors. This is, officially, publicly reported information. It is, however,  displayed and stored on hundreds of disparate government sites in various forms, and this hinders the search and use of the information should anyone need it.

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine month.”

“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a torch.”

“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.”

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Disclosed.ca collects the information on awarded contracts and makes the data searchable across all departments.

As some of you may know, government contracts are awarded through merx.com, a website that lists the contracts daily from all levels of government including the Federal and Provincial Governments as well as the MASH sector (Municipal, Academic, School Boards and Hospitals) from across Canada. Anyone can register and bid for these contracts. Now, due to Ilia Lobsanov’s efforts, the process of contract awarding became more transparent as disclosed.ca allows the public to better identify regular recipients of government contracts.

Currently Ilia Lobsanov is looking for collaborators who would help him to transform the functionality he had developed into an API, so other people and communities can use it to obtain information from government sites and make it more approachable and viewable.

(By the way, OSME – Ontario Region offers great free seminars to small businesses who want to sell goods and services to the Government of Canada. You can register here: http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/ontario/bpme-osme/colloques-seminars-eng.html.)

Bonus: a great talk on Open Data by Mark Kuznicki of Toronto

http://changecamp.ca/2010/03/open-space-social-media-and-open-data/