Open Halton: Milton Open Data Motion

Today Milton, ON town council is considering an open data motion put forward jointly by two Milton councilors: Rick Di Lorenzo and Zeeshan Hamid.

The motion specifically calls out Open Government, Open Data and Open Standards as the areas that contribute towards transparency, sharing of information, improving services, efficiency of government services and creating a more economically vibrant community.

This is an opportunity for the town to endorse the following principles:

Open and Accessible Data – the Town of Milton will freely share with citizens,
businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;

Open Standards – the Town of Milton will move as quickly as possible to adopt
prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;

and to implement specific actions for the city staff to report back to council what steps could be taken on existing data, with the relevant focus on costs, risks and benefits.

This motion is modeled after similar motions – like those by the Cities of Vancouver, Edmonton and Ottawa, and many others that paved the path for open data initiatives in Canada.

I will be representing (and tweeting from) @OpenHalton, as well as deliver a delegation on Open Data with the slides posted below: