User-Friendly Open Government (CA0064)

1. User-friendly open government
Issue to be addressed
Canadians want their government to reflect the values of transparency, accountability, and
citizen participation in all of its work. To do this, the Government of Canada needs to put
citizens at the centre of its open government efforts. The more Canadians know about and
understand the work government does, and the more they are able to actively participate in it,
the more we can all harness the social and economic potential of open government.
Commitment
The Government of Canada will provide opportunities for Canadians to learn about open
government. We will also improve the openness of federal government data. We will:
• make improvements to open.canada.ca
• help Canadians learn more about Government of Canada work on open government
• improve the quality of open data available through open.canada.ca
• expand the Open by Default pilot project
• provide tools for government and citizens to work together
• develop open data privacy guidelines
Lead department(s)
Canada School of Public Service (CSPS); Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC);
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)’s Federal Geospatial Program (FGP); Statistics Canada
(StatCan); Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS); other departments and agencies across
the Government of Canada
Milestones
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
1.1 Make improvements to
open.canada.ca to make it
easier for users to find what
they’re looking for and
contribute to the open
government community
(TBS)
Pilot launched for users to submit
datasets, visualizations, and reports
based on open government data or
information
At least 20 usersubmitted
records available
by June 2020
Space provided on open.canada.ca for
stories of open data impact, including
user-submitted stories
At least
50 stories
15
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
available by
June 2019
Quarterly reporting on progress on
releasing datasets submitted via the
Suggest a Dataset form on
open.canada.ca
December 2018
Regular public reporting on
improvements, user research and
feedback on open.canada.ca, including on
top task success rates
June 2020
1.2 Help Canadians learn about
Canada’s work on open
government through learning
materials, information
sessions, and enhanced
training for public servants
(CSPS/TBS)
Materials for teachers and educators
drafted and published
June 2019
Outreach to at least 50 teachers or
educators to encourage them to review
and use these materials
March 2020
70% of teachers using the material are
satisfied with it
March 2020
At least 300 public servants from at least
15 Government of Canada departments
or agencies trained through learning
activities indicate a better understanding
of open government following the
learning activity
June 2020
A Government of Canada Digital Academy
is established, and at least 40 nominated
participants complete its premium course
curriculum3
August 2019
3 workshop events are held to train
federal public servants on employing
administrative data in decision-making
June 2020 What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
Public open government and open data
webinars are held at least every 2 months
6 held by
October 2019
12 held by
June 2020
Participants are happy with webinar
content and format (at least 70%
satisfaction measured by a short survey
after each webinar)
June 2020
1.3 Improve the quality of open
data available on
open.canada.ca
(NRCan/StatCan/TBS)
Data quality criteria developed and
published, and workshops are held with
government officials to develop their
capacity to improve quality of datasets
June 2019
A new data quality rating system to
supplement current “Rate this dataset”
function is developed in consultation with
users and national partners and available
on open.canada.ca
June 2020
200 frequently downloaded datasets are
reviewed for quality,
4 standardization,
complete metadata, contextual
documentation, and plain language
descriptions
June 2020
An additional 500 geospatial datasets
reviewed using the Federal Geospatial
Platform (FGP) data quality assessment
criteria from NRCan
June 2020
1.4 Expand the Open by
Default pilot to make working
documents from government
officials open by default,
subject to applicable
Open by Default pilot is expanded to
capture working documents produced by
the Open Government team at TBS
June 2019
New innovative technologies are
implemented to improve accessibility and
April 2020

4. Data quality may include things like relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, interpretability, and
coherence. For more information, check out the Government of Canada’s Policy on Informing Users of Data Quality
and Methodology.
17
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
restrictions associated with
privacy, confidentiality, and
security
(TBS)
availability of documents in both official
languages in order to comply with the
Official Languages Act, the Treasury
Board Policy on Official Languages, and
the Standard on Web Accessibility
A subset of working documents produced
by at least 3 government departments, in
addition to the Open Government team
at TBS, is available through the Open by
Default portal
June 2020
1.5 Co-create a public, digital
collaboration space where
citizens and government
employees can work together
(TBS)
A public, digital collaboration space is
launched, and made available for
Canadians and government officials to
use. The collaboration space will:
• allow users to register with a single,
easy-to-use sign-in
• allow Canadians and government
officials to share files, work
collaboratively, and participate in
community discussions
June 2019
1.6 Develop open data
guidelines to protect the
privacy of citizens, businesses,
and institutions
(StatCan)
A series of workshops is delivered by
Statistics Canada to train participants on
the application of guidelines for the
anonymization of datasets
June 2019
1.7 Help Canadians understand
the data and models used to
design and study government
programs
(ESDC)
Microsimulation models, including
underlying datasets, results and
supporting documents, are made publicly
available to help to explain how the
government uses these models to design
programs and to estimate their impacts
December 2019
and ongoing

Design Report

1. User-friendly open government

The Government of Canada will provide opportunities for Canadians to learn about open government. We will also improve the openness of federal government data. We will:

• make improvements to canada.ca
• help Canadians learn more about Government of Canada work on open government
• improve the quality of open data available through canada.ca
• expand the Open by Default pilot project
• provide tools for government and citizens to work together
• develop open data privacy guidelines

Milestones

1.1 Make improvements to open.canada.ca to make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for and contribute to the open government community (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

1.2 Help Canadians learn about Canada’s work on open government through learning materials, information sessions, and enhanced training for public servants (Canada School of Public Service/Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

1.3 Improve the quality of open data available on open.canada.ca (Natural Resources Canada/ Statistics Canada/Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

1.4 Expand the Open by Default pilot to make working documents from government officials open by default, subject to applicable restrictions associated with privacy, confidentiality, and security (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

1.5 Co-create a public, digital collaboration space where citizens and government employees can work together (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

1.6 Develop open data guidelines to protect the privacy of citizens, businesses, and institutions (Statistics Canada)

1.7 Help Canadians understand the data and models used to design and study government programs (Employment and Social Development Canada)

For more details about the commitment text, milestones, self-identified success criteria, and estimated completion dates see, https://open.canada.ca/en/content/canadas-2018-2020-national-action-plan-open-government#toc3-4

Start Date: August 2019

End Date: Varies according to milestone

Context and Objectives

This commitment focuses on educating Canadians about openness and the opportunities it affords, and at making it easier for citizens to find high quality data and information resources about government activities. The commitment sets out a series of broad measures to facilitate moving forward with openness on two fronts. First, to enhance existing, and foster new, opportunities for Canadians to learn about open government and to work with the federal government. Second, to continue building on advancements from the three previous action plans toward improving the quality of open data the GoC makes available. Seeking to educate Canadians about open government is a commendable objective. However, as written, Commitment 1 is solution-oriented and aspirational in scope. Neither the current state of affairs prior to its launch vis-à-vis Canadian’s knowledge of open government nor the targeted change that is meant to emerge from its implementation are specified.

This commitment aligns with the OGP values of Access to Information, Civic Participation, and Technology and Innovation. However, the extent to which the milestones align with OGP values is mixed. Milestones 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 are directly relevant to the OGP values of Access to Information, Civic Participation, Technology and Innovation, or combinations thereof. The proposed improvements to open.canada.ca and the expanding of the Open by Default pilot contribute to improving access to information and facilitating civic participation insofar as they offer increased opportunities for providing user feedback, with government making increased levels of datum and documentation available to interested parties. Likewise, the proposed digital collaboration space – the GCCollab [1] and GCmessage [2] open software tools – offers opportunities for information sharing, public participation, and collaboration. [3] Milestones 1.2, 1.6 and 1.7 pertain foremost to providing information and learning opportunities about government activities and the implementing of government guidelines. Based on the value definitions provided by in the IRM Procedures Manual, it is unclear how they align with any of the four OGP values. [4] This said, the IRM researcher acknowledges that the educational opportunities afforded by these three milestones can potentially enable interested parties to engage with and monitor Canada’s progress in moving toward open government.

For Commitment 1, there is a link between the objective of educating Canadians about the work government does and its open government efforts, and the seven milestones set out for realizing this goal. Milestones 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 are easily verifiable (i.e., either the proposed activity or change has taken place, or it has not) whereas Milestones 1.1, 1.2, and 1.7 require some degree of interpretation with regard to their measurability. Likewise, the validity of success criteria for all the milestones is subject question (i.e., do they actually measure/reflect what they claim to measure?). This is due, in part, to the fact that the success criteria for Milestones 1.1, 1.2 and 1.7 offer no indication of the measures to be used to evaluate whether users of open.canada.ca actually find it easier to locate and uncover “what they’re looking for and contribute to the open government community” and whether Canadians have learned about the country’s work on open government or “understand the data and models sued to design and study government programs.” The public comments received about the draft commitment identified specific issues whose resolution could have served to inform the creation of more precise indicators of success for milestones 1.1 and 1.2. For example, comments received from Jury Konga, Executive Director of the GO Open Data Association, and others, suggested that the chief improvement needed to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for at open.canada.ca is to have the platform indexed and fully searchable. [5]

In sum, Commitment 1 appears to be anchored in the notion that, the more Canadians learn about open government, the more they will use open government data and engage with government. Much weight is placed on delivering information, reports, analyses, making it easier for users to engage with open data and open government, as well as on government-led training. The impact of this commitment is tempered by this solution-centric orientation. [6] Nonetheless, it does constitute an incremental, positive step in working toward providing opportunities for Canadians to learn about open government, and for improving the openness of federal government data. Hence, Commitment 1 is assessed as having a minor potential impact.

Next steps

Commitment 1 is illustrative of an important and necessary open government initiative. Educating Canadians about open government and improving the quality of openness are laudable ongoing processes. However, the link between the commitment, the milestones, and the proposed success criteria – some of which appear to be milestones in their own right – is vague. Avoiding the pitfalls of data determinism requires being cautious not to overestimate citizens’ desires and motivations for engaging with government data and with government itself. Opening government data is not a ‘one size fits all’ proposition. Different stakeholders have very different data and information needs, and very different motivations for engaging with such resources. The government-citizen dialogue at the core of this commitment needs to be operationalized as an ongoing iterative process that both complements and extends beyond Canada’s OGP action plan.

The IRM researcher recommends that in moving forward lead departments and agencies strive to:

• identify and tackle specific challenges/issues/priorities that can be addressed by improving the openness and quality of federal government data as opposed to starting from a position of ‘how can we provide opportunities for Canadians to learn about open government?’;
• ensure the validity of the success indicators being used to assess/measure the success of the milestones, and the commitment more broadly;
• enhance opportunities for consulting and engaging directly with citizens and civil society interests about their respective user needs, educational and otherwise, with regard to open government; and
• establish and implement internal monitoring and evaluation practices to ensure the user feedback obtained is incorporated into the design, implementation, and outputs of the planned activities.

Transitional Results Report

Commitment 1. User-friendly open government

Completion: Substantial

This commitment aimed to educate Canadians about the opportunities openness affords, and to make it easier for citizens to find high-quality data and information resources about government activities. With its focus on strengthening existing open datasets and channels, it was evaluated as having minor potential impact on open government in Canada.

As per the information reported at the National Action Plan Open Government Tracker, four milestones were largely—but not entirely—completed. [1] Citing a reprioritization of work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, limited and/or no progress is reported for three milestones.

Substantial progress was made on milestone 1.1. which focused on improving the functionality of Canada’s open data portal (https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data). [2] The Open Government and Portal teams launched a user feedback survey lasting six months and analyzed the approximately 2,000 responses to inform a strategy to improve the platform. The teams modified the ‘Suggest a Dataset’ [3] function to include quarterly updates from departments on the status of requests and established a more streamlined internal process to respond to requests. The Open Government Team also created a portal for Open Data User Stories. [4] While the team initially aimed to have 50 stories posted by 2019, only 17 were posted by the end of the implementation period. Nor was the planned channel for users to submit datasets, visualizations, and reports created. [5]

Milestone 1.3. which sought to improve the quality of data available on the open data portal was completed. Under this aim, TBS developed, in consultation with the open data community, a data quality rating system whose implementation is meant to start at a future time, subject to project prioritization. [6]

For milestone 1.4, an Open by Default pilot project was launched in 2019 and subsequently delayed due to a lack of automated tools to help address privacy and security risks, as well as the challenges of meeting official languages and accessibility requirements. [7] This pilot was then halted due to a reprioritization of work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The collaboration space created under the auspices of milestone 1.5 is GCcollab. [8] The number of users registered with this space grew from approximately 30,000 to 108,000 in the period between June 30, 2018, and June 30, 2021. [9]

In terms of the three other milestones, limited progress was made on milestone 1.2. Due to the COVID-19 crisis and a reprioritization to publishing COVID-19 data, TBS and CSPS did not develop and distribute educational materials about open government for educators as initially envisioned under this milestone. However, the government did carry out planned digital literacy training for public servants and members of the public. CSPS launched a Digital Accelerator course within the Digital Academy that trained 54 participants from across four departments on how to use data in decision-making. [10] The first workshop in 2019 on data rights and ethics had 340 participants. [11] Another dealing with AI had some 250 in attendance. The government’s 2019 annual Digital Open Government Forum included over 1,600 online participants. [12] The GoC reports that 12 webinars were held as foreseen in the action plan, including a public webinar during the 2021 Open Gov Week. Finally, over 350 public servants from across 50 departments participated in the 2019 Global Summit in some capacity, which the government reports participants’ knowledge of open government. In the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 50 participants took part in a session on open government and open science. Limited use of surveys inhibited measurement of the impact of these events on participants’ open government knowledge. [13]

Milestone 1.6 which saw Statistics Canada, in collaboration with TBS, provide more than 20 workshops on the anonymization of datasets, was completed. [14]

Limited progress was made on milestone 1.7 which sought to provide microsimulation models to help explain to citizens how the government uses models to design programs and to estimate their impacts. By December 2020, the project’s technical infrastructure was partially in place and funding was designated. However, it too, was delayed as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. [15]