Winnipeg, MB - As part of the City of Winnipeg's dedication to openness and transparency, 27 new opportunities have been identified across City departments to improve data sharing in a low-cost, high-benefit manner, using the City's Open Data Portal.
“The commitment I made to Winnipeggers was to see an ongoing effort to improve the way information flows out of the City. The report titled ‘Open and Accessible Data Initiative - Machine Readable Format’ heard at EPC this week is an important step in that effort.” said Mayor Bowman. “I look forward to the policy that the public service will develop, and the ongoing efforts to release more information to the public.”
Among the 27 identified data sharing (dataset) opportunities are:
- Water quality test results
- Waste pickup statistics
- Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service patient offloads
- Lane closures
- Traffic counts
- River levels
- Winnipeg Police Service crime reports
- Recreation registrations
Through the course of its operations, the City of Winnipeg maintains large amounts of information. This report and the policy work coming from it, signal a significant step forward in ongoing efforts to improve the open government position of the City of Winnipeg. The publishing of data will continue to respect privacy legislation by ensuring data sets do not contain personally identifiable information.
The City of Winnipeg’s Open Data Portal was launched in July 2014 with an initial inventory of 68 data sets available to the public, and open 24/7. In November 2014, the Winnipeg Public Service added data sets established to support enhanced 311 performance reporting.
Open Data is information that is widely available, in a format that can be read by a computer and is made available for anyone to use, transform or republish without restriction. It normally only requires that the data source be cited.