Backgrounder

Open Data Portal

On March 17, 2011, the Government of Canada launched the pilot project for an online Open Data Portal.

During public consultations on the Digital Economy Strategy, Canadians called for open data to be made available in more usable and accessible formats.

Open Data is about offering Government data in a more useful and machine readable formats to enable citizens, the private sector and non-government organizations to leverage it in innovative and value-added ways.

The Open Data Portal is a one-stop shop for federal Government data, providing data that can be downloaded free of charge. The portal facilitates access to datasets available on websites to citizens, researchers, voluntary organizations and the private sector. Application developers can reuse and mashup the data from the portal for commercial purposes, research, or community services to benefit all Canadians in a variety of ways.

This pilot portal will initially bring together more than 260,000 datasets from the following ten participating departments available to all Canadians: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Citizenship and Immigration Canada; Environment Canada; Department of Finance Canada; Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Library and Archives Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Statistics Canada; Transport Canada; and the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Examples of the data sets to be made available by federal departments through the Open Data Portal include:

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

• Historical Milk Production by Calendar Year
• Number of Dairy Cows by Province

Citizenship and Immigration Canada

• Applications Processed Abroad and Processing Times
• Permanent Resident Summary by Mission

Environment Canada

• Climate Data (in the context of the range of weather data available to the public)
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting, Emissions Data

Department of Finance Canada

• Financial data on government assets, liabilities, investments, expenditures, savings, transactions and conditions in fiscal reference tables

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

• Canadian Tides and Water Levels Data Archive
• Maps and data via MAPSTER

Library and Archives Canada

• Soldiers of the First World War - CEF
• Maps, Plans and Charts of Canada

Natural Resources Canada

• CanTopo, Canada (new generation of topographic maps)
• CanVec, Canada (digital cartographic reference product)

Statistics Canada

• Consumer Price Index, by province (monthly)
• Gross domestic product at basic prices, by industry (monthly)

Transport Canada

• Civil Aircraft Register Database

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

• Access to Information and Privacy Statistics

The Open Data Portal is available at www.data.gc.ca. The pilot phase will take place over a 12-month period, during which the Government will continue to increase the number of datasets available to users and the number of participating departments.

The Open Data Portal is part of the Government of Canada’s efforts to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all Canadians.