Halifax considering open data

Halifax Regional Municipality is looking at the option of making its mapping data on streets, civic numbers, buildings and bus routes freely available to the pub­lic online.

The information is in hot de­mand due to an explosion in the use of global positioning and oth­er mapping systems.

“There are a lot of folks out there who are very creative and would like to build web applica­tions and in order to do that, in many cases, you need mapping data,” says Donna Davis, a data information manager for the city. “People are wanting, for exam­ple, to develop applications that tell when the next bus is coming . . . or build an application where you can identify where potholes are on (a) street.”

City staff plan on bringing the issue to council in February.

Right now, the municipality has a fairly restrictive policy when it comes to accessing and distributing data from its geo­graphic information systems, Ms. Davis said Tuesday.

A policy passed by council in 2006 limits free access to the data to certain groups including school boards, libraries and rec­reation groups. They must sign a data licensing agreement to ob­tain the information.

Utilities, developers and busi­nesses have to pay for the data and restrictions exist on how they can use it.

In 2006, “council was not pre­pared to allow for the open distri­bution of our data to individuals, who could resell the data or reuse it for commercial purposes, (such as) map making companies,” Ms. Davis said.

However, city staff are taking another look at the issue, in part, because of the huge number of in­dividuals and companies that want the information, and the lack of those willing to pay for it.

“We’ve not had a lot of requests to buy the data. . . . It hasn’t been a big money maker,” she said.

Another concern of the munici­pality is the high number of com­plaints it gets that data used by some mapping companies is out of date.

“Because these various map­ping companies don’t want to buy the data . . . they find other ways to create their data, and it is often out of date. It is not as accurate,” Ms Davis said. “We have people using GPS systems based on these inaccurate maps.”

The city’s geographic informa­tion system details street net­works, civic addresses, buildings, administrative boundaries and Metro Transit routes. It also in­cludes information on property boundaries, cemeteries, sewers, curbs and sidewalks.

“This information is represent­ed graphically in the system, so you can actually use it to make maps, and you can also use it to do analysis,” she said.

The growing trend among mu­nicipal governments across the country is a move toward more “open data” concepts, making more information freely availa­ble to the public, Ms. Davis said.

The City of Toronto, for in­stance, has a website where the public can access geographic data as well as many other types of municipal information in a user-friendly format. Vancouver is also planning to do the same.

“We think that it is probably time that we go back and talk to council . . . and get direction from them to see whether or not they want staff to pursue this idea of more open data access,” Ms. Da­vis said While the city’s focus is about crafting a policy on distribution of geographic information, dis­cussions could extend to other types of information.

Coun. Jennifer Watts (Con­naught- Quinpool) said she has heard from several residents in her district who want Halif ax to follow the lead of other cities and put in place an open data concept.( cmellor@herald