On May 21st, 2009 the City of Vancouver passed a motion that directed City Staff to begin sharing the data and information the city collects, to share this data in open standards and to place open source on an equal footing with proprietary software.
Below is a simple version of the motion - one that could serve as a template for other cities.
Consequently, this page is designed to be a place where interested citizens, politicians and public citizens other cities can suggest changes, propose edits, copy and repurpose the template. If your city has passed a motion that addresses open data, open standards and/or open source, let us know and we will post the motion to this website so other cities can leverage the work of others.
The Open City Motion
WHEREAS [the City]is committed to bringing the community into City Hall by engaging citizens, and soliciting their ideas, input and creative energy;
WHEREAS municipalities around the world have an opportunity to dramatically lower their costs by collectively sharing and supporting software they use and create;
WHEREAS the total value of public data is maximized when provided for free or where necessary only a minimal cost of distribution;
WHEREAS when data is shared freely, citizens are enabled to use and re-purpose it to help create a more economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable city;
WHEREAS [the City] needs to look for opportunities for creating economic activity and partnership with the creative tech sector;
WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to city information by citizens and businesses and improved coordination and efficiencies across municipal boundaries and with federal and provincial partners;
WHEREAS [the City] has incredible resources of data and information
WHEREAS digital innovation can enhance citizen communications, support the brand of the city as creative and innovative, improve service delivery, support citizens to self-organize and solve their own problems, and create a stronger sense of civic engagement, community, and pride.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT [the City] endorses the principles of transparency, civic engagement, and innovation through:
- Open and Accessible Data: [the City] will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;
- Open Standards: [the City] will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
- Open Source Software: the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with proprietary systems during procurement cycles; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT in pursuit of open data the City will:
- Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data;
- Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats;
- Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public;
- Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) is delivered in a prevailing open-standard format and licensed under permissive terms that allow the data to be treated as in the public domain;
- License any software applications developed by the City such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED THAT the City Manager, and Deputy City Manager responsible for IT and the Mayor’s office be tasked with developing an action plan for implementation of the above.
Great news! I look forward to seeing what data is made available.
I attended last week’s Vancouver PHP group meeting at the new conference center, ‘Open Web, Vancouver’.
It has been fascinating over the last few years to see how PHP and other open source products are moving from the realm of geeks and software folk into tools for the whole population to both use and benefit from. This year it seemed that more than half the conference had little to do with php as such, and the focus was definitely on the ‘open’ of open source.
In particular I was most impressed by David Eaves’ presentation, where he outlined the rational and reality of the motion described above, and wish to congratulate all who were involved in both the motion’s drafting, proposing and adoption. I was however disappointed that Councilor Andrea Rymer, who was, I understand, the motion’s main driving force, failed to make it to the presentation, I would have liked to hear her talk.
Although I am not a ‘Vancouverite’, I will be presenting a copy of the motion to my local council, here in Whistler, BC, and will be interested to see if anyone is prepared to ‘run with it’.