Vancouver Open Gov Lunch Re-Cap & Recent News
Our first Open Government Lunch took place in a committee room at City Hall on Friday, June 3rd from 12pm to 1pm. It was a fantastic chance to hear more about what people were interested in or passionate about, where they were coming from and the diversity of topics that brought them there.
Some of the topics and questions we touched upon included…
- What is the appropriate role of governments when it comes to APIs? Should staff be investigating how to make read-write APIs available, or are governments better off taking those resources to make apps that enable citizens to do what they want to? What are the pros and cons of each approach, and what examples exist that illustrate these clearly? (Are the pros and cons that are issue, sector or service-specific?)
- Bridging the Solitudes: open government and open data have a lot in common, but also come from very different traditions of practice, which can result in tension (as recently manifested the blog post by long-time City Hall reporter Frances Bula, and comments by local tech entrepreneur and open data supporter Boris Mann). In what ways do these efforts overlap, and in what ways might they take away from each other?
- Open 311: Vancouver has a 311 system. Both standards and precedent exist for Open 311 systems, which allow third-party apps to both report and retrieve existing reports made by citizens. There was some interest in making this the focus of a meetup or event. If you are interested in helping make this meetup or event a reality, let Karen know by replying to this email, and she will convene a list of volunteers to work more on this.
- Sharing applications: The City can play a unique role in helping applications based on open data to find audiences and users, and to improve through receiving feedback and collaboration. How should the City refer to visualizations that people do with its data, without necessarily endorsing them as fully-supported City’s services? Are there other places (like Portland) who have figured out how best to do it?
- And since we’d mentioned it, here’s a link to that picture we mentioned of Luke Closs’ low-tech, high-concept, and very hands-on data visualization based on recently-released data from Vancouver about councillors’ expenditures, made during Open Gov West 2011 and based on a slide from keynote presenter Tiego Peixoto.
Want to see more of these events in the future? We’d love to see future lunches happen and we could use your help getting them off the ground! Contact Karen to find out more about how to help volunteer as a co-organizer.
Some open Government-related stories in Vancouver…
City of Vancouver & FOI: Local reporters Chad Skelton and Frances Bula each write about their experiences covering the City of Vancouver and how Freedom of Information requests figure (or don’t) in their work. Be sure to check out discussion on Frances’ story, highlighting perceptions and tensions between those seeking open government and those advocating for open government data.
Parks Board outreach: Malcolm Bromley, the Executive Director of the Vancouver Parks Board, is noted in this Vancouver Sun piece on his approach to public engagement during a dispute.
Keep in touch with Open Gov West – and give us your ideas!
Find us on Twitter (@OpenGovWest) or Facebook, or get in touch with Karen, the Vancouver liaison for Open Gov West, directly (by replying to this email) or chatting with Karen or Sarah at one of our events. What does the future of Open Government advocacy in Vancouver look like to you? Please get in touch or leave a comment here!
