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May

2009

globeandmail.com: The visible city: Will public data end up online?

Frances Bula reports on Vancouver City Council's plans to make city information and statistics publicly accessible:
QUOTE
The idea is that everyone from programmers to curious residents could use city data to do anything from tracking their garbage-truck driver on his route to mapping where the worst landlords' buildings are.

The notion - being pioneered in such places as Toronto, Washington and San Francisco - is that the more information people have, the more cities can tap into the collective energy of their residents to develop new applications or get more involved in the way the city works.
UNQUOTE

www.theglobeandmail.com/...TPStory

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The move to liberate government records was welcomed by the provincial organization that monitors the state of information more closely than any other, the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

"There is more and more information available in computer files, but the trend, unfortunately, so far has been that increasingly that information is restricted," said Richard Rosenberg, a computer-science professor who is the association's president. He started working with computers in the 1960s, and there was hope the technology would be a great tool for democracy.

Instead, governments have become more wary about releasing information, especially in B.C.

"There's this underlying feeling from bureaucrats and politicians that releasing information would come back to haunt them."