RECOMMANDATION 1

The Government of Canada continue to implement its open data action plan and report back to the Committee on its progress by 31 March 2015. In addition, the Government of Canada should report back to the Committee on the implementation of its commitments in relation to the G8 Open Data Charter.

RECOMMANDATION 2

The Government of Canada should make its datasets available by default to the public free of charge through its open data portal.

RECOMMANDATION 3

The Government of Canada should examine the possibility of including Crown corporations in the list of organizations covered by its directive on open government.

RECOMMANDATION 4

The Government of Canada, in its directive on open government, should require departments to publish an annual progress report with respect to their release of datasets on the open data portal.

RECOMMANDATION 5

The Government of Canada, in its directive on open government, should require departments to document the reason for which a particular dataset will not be released on the open data portal and publish this justification as part of its inventory of datasets.

RECOMMANDATION 6

The Government of Canada continue to take all precautionary measures to ensure the confidentiality of data, using the most current techniques to ensure that information published on its open data portal cannot be linked to a particular individual or organization. In addition, the Government of Canada should consider engaging an independent organization to verify whether all the necessary steps are taken to ensure confidentiality of data before its release on the federal government’s open data portal.

RECOMMANDATION 7

The Government of Canada should develop guidelines for public servants so they are able to ensure that confidential information is not revealed through the release of datasets on the federal government’s open data portal.

RECOMMANDATION 8

The Government of Canada should work with provincial, territorial and municipal governments to standardize metadata for all of the high value datasets identified in the G8 Open Data Charter.

RECOMMANDATION 9

The Government of Canada should establish working group level bodies organized by sector to develop metadata standards.

RECOMMANDATION 10

Through federal departments and agencies and through Crown corporations, the Government of Canada should provide additional data by demographic group, geographic region and by industry on its open data portal.

RECOMMANDATION 11

The Government of Canada should collaborate with provincial, territorial and municipal governments to provide data at more granular levels of geography and industry.

RECOMMANDATION 12

That the Government of Canada should release forward-looking data, such as projections and forecasts, on its open data portal.

RECOMMANDATION 13

The Government of Canada should assess whether there are restrictions in existing federal legislation which prevent the release of certain datasets on its open data portal, and consider making legislative changes where appropriate. In addition, the Government of Canada consider open data requirements when introducing new legislation.

RECOMMANDATION 14

The Government of Canada should update the Access to Information Act in order to require federal departments and agencies to provide datasets that are in a machine-readable formats when responding to access to information requests for data.

RECOMMENDAITON 15

The Government of Canada accelerate its efforts to harmonize data formats by consulting sectorial roundtables, involving provincial, territorial and municipal governments, and other stakeholders.

RECOMMANDATION 16

The Government of Canada should continue to prioritize the release of high value datasets and align the format of those datasets with its G8 partner countries.

RECOMMANDATION 17

The Government of Canada should update its procurement policies to require that information technology purchases support open data; and that these policies include a requirement in terms of data formats, such as RDF and CSV formats, in order to support the release of open data in machine-readable formats.

RECOMMANDATION 18

The Government of Canada, in collaboration with provincial, territorial and municipal governments, should develop a federated search function to enable users to access open data from all three levels of government through a single point of access.

RECOMMANDATION 19

The Government of Canada should continue to promote its open data portal through additional promotion to the public.

RECOMMANDATION 20

The Government of Canada establish performance measures to evaluate its implementation of open data in line with its commitments under the G8 Open Data Charter and its membership in the Open Government Partnership, and include these performance measures in departmental reports on plans and priorities and departmental performance reports.

RECOMMANDATION 21

The Government of Canada should create a crowdsourcing website where federal departments and agencies can release datasets linked to a particular issue and launch competitions to challenge the public to find ways to create savings for the federal government related to the issue.

RECOMMANDATION 22

The Government of Canada should establish performance measures in consultation with stakeholder groups to evaluate the success of its open data initiative.