Mission & Current ProjectsCommunity Data Webinar

June 19, 2013

• Canadian nonprofit civic technology social enterprise• builds online tools to help governments and citizens

engage with each other • Follows two main strategies:

Improve access to government informationMake participation easy, meaningful and fun

Open North: Mission

Connect with us

Twitter: @opennorth

Facebook: OpenNorth.NordOuvert

Blog: www.opennorth.ca/blog

Open North: MissionGoals & Principles:• to deliver non-partisan, free, open source tools to access decision-making processes to work with governments to design new participatory processes and to ensure citizen’s voices are heard

• to increase the number of ways citizens can engage with elected officials and government information

• to fulfill a support role to nonprofits and media with our expertise in using technology to make information easier to access and use

• to establish data standards that make publishing and sharing information easier

Civic Engagement Tools:

• Citizen Budget - online budget simulations platform

• MyCityHall.ca - government monitoring and petition platform

Open Government Data:

• Represent - open database of elected officials and electoral boundaries

• Open511 - open data standard for sharing road events

• Popolo - open data standard for legislatures

Open North: Our Work

How we’re impacting municipaldecision-making

an online customizable budget simulator that allows you to consult residents on the their budget priorities

Citizen Budget

Highlights:• residents interact with real budget data to form realistic budget decisions

• puts citizens in the shoes of municipal administrators as they navigate trade-offs

• unlike traditional consultations, residents can respond at a time that is convenient for them

• creates data-rich insights for municipal staff and generates lists of engaged residents

Citizen Budget

Case Study: BudgetPlateau.com

• Out of 100,000 residents:• Over 4,400 visited the consultation’s website• Over 700 submitted in 2012, up from 415 in 2011

• In 2011, 49% of submissions were made in the first week, and 73% in the first half of the 2-month process

• Positive response from residents and local media

BudgetPlateau.com Results

Thanks to this unique online tool, citizens can engage in an educational exercise similar to the budget

choices we face. At the end of the consultation, we will be able to make choices that take into account

people's concerns.Luc Ferrandez, Plateau Mont-Royal mayor

BudgetPlateau.com InsightsThe administration was able to directly integrate results from the consultation into their next budget, for example:

•72% of respondents were interested in replacing one waste collection per week with a food waste collection

•64% were in favour of new public art spending, on average on the order of $37,023 annually

a government monitoring & petition platform that will allow citizens to track to activity of local elected officials and influence decision made at city hall

MyCityHall.ca

Highlights:•sign up for keyword alerts from council documents, minutes, by-laws, agendas and votes

•ask questions to & view responses from your elected officials

•track and share progress of legislation from first reading through to vote

•monitor councillor activity, including attendance records

•read explainers on how council works and get advice on how to lobby council

MyCityHall.ca

How we’re increasing accessto government information

Representthe largest database of elected officials and administrative boundaries for the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government in Canada

Highlights:•Includes all members of parliament, provincial legislatures, and municipal councillors for 50% of the country’s population2 Drupal integration modules: webform and CiviCRM10+ applications of the API to date

•Used by the Tyee to power their 2013 British Columbia Election Map & Guide

Represent

Open511suite of products to help governments and citizens better handle disruptive events in the road system

Highlights:•developing an open API for publishing road events (accidents, construction etc) and other mobility related data

•open data standards which seek to improve interoperability between regions is hugely beneficial to citizens

•Open North leads a team of 8 collaborators from government, industry and academia

•Open511 received a substantial grant from the Government of Canada’s GeoConnections program

Open511

Popoloan international open government data specification relating to the legislative branch, created through community consensus

Highlights:•to help government spend less time transforming data and more time applying it to the problems they face

•improves ability of civic developers to create government transparency, monitoring and engagement websites, by developing reusable open source components that implement the specifications, such as MyCityHall.ca and OpenGovernment.org

•commitments to adopt from open government community: mySociety, Participatory Politics Foundation, Sunlight Labs

Popolo

Contact us:info@opennorth.ca

Blog:blog.opennorth.ca

Follow us on twitter:@opennorth

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