A visit from the open data bunny

Easter bunny crop 600p

Can you find any easter eggs?

In 2014 I had the privilege of traveling across Canada in a jet plane, as well as on the internet, to listen to what some Canadians had to say about Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government.

The purpose of this post is to introduce you to one of the outputs of that exercise; the release of all the consultation comments collected as open data. Some of this data might be relevant to the conversation on principles for engagement between governments and citizens. Part of that conversation is taking place at the Canadian Open Dialogue Forum next week in Ottawa.

This dataset is the same one I used to perform some high level qualitative analysis that informed the development of the action plan for 2014-16. That analysis is described in the what we heard report. My thinking is that the data may contain some undiscovered insights, some easter eggs if you will. Easter eggs you might be able to find.

The data contains the actual text of comments collected, as well as metadata and the codes we applied during the analysis. One of these is the “core code” (data, info, or dialogue). Filter the comments by the dialogue core code and you end up with 322 comments that might be fun to analyze in the context of the conversation around principles. These comments have location, theme, subthemes and other metadata to play with.

Here is a link to the data and release notes on the open.canada web site.  If you are up for a little easter egg hunt, please explore.

Be sure to share your discoveries using the hashtags #CODF16 and #OpenGovCan, or leave a comment here.

Hoppy easter everybody!

Thom

 

March 2016 Update

This is my annual(ish) update where I send you a few words on my recent experience, and then a few more about an event that you might like to attend.

As you might know, I have been working in Open Dialogue at the Open Government Secretariat, which is part of the Chief Information Officer’s Branch, at the Treasury Board Secretariat in the Government of Canada. What that means is that I have had the opportunity to design and practice high calibre citizen engagement, and perhaps provide a nudge towards better engagement across the enterprise. It has been a most interesting 18 months, and I am hoping for an opportunity to help implement some of the new government’s commitments to openness and collaboration.

In addition to being an advocate for transparency and collaboration in the Government of Canada, I am also addicted to teaching, mostly at Algonquin’s Advertising and Marketing Communication Management Program. For the last few years I have been conducting two courses:

  1. For graduating students I curate and deliver a Professional Practice speaker’s series designed to help them develop self awareness and networking skills. If you have a story to that you think would be insightful to a marketing communications student about to graduate, I would be happy to chat about you speaking to the class.
  2. I also teach first year students a course about why consumers do what they do, and how you can sometimes influence behaviour through clever messaging.

I learn a lot from teaching, much of which is applicable to a changing public service, and I am happy to share, so feel free to connect if you think I might know something of use to you in your work.

The event of interest is about policy making in the digital age. This year promises to be an exciting one for citizen engagement in Canada, and this conference just might mark a pivotal moment in our democracy. Taking place in Ottawa, March 31-April 1, the Canadian Open Dialogue Forum (Open 2016), aims to “bring together 300 participants for conversations about the untapped potential of open dialogue, and how the convergence of data, information and dialogue could create new opportunities for prosperity.” I understand there is a buy 2 tickets and get 3 offer in place until March 13. Simply email info@codf.ca with the names of your two paid registrants and the name and email of your free registration.

I’m pretty excited about the potential of this gathering and hope to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this message, I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to.

All the best for 2016,

Thom