Mission & Current Projects Community 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 information Make participation easy, meaningful and fun Open North: Mission Connect with us Facebook: OpenNorth.NordOuvert Blog:

Open North: Mission Goals & 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 municipal decision-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 mayorLuc Ferrandez, Plateau Mont-Royal mayor

BudgetPlateau.com Insights The 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 access to government information

Represent the 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

Open511 suite 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

Popolo an 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: Blog: blog.opennorth.ca Follow us on Volunteer with us! To learn more: