Championing Open Government in the Public Health Agency of Canada
By Craig Cluney on June 18, 2018
Craig Cluney In November 2017, the President of the Public Health Agency of Canada asked me to serve as the Agency's Open Government Champion. Like other Champions, my primary role is to ensure that the initiative becomes part of the culture and way of doing business in the organization and remains a priority with senior management. Starting in this new role, I was aware that being open and…
Does principled engagement lead to increased trust?
By Laura Wesley on June 12, 2018
Recently we published public engagement principles for the Government of Canada. This was part of our Open Government commitment to Enable Open Dialogue and Open Policy Making. We were delighted by how many people helped us along the way, which Thom has written about. This post explains what we intend to do with these principles, and how it helps us move towards a more participatory approach to…
The path to Canada’s open dialogue engagement principles
By Thom Kearney on May 24, 2018
Working in open government means learning how to listen to citizens and stakeholders. When it comes to how the Government of Canada approaches citizen engagement, over and over again we have heard a recurring theme: it must be authentic and meaningful. To help us achieve this goal, we’ve developed a set of principles and guidelines with the goal of ensuring that the Government of Canada…
A Study on Citizen Engagement
By Laura Wesley on May 14, 2018
This blog is the second in a series that starts with “Canada participates in peer knowledge exchange,” explaining how Canada is working with international partners to explore possible links between citizen engagement and trust in government. In a healthy democracy, Canadians have trust in their democratic processes, and are engaged in how government works. The data, however, shows trust in…
Update on creating Canada’s Fourth National Action Plan on Open Government
By Open Government Team on May 10, 2018
Thanks to all of you who participated in sharing your ideas on what you’d like to see in Canada’s 4th National Action Plan on Open Government for 2018-2020! We heard from over 9,500 of you both online and in person and have received over 5,000 comments, ideas and questions. We’re now working to carefully analyze all of your ideas, and we have started the process of co-creating draft commitments…
Towards more transparent and accountable government spending
By The Honourable Scott Brison on May 8, 2018
In 2015, Canadians elected our Liberal government on a platform that included a pledge to “change Parliament’s financial processes so that government accounting is more consistent and clear.” We are making good on that promise. Canadians, and those elected to represent them, have a right to know where public funds are going and how they will be spent. The ability to follow the money is…
Open Government Week – cause for celebration
By The Honourable Scott Brison on May 7, 2018
Open Government Week – cause for celebration - Transcript I’m Scott Brison, President of the Treasury Board of Canada. The Government of Canada believes that when more Canadians are involved in helping shape our decisions, we make better choices for all Canadians. Open government is good government. That’s why we’re a proud member of the international Open Government Partnership. And…
How Open Government can bring life-changing information to women
By Portia Taylor on March 27, 2018
Working in the open is important to me as an Open Government Advisor for the Government of Canada. Beyond my work to share Open Science progress, I also want to share with Canadians my experience on a theme that that is all about sharing: women lack access to information. Canada’s Open Government cares about women On a daily basis, my work shows me the value of information. I get why Canadians…
Help us make government more open
By The Honourable Scott Brison on March 14, 2018
We make better decisions when more Canadians are involved in shaping them. In that spirit, since last fall, the government has been welcoming your ideas for our commitments in Canada’s 4th plan on Open Government for 2018-2020. The clock is ticking: we need your ideas by March 25. The relationship between government and citizens is changing. Citizens have more information than ever before and…
My take on Open Science
By Dr. Mona Nemer on March 14, 2018
As Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, one of my key mandate objectives is to help make government science fully available to the public. In light of this, I led Canada’s first federal Open Science panel discussion on January 22, 2018. Webcast around the world, the interactive session drew hundreds of participants online and in-studio. Our panelists were experts from academia and government, and…
Canada participates in peer knowledge exchange
By Laura Wesley on March 7, 2018
Canada has come into the spotlight recently as a leader in transparency, participation and accountability on the world stage. The Privy Council Office (PCO) and Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) share a commitment to enable Open Dialogue and Open Policy Making. It is within this context that I was invited to participate in a peer knowledge exchange on “using open government to build…
We’re changing, but hopefully you won’t even notice
By Open Government Team on January 31, 2018
Digital service are never fully “completed,” (iterative development for the win!) and open.canada.ca is no exception. This week, we are excited to say that we’ve made a foundational investment to support future responsiveness by migrating the infrastructure of open.canada.ca to cloud hosting and upgrading to Drupal 8. Ideally, you didn’t even notice. Since 2011, open.canada.ca has been the…
Hackathon inspires girls to gain knowledge and tech courage
By The Honourable Scott Brison on December 14, 2017
I went back to school this week, albeit as a guest speaker to a group of about 90 girls from grades 6 through 8 at D. Roy Kennedy Public School in Ottawa. The occasion was one of 90 Hackergal hackathons held at schools in cities across Canada to interest girls in careers in information technology. Using the Python coding language, they watched their own imaginations come to life on a computer…
What do we do at the Results & Delivery Unit - and why?
By Matthew Mendelsohn on December 4, 2017
I was very pleased that the Government recently launched Canada.ca/results. Last week, the Results and Delivery Unit (RDU) posted the data set we’re using to track mandate letter commitments at open.canada.ca, allowing anyone to poke around in the data and analyze it as they’d like. In my first blog post, I’d like to share my broader reflections on the core work of the RDU and describe our role…
Global Leadership in Open Government is Canadian
By The Honourable Scott Brison on November 30, 2017
As you may know, Canada recently accepted a new leadership role with the Open Government Partnership (OGP) as co-chair for a one-year term. Last week, I represented our country in this role by participating in the OGP’s Americas Regional Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This meeting was an opportunity for OGP members, civil society organizations, academics and citizens to come together and…
