Kick-Off for CODE

The Government of Canada is partnering with XMG Studio to host a nationwide Open Data appathon – an intense 48-hour coding sprint where innovators compete to build applications (apps) using federal government data from data.gc.ca.  Coined the Canadian Open Data Experience (CODE), this event will be held February 28 – March 2, 2014.

It’s part of an ongoing effort to expand our Open Data and Open Government initiatives, enhancing government transparency and making information easier to access. You can learn more by visiting our “About CODE” page, or sign up at XMG’s site for the event.

How We’re Getting Ready

The Government of Canada is providing the raw material for CODE: the data on data.gc.ca. And while we’re hosting over 189,000 different datasets, we want coders and developers to get as much material to work with to make great things at CODE.

To work toward that goal, on December 4th 2013 we brought together a group—representing 48 different departments, agencies, and Crown corporations—for a kick-off workshop to build our path to the CODE. We took on four different questions:

• What datasets might be interesting and useful for participants?
• What apps would Canadians like to see built?
• What application programming interfaces (APIs) would help?
• Who should know about CODE, and how do we reach them?

This led to a wealth of ideas and a lot of work to do. Between now and February 28 (and beyond), we’ll be working within our Government of Canada Open Data community to turn those ideas into datasets and APIs. We’ll highlight the best for use at CODE on the Featured Datasets page, but that will only scratch the surface of what’s available.

And, of course, we’ll keep updating data.gc.ca and this blog.

What You Can Do

If you’re a developer or learning how to build apps, you can sign up for CODE. You can participate virtually from anywhere in Canada, or apply to participate in person at the event hub in Toronto. In the meantime, you can also check out what datasets are available.

And of course, you can provide feedback to the data.gc.ca team at any time, suggest additional datasets, or leave a comment on this post. Is there anything you’d like us to cover in the near future?