What We Heard – Summary Report

Designing for productive conversation

As open government matures, we have found that we needed to spend more time on more specific topics to work through the history, context, and next steps. Increasingly, we have designed sessions based on specific themes to guide discussion, rather than holding sessions focused on open government generally. While there is value in discussing commitment ideas with people with a range of interests, we often found that there was too much breadth at workshop tables. For example, if someone attended to discuss access to information reform and sat with an open source software advocate, the space to discuss either important topic is suddenly cut in half.

As examples, we held themed sessions in Alberta on how open data can support the Canadian not-for-profit community, and met with University of Toronto students on how the digital world could support open policy making. Our session in Halifax with the African Nova Scotian community focused on inclusive, user-friendly open government.

Prioritizing inclusion and respect

We wanted to ensure that both our engagement process and our National Action Plan respected the spirit of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. We wanted to foster an ongoing dialogue with interested people to hear their perspectives on open government and the right directions for commitments. This included participating in a data governance gathering in partnership with the British Columbia First Nations Information Governance Initiative and meeting with people invited through the Alberta First Nations Information Governance Centre. These and other conversations were important and insightful, and informed the plan’s approach to data governance and how open government can both impact, and support, Indigenous community-building.

Meeting the community where it was

The team had many opportunities to discuss open government during community events, including a Gatineau IAP2 Conference, the Student Policy Conference at the University of Ottawa, and the Privacy and Access Council of Canada Congress.

Internal engagement

Our engagement on the 2018-2020 National Action Plan was initially shaped by discussions with our colleagues in Government of Canada departments and agencies. We have a number of internal working groups we engage with regularly to advance openness and transparency initiatives government-wide. As we started designing our engagement process, we reached out to these working groups to ask them for their ideas and suggestions for the plan as well. Their input is not captured in our engagement dataset, but it did help to shape our early thinking about what we may have been able to include in the National Action Plan.

Later in the engagement process, as we started to build up a significant amount of data on what Canadians were telling us, we reached out to departments and agencies to ask how the Government of Canada could respond to your ideas.

For the open government team, this work was a balance of trying to be more ambitious in responding to your ideas and suggestions, while also staying realistic about what we can achieve within the 2-year timeline for the National Action Plan.

Open government workshops

During the idea-generating and development phase, in-person workshops were designed as a forum for open dialogue that could surface new and innovative ideas for the plan. Workshops followed the same agenda, usually over 2 to 2.5 hours. The sessions began with a short presentation on open government to date and how National Action Plans are developed. Participants then worked in smaller groups to discuss commitment ideas. Participants could also fill out individual feedback forms if their table discussions left out ideas that were important to them. Facilitator notes, table notes, and feedback forms were all collected and transcribed into the master dataset of input.

We also collected input during webinars through videoconferencing and polling software (WebEx and Sli.do) as participants discussed ideas virtually.

Data analysis

We analyzed comments and ideas to categorize each one into a high-level theme and then a more granular sub-theme. This allowed us to create a high-level overview of the feedback, and it helped us to be more objective in identifying priority areas. It is one thing to read an idea and find it compelling, but it is also important to review analyzed data and see what issues most of our participants were talking about. For instance, we might hear ideas like “people need skills to use open data” (an open data theme) and “people need to understand government to engage” (an open dialogue theme) but we would only connect the two through the “civic literacy” subtheme. Thematic analysis allowed us to identify common threads across the input data and let us put figures and rigour around statements like “many of you told us that civic literacy is foundational to realizing the benefits of open government.”

We looked at previously identified themes (e.g., open data), and new potential areas of work (e.g., healthy democracy). Each comment was reviewed by at least three people to minimize personal bias and ensure the ideas were categorized consistently. We paid particular attention to ideas that had generated many comments or votes.

In parallel, we experimented with two different artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to assess the reliability of automated coding. We used previous manually-coded open government engagement input as training data. The accuracy rate was impressive for high-volume themes (e.g. open data and open dialogue) and less so for others (e.g. social innovation). We see a lot of potential for AI support for engagement data analysis in government, but only if we see a critical mass of departments adhering to a data framework and releasing open consultation data for comparability.

Because of this, for the development of the 2018-2020 National Action Plan we relied on our manual coding process to ensure that the analysis was reliable.

The following figure explains our process and how we worked with the data captured during our consultations.

Figure 6 - Text version

1. Engage and listen:
   • Get involved questionnaire.
   • Engagement activities online and in-person.
2. Document and collect:
   • Capture comments, transcribe, clean up, transform for consistency.
3. Group and analyze
   • Code for relevance and emerging themes.
   • Iterative reports, discovery & sense making.
4. Share, discuss and decide
   • Grouped comments shared with potential partners. Incorporated into draft commitments where possible.
5. Act and report
   • Data and What We Heard released with draft report. Implementation dashboard.

Better engagement on policies, programs, and services

You told us that the Government of Canada should engage more frequently, in a more meaningful way, and should include marginalized communities across the country. You expressed a desire for truly open dialogue with government that represents and genuinely considers diverse perspectives at multiple stages of the policy process. You provided insight into the wide range of barriers that people might face in participating in public discussions. You also told us that we should be more collaborative and include Canadians in policy-making, not just in generating ideas or providing feedback on drafts, but throughout implementation and the evaluation of results.

“Better policies and programs: Open policymaking represents an opportunity to create and prioritize better programs and projects that are more in line with what is needed and desired by Canadians.”

We want to engage more in the coming years and be more inclusive. We’re committed to engaging in ways that ensure that the voices and experiences of marginalized and under-represented communities are represented. As part of our commitment on Feminist and inclusive dialogue, we will test ways to make government engagement and consultation processes more open to everyone, and share that learning across the Government of Canada. We’re taking steps to make engagement part of skills developed for federal public servants, and provide a guide for gender-based analysis in engagement processes.

“Principle for engagement should be to start with those who are impacted worst and most.”

Governance and accountability

You told us that you want us to be accountable for acting on people’s contributions to engagement processes. You want us to communicate earlier and more clearly, and give feedback to communities after engaging with them. You also want us to have meaningful public participation in shaping open policy processes: who are we reaching out to, how we communicate, and what is done with the input.

We have included public engagement processes in many of our commitments, including commitments on Corporate transparency, Digital government and services, Open science, and Access to Information, to name a few. We are also working to make our processes more open and transparent to the public by publishing our open government consultation data.

The Government of Canada is working on a consultation data standard to encourage and enable more programs to release their full set of inputs, to create accountability and to facilitate external analysis. While this work is not reflected directly in our National Action Plan, we will continue to work with departments wherever possible to ensure they publish the results of their public engagement processes, and they explain how public input influenced policies, programs, and services.

“[You] need to get more people in the room (diversity).”

“Are you ensuring platforms are accessible in the current engagement process? What have you done to include groups like Indigenous persons and persons with disabilities, so they do not experience barriers in participating in this important conversation?”

We also received multiple calls to collect more demographic data about consultation participants, to track and to be held accountable for our outreach and inclusion efforts. After much discussion, we decided not to pursue a commitment in this direction, prioritizing participants’ privacy instead. We worried that disclosing additional personal information might create barriers for precisely those people we were trying to reach. People can sometimes be less candid in their suggestions and comments if they feel government is collecting their data in order to track their input. For our engagement processes, the problem remains of how to balance the need to collect more detailed demographic information with the need to protect our participants’ privacy.

Data quality and standards

One of the clearest themes from your input was that we need to do a lot more work on data: quality, standards, timeliness, and formats.

As part of our User-friendly open government commitment, we will be continuing our work to ensure that the data on open.canada.ca is high-quality and high value. We have committed to develop new data quality guidelines and a new data quality rating system. We have also committed to reviewing datasets already on open.canada.ca to ensure they meet the highest quality standards. Finally, as part of our Open government community commitment, we will work with partners in provincial and territorial governments on a pilot project to standardize five high-value datasets across Canada.

In previous National Action Plan cycles, we specifically sought out opinions on whether to prioritize data quality or maximize release. The principle we arrived at was “release early, improve often.” However, since then, we have heard an increasing number of stakeholders suggest that the approach should be to focus on high-quality and high-value datasets. We need to find a way to reconcile that request with our 2014 open-by-default policy and get the best of both worlds. This will be an ongoing focus of our work. For example, it will be addressed through the new Digital Policy for the Government of Canada, as outlined in our Digital government and services commitment. 

We also heard more requests than ever for developer-friendly formats, real-time data updates, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and better standards for server uptime. The user base and use cases are diversifying over time, and we’re adjusting to evolving requirements. You also told us that there’s a lot of variance between federal organizations in data governance, and that we need more guidance available to enable consistency. To that end, we recently launched an Open Government Guidebook, and we’re going to work with our partners across the Government of Canada to make sure the data offered on open.canada.ca is the best possible.

Connecting data and people

You told us that we should connect data with people. Specifically, you want us to:

• provide more context on how data was collected
• publish examples of how data has been used
• provide suggestions for civic technology projects or public problems to solve
• host thematic web-based information sessions about data holdings
• make it easier to reach out to data curators directly

At the core of this theme, we found a few foundational principles:

• having data online doesn’t mean it’s always findable or understandable
• it’s hard to conduct research or make business or social policy decisions on data alone, unless the data is impeccably documented

Improved guidance like the Open Government Guidebook will help with the documentation side, ensuring data is well described so the context is understandable to our users. We’re also working to encourage Government of Canada organizations to create more direct links between raw data, the work of government, and the real-world benefits for Canadians.

“Engagement really needs to be on themes: poverty reduction, eco-development... people do not respond to abstract concepts like open data but do mobilize to issues that need open data to succeed.”

For example, as part of our Open science commitment, the National Research Council will launch a platform to connect Canadians to science professionals, allowing you to better understand what federal scientists are working on. As part of our User-friendly open government commitment, we’ll curate a series of data webinars to help bridge the supply and demand of data. We’ve also committed to creating a space on the website for stories of open data impact, including user-submitted stories, datasets, visualizations, and reports to build community and conversation around the data.

“When quality issues are identified, have a way to track the issues defined in an open way... publish them as open data and make sure there is appropriate attention to fix the quality issues.”

We also heard that we should have a way to openly track issues with both datasets and the open.canada.ca website. We currently have comment threads on each dataset so that if we solve a user problem once, it’s visible to all future users. We continue to seek opportunities to enhance the open.canada.ca website and the quality of the data assets available. We continue to aim for a high level of responsiveness to feedback. 

User experience

Many comments throughout the engagement emphasized that the data and information ecosystem for a government starts with user-friendly websites, findability, and optimization.

“Need more intuitive websites and visualizations – many in the community expressed that they have no idea how to figure out who is responsible for what or what government is working on.”

You told us that Government of Canada websites are often hard to understand and navigate, and that solving that issue starts with knowing our users. We agree, and the Government of Canada is currently working through top tasks and high-impact services to optimize web interactions for usability and inclusive, accessible design. We also committed in our Digital government and services commitment to create a service dashboard about our progress optimizing government websites in the interest of transparency and accountability.

Open data and access to information and privacy requests

You also told us to improve the open data and Access to Information (ATI) portals. We heard about issues with findability, broken links, and a need for an updated ATI request service.

We also heard a range of functionality requests – beyond those covered in the open data section, above - including data previews and visualization tools.

We will work in the coming months to make major improvements to open.canada.ca and the ATI systems. As part of our Access to information commitment, we will make it easier for Canadians to understand how to make access to information and personal information requests. We will also make it easier for departments to provide access to information responses electronically, so that requesters can get their documents in a digital format if they want to.

On open.canada.ca, we will be making some much-needed improvements to the site navigation and information architecture. We want to make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for on our open government portal. After all, that information is there for you. As part of our User-friendly open government commitment, we will be reporting publicly more regularly on the improvements we are making to open.canada.ca

Create a public registry of beneficial ownership

You told us that you feel Canada is lagging behind in preventing corporate malfeasance, including money laundering and corruption, and that Canada should consider the policy case for creating a registry of information on beneficial owners of corporations. A beneficial owner is anyone who receives the benefits of ownership of a corporation, even if they’re not the listed owner. We also received feedback expressing concerns about privacy of personal information and disincentives to economic activity, which we must take into account in assessing the options available.

The federal, provincial, and territorial governments in Canada are already working together to strengthen the transparency of beneficial ownership information, as set out in the Agreement to Strengthen Beneficial Ownership Transparency, announced in December 2017 by Canada’s finance ministers. You told us that it is important this work consider the development of a registry that is open and publicly accessible.

As the responsibility for regulating corporations is divided between the federal government and the provinces and territories, inter-governmental collaboration on this work is important. Federal action alone would only apply to about 10% of Canadian corporations. As such, in the long run, it will be much more effective to develop a consistent approach across Canada that improves timely and appropriate access to beneficial ownership information on all corporations in Canada.

As part of our Corporate transparency commitment, we have committed to continue to engage with stakeholders in civil society, private sector, and academia to explore options for strengthening beneficial ownership transparency. One of the options we have committed to explore is the creation of a public registry. We will also ensure that we equip stakeholders to engage in a meaningful way with government, providing a discussion document on beneficial ownership issues to inform this engagement.

Some stakeholders told us that they think the current commitment falls short of their expectations. However, we believe this commitment will help to strengthen the transparency of beneficial ownership in Canada, and will allow governments to continue to explore options to continue this work in future.

Demonstrate how public money is spent

You told us that it needs to be easier to understand, track, and analyze public spending.

“Reporting on services provided, so you can see how your taxes are being used.”

“Transparency and accountability with respect to where funds come from and how those same funds are spent.”

Specifically, we heard calls for a “citizen’s budget” that explains the Government of Canada’s spending plans in plain language, as well as tools that allow people to search and explore spending by themes or regions.

We heard calls for more explicit links between all the documents in the budget cycle: the estimates, the budget, procurement data, and the public accounts. As part of our Financial transparency and accountability commitment, we have committed to engaging Parliament and Canadians to review our progress in improving the timeliness, completeness, and transparency of the Budget and Main Estimates. We will also expand and improve GC InfoBase, a data exploration and visualization tool for government spending, programs, and results delivered.

“Use and champion open standards -contribute to international standards communities. E.g., OCDS.“

You also told us that you would like to see Canada officially endorse the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) for procurement data. We committed in the next National Action Plan to ensure that Canadians have access to open procurement data, and to pilot OCDS-aligned approaches. The pilot data will include planning, tender, award, contract, and implementation information. We will continue to work with partners throughout the Government of Canada, across the country, and around the world to ensure Canada’s work on open contracting is aligned with leading global practices.

Access to information

A suggestion related to reforming the Access to Information (ATI) regime received the highest number of votes on open.canada.ca. This idea included recommendations for improving the administration of ATI. It also recommended changes to the content of proposed legislative amendments to the Access to Information Act, known as Bill C-58. Bill C-58 would require more information to be proactively disclosed by government institutions, including briefing note titles, ministerial transition binders, question period notes and parliamentary committee binders. Many of you felt C-58 does not go far enough, particularly that it doesn’t address exemptions.

In our Access to information commitment, we noted that a full review of the Access to Information Act will begin within a year of Royal Assent of Bill C-58.

“[There’s an] urgent need for real and substantial review of Canada’s sorely outdated Access to Information Act.”

Some of you expressed concerns about our proposal to commit to further consultation on improving ATI. Consultations on certain targeted changes took place in summer 2016. However, some issues may warrant further exploration through additional and deeper consultations with Canadians, and particularly with Indigenous peoples. It will be important to continue to engage with Indigenous organizations and representatives about how the Access to Information Act needs to evolve to reflect Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, including how information and knowledge of Indigenous communities is protected and made accessible.

We also committed to improving the online request service, to providing plain-language explanations to requestors, and to pursuing other steps to improve the ATI process.

A number of stakeholders told us that they think the current commitments fall short of the changes that are needed. The commitment to a full review of the Access to Information Act and improvements to the ATIP Online Request Service are intended to continue to improve access.

Stakeholder feedback received during the development of Bill C-58 and the National Action Plan on Open Government will inform the full legislative review; your concerns and feedback were received, understood, and appreciated.

Open information

You told us that any information collected or created by the government should be freely accessible to citizens, in line with the “open by default” approach.
We’re working in this direction, and learning as we go. We’ve put in place policies and platforms to support open information by default, and are providing guidance to departments based on the experiences to date across the federal government.

One of the challenges we seek to address is providing more real-time open information while continuing to meet our other obligations; we want everything to be open, but we also want anything that’s publicly available to be accessible to everyone, and available in both official languages. We’ve experimented with releasing draft working documents, and we are currently piloting automated translation of metadata. In the coming months, we plan to experiment with additional automated translation and accessibility tools to maximize the amount of information that can be proactively shared publicly. This work is outlined in our User-friendly open government commitment, where we have committed to expand the Open by Default pilot to make working documents from government officials open by default

“Is crown copyright still relevant in an open government world?”

You also told us that privacy and security need to be at the centre of our thinking, particularly as the effort towards open data and information grows while the technological environment evolves in parallel. The Government of Canada is building capacity for data governance, data ethics, and digital rights and is fully committed to protecting the privacy of citizens, businesses, and institutions. While this work is not captured in the National Action Plan, it will be a focus for a number of Government of Canada departments in the coming years.

Better communication and collaboration across all jurisdictions

You told us that the federal government needs to do a better job collaborating with provinces, territories and municipalities for the sake of data standards and for consistent user experiences.

We collaborate across jurisdictions regularly and enthusiastically. We recognize a need to mature from mutual learning and aligning projects to a more institutionalized approach, focusing on specific areas for pan-Canadian approaches.

For example, this past year we worked with provinces and territories to identify a set of high-value datasets for standardized release, to create maximum comparability and combination of data that includes public spending, water quality, maps, and education. As part of our Open government community commitment for the 2018-2020 Plan, we will work with provinces and territories to pilot standardizing some of these high-value datasets.

You told us you support the idea of a federated data search that we had previously committed to. Building on our federated search portal with the province of Alberta, we have committed to partner with at least two other interested provincial and territorial governments, as well as two municipal governments.

Intergovernmental collaboration also underpins several other commitments falling under other themes, including common contracting data standards (in our Financial transparency and accountability commitment) and beneficial ownership transparency (in our Corporate transparency commitment).

Finally, we will be looking to expand our outreach and collaboration with local governments.

Resourcing civil society and communities for engagement

We heard that more needs to be done to support civil society and community groups. In an era of distributed problem-solving and public participation as a standard policy-making approach, civil society and community organizations need resources to research, analyze, and engage their communities. We have taken some steps to address this in our National Action Plan. For example, as part of our Feminist and inclusive dialogue commitment, we will support initiatives that build the capacity and longer-term viability of women’s organizations. We recognize there is more to do across the whole of government to offer support and resources to the civil society and community groups that keep governments accountable.

We also heard that we need to actively support the public and, in particular, marginalized and underrepresented communities in open policymaking processes. As captured in our Feminist and inclusive dialogue commitment, we plan to test promising new practices for supporting participation and lowering the barriers to engagement.

Finally, as part of our Healthy democracy commitment, we are working to ensure Canada’s democratic institutions are robust and resilient, so that they can effectively represent all Canadians. This will include work to support a healthy and reliable news ecosystem at the domestic level. It will also include work internationally to strengthen governments’ capacity to identify and respond to threats to democracy

Open science for a better society

You told us that the benefits associated with opening access to scientific data and research are far-reaching and have great potential to advance society. In line with the broader open information principle, you told us that not only should the work of government scientists be open, but all federally-funded science.

“We need to be uncomfortably sharing information.”

Other specific ideas included the creation of a centralized archive of open publications, strengthening collaboration between government and academia, and ensuring that scientists can speak freely about their work.

As part of our Open science commitment, we committed to piloting an open science portal to make it easier to access open publications from federal scientists. We also committed to launching a platform to connect people to National Research Council scientists, and to working closely with the scientific community on future actions to build the open science ecosystem. This will include engagement sessions with diverse stakeholders across the country.

“Suggested commitment: Work with Science Based Departments and Agencies to measure the implementation of Open Science.”

We also recognize that there’s a cultural and leadership element to sharing data, information, and scientific works. You told us that complete transparency is required to benefit from open science. Even if the data shared is not “positive”, people want to know the full story. As part of our User-friendly open government commitment, we intend to showcase Canada’s leadership, promote the stories and benefits of open approaches, and provide training and guidance to maximize the soft skills required for open government.

Become a more digital government

You told us that the government needs to have an increased and improved online presence, including more user-friendly applications and websites with greater interoperability with different devices and other jurisdictions.

This is a top priority for the Government of Canada. Former Treasury Board President Scott Brison was appointed as the first-ever Minister of Digital Government. This follows the launch of the Canadian Digital Service, the decision to make the Government of Canada Chief Information Officer a Deputy Minister-level position, the development of digital standards and a single digital policy, and a number of other complementary initiatives.

For open government specifically, we have created a User-friendly open government commitment. As part of this commitment, we will work to improve open.canada.ca to make it more user-friendly. We will also leverage digital tools like webinars to reach out to Canadians to tell them more about the work we are doing.

We have also included a commitment on Digital government and services, which sets out how we will engage with Canadians to understand how they are impacted by the changing roles of data and digital government. Two major centrepieces of this commitment are a new Digital Policy for the Government of Canada and a Data Strategy Roadmap. These will help us chart a path forward to allow departments to better use data and digital solutions to connect with Canadians and make sound decisions.

User-driven digital services

“… In many non-gov service sectors, direct customers’ feedback is the main mechanism for improving services – why not gov? Ongoing DIRECT citizen feedback to services they are getting plus genuine accountability… is needed and can be done.”

“If we knew more about the clients, we could better adapt to fit their needs.”

You told us to get more innovative and creative with service delivery, including leveraging the expertise and capacity that exists outside of government. You asked for “tell us once” approaches so that you don’t have to send the same information to government multiple times for different services. And you asked for transparency about specific services, like the status of applications, and about government’s progress towards service improvement, through dashboards and public reporting on transformation.

You also told us the importance of empathy and responsiveness, and you told us we can’t forget the role of people in a digitally-driven service ecosystem: “Ensure there is someone on the other end.”

We recognize that creating user-driven services means giving users the information they need to understand what kind of standards they can expect. As part of our Digital government and services commitment, we will publish a dashboard of data on service delivery performance for all major service departments. We will also publish analytics on canada.ca website traffic for key service portals.

Build relationships based on respect and trust

We recognize that no individual or group can speak for others, let alone the multitude of Indigenous communities and voices across the country. We do, however, think that it is incredibly important to work with as many communities as possible and continuously expand our understanding in new directions.

“Data sovereignty issues need to be sorted.”

Based on our discussions with Indigenous people, we believe that we haven’t done enough in our work on data and open policy-making. We need to do more to ensure that this work is fair and appropriate for everyone who may be impacted. And this work has to be guided by an ongoing dialogue and a lasting relationship.

As part of our Reconciliation and open government commitment, we will try to identify opportunities for stronger collaboration with Indigenous peoples on open government and data governance. And we will do our own homework as well. All members of the open government team will receive OCAP training so we can better understand how the First Nations principles of Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession apply to our work on open data and information.

Start with understanding

You told us that more needs to be done to ensure that we understand Indigenous peoples’ perspectives on open government, and on government more broadly. You believe that we have to improve the way that we discuss data governance and the collection of information.

“First Nations are distinct and unique with different world views – we must think about and respect the differences in world views. Humility and respect are essential – co-creation or self-determined solutions are the only way to go forward.”

As part of our Reconciliation and open government commitment, we will work in the coming years to build capacity for Indigenous communities and organizations to use data and research their own requirements and needs towards the goal of supporting improved social and economic outcomes.

We also have taken steps to improve our relationship with Indigenous peoples across the country. We will continue to learn and to encourage federal public servants to take courses and training about the rights-based relationships between the Government of Canada and Indigenous peoples.

Understand and support the social and not-for profit sector

You told us that we should support local efforts to use open data for community impact through research, civic technology projects, and social innovation projects. You also told us that the government should take a more proactive stance in understanding the work of the social and not-for-profit sector, so that we can suggest data and resources that might be of interest for social policy and research purposes. Some participants suggested connecting potential public problems with data resources and trying to build community around those ideas.

“How can we encourage the business sector to share data to impact social challenges? Data philanthropy. E.g., could global food production data help solve hunger?”

We also heard that while many not-for-profits could benefit from open data, many are lacking the time, skills, or capacity to fully leverage what’s available. You told us government should work to support these organizations, and should lower the barriers to open data use. You told us that we should streamline and simplify reporting requirements for grant-based projects, using more standardized data.

As part of our User-friendly open government commitment, we will seek to make our work more accessible and understandable to everyone. We will make improvements to our website, increase data standardization, and focus on open government education and awareness-building. The goal of this work is to help Canadians and civil society organizations to more easily access the work we do and connect with us when they need to.

You also told us to continue this dialogue, and to work with businesses and not-for-profit organizations on how these sectors can improve open data sharing.

Open parliament

While this theme was more popular in our 2016 engagement process than it was in 2018, it was still raised by a number of participants. You told us you wanted to see Parliament become more open, including by creating additional channels for public input before votes, providing easier ways to track legislation through the process, strengthening Question Period in the House of Commons, and extending the Access to Information regime to elected officials.

“How do we put the legislative role of government into the hands of the people? A legitimate, open process?”

While we recognize the close links between openness in government and openness in Parliament, the National Action Plan process focuses on what the federal public service can accomplish. We’ve continued discussions and shared comments with organizations better placed to advance this conversation in Canada. We are excited about recent discussions regarding the development of a process for co-creating a Canadian Open Parliament Action Plan. We will continue to work with partners in civil society and in Parliament to support this work in any way we can.

Open data from smart cities initiatives and improved urban data

You asked for two initiatives to support the urban data ecosystem. First, that we maximize the openness of data collected through smart cities initiatives. Second, that we release more, and more granular, foundational geospatial data that can help urban planning and social policy design. We are continuing conversations on both these areas, and we hope to make this part of our work over the coming years, even if it is not reflected directly in the plan.

Feminist and inclusive peer review

As we began the process of developing our National Action Plan, the open government team discussed options for ensuring that the commitments in the plan reflected the needs and expectations of under-represented communities, including equity-seeking groups like women, girls, LGBTQ2 people, racialized communities, persons with disabilities, young Canadians, low-income Canadians, and others. We wanted to ensure that the plan represented not just our own understanding of inclusion, but a broader expertise in inclusive and feminist policy-making.

We therefore decided to reach out to 4 experts to ask them to conduct a peer review of our draft National Action Plan, make recommendations, and suggest changes. Our 4 peer reviewers were:

• Nasma Ahmed, facilitator and developer
• Elodie Joy Jacquet, Dialogue and Public Engagement Consultant, SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
• Saadia Muzaffar, tech entrepreneur, author, and advocate
• Leslie Shade, Professor and Associate Dean, University of Toronto

Our reviewer’s recommendations focused on 3 key areas:

• Accessibility
• Intersectionality
• Co-creation through public engagement

On accessibility, reviewers focused on the digital divide – the differing level of digital skills and access to digital technologies. Capacity for and access to digital technologies can be influenced by socio-economic status, demographics (gender, generation, race, ethnicity) and geography, leaving some Canadians with less digital access than others. While issues of affordability and technology are beyond the scope of the National Action Plan, the open government team has committed to test best practices for designing inclusive public engagement processes. We will continue to incorporate both digital and in-person options for participation in our engagement processes. This aims to ensure that open government activities can reach a geographically diverse audience through digital channels, while still providing some opportunities for Canadians to participate in their own communities.

On intersectionality, reviewers noted that the National Action Plan should include a clearer, more detailed definition of “intersectionality”, as we have identified it as a lens through which we will view all of our open government work. We have added a more detailed definition of intersectionality as an annex to our plan, which is linked to the text of our Feminist and inclusive dialogue commitment.

Finally, on co-creation through public engagement, reviewers suggested that some of the commitments in the draft plan – such as “Feminist and inclusive government” and “Leadership and collaboration” – did not represent discrete activities that formed part of open government. Instead, they were over-arching principles that should apply to all open government work. They recommended these commitments be reflected instead in introductory text for the plan. While we have maintained the concrete commitments on Feminist and inclusive dialogue and Open government community, we have also included a set of guiding principles in the introduction to the plan. These principles will guide all our open government work in the years to come, across all commitments. Principles include accessibility, inclusion, collaboration, and gender equality.

We also asked our reviewers to help us create gender-based or inclusion indicators for all of our National Action Plan commitments. After serious considerations, reviewers decided not to propose these indicators, because they felt they were not in a position to represent the diverse communities that may be impacted by our open government work. They believed that more work was needed to engage directly with those communities to understand how we can measure our success in including them in our open government work. For this reason, we have dropped from the plan our commitment to create and monitor GBA+ indicators for all commitments. Instead, over the next two years we will work to engage communities across Canada to better understand how we can measure whether we are being inclusive in our open government work.

The full findings of our feminist and inclusive peer reviewers can be found in Annex A of this report.