THUNDER BAY — The City of Thunder Bay is making access to selected municipal data more readily available to the general public.
On Tuesday, it announced the launch of an Open Data Portal, an online gateway to dozens of datasets ranging from the street network to real time transit feeds and financial statements.
A number of city staff have spent the past two years working on the project.
"It's been a fairly substantial undertaking, and we're just happy to see it finally happening," said Jack Avella, manager of corporate information technology for the city.
Avella described open data as "a great tool" for innovation and development.
The portal contains data, documents, applications and interactive maps which the city says can be used in a variety of ways, from research to the eventual development of new services and software applications.
Historically, "we do get a number of requests" for information like this, Avella said. "The thing that sets us aside is how we provide the data, in a usable format. So machines or computers can pick it up and use it to do different things."
The portal incorporates a user-friendly navigation platform.
None of the data contains personal identifying information. It can be searched or browsed by category and downloaded to be freely used without copyright or patent restrictions.
At present, 56 separate datasets are available.
The committee that decided what to include in the launch considered not just the data that is more frequently requested, but also information that staff felt might be of interest if people knew it was available.
"It also was intended to give people an idea of the types of data that can be requested. Mapping data, facility information, and financial data...we tried to give people a taste of different datasets that might be available on an open portal," Avella said.
He said staff will continue to work internally on potential additions to the portal, including new requests for data that are submitted by the public.
"If there's a purpose to the request, and we feel it is of value, that is something we'll endeavour to provide them."
The city will also evaluate whether the data is readily available, and how much effort will be required to prepare it.
Avella said that in some cases there will also be limits to what can be made accessible for legal reasons or privacy concerns.
Data that is used by the city but not owned by the city – such as information gathered by the province's Municipal Property Assessment Corporation – cannot be provided on the portal.
