Among many projects I’ve been involved in recently I lent a helping hand to launching CivicAccess.ca

Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data (aka: CivicAccess.ca). CivicAccess is being founded by [people] from across Canada. We are motivated by the belief that open civic information and data are necessary for being engaged citizens in an “information society”.

Here’s the personal motivation I put forward when signing up to be a founder of the group ‘I can get an RSS feed of where my FedEx packages are and XML data on the weather in Tokyo but if I want to know how my councillor voted I get a jumbled 200 page PDF published a week after the vote. So why is the most important democratic data so far behind the curve?‘. I’m going to coin the term ‘Democratic Web 2.0 Deficit’, watch that one take off.

The aims of the group are to:

1. To encourage all levels of governments (county, municipal, provincial, federal) to make civic data and information available to citizens without restrictions, at no cost, and in useable open formats.
2. To encourage the development of citizen projects using civic data and information

The group’s in the early stages right now, but it has the backing of a broad and interesting group of founders, so I have hopes of good things to come. If this looks interesting, join the email discussion list and get involved!