technology
by George Kouroupis
GIS
A Geographic Approach to
Open Government
Being more "open" has become a
key priority for governments, at all
levels, worldwide today. In Canada,
we're seeing significant traction in the
movement to open government in the
municipal space, with several cities
embarking on initiatives that will help
them enhance transparency, provide
citizen-centric services, and increase
citizen engagement.
In addition to people, policies,
and methodologies, technology is
a key enabler of open government.
In Canada, 28 million Canadians,
(representing 83 percent of the
population), use the internet, and
over 21 million have mobile phones,
according to a 2009 Statistics
Canada report. Web technologies
have enabled immediate access to a
broad range of information, services,
and applications. Municipalities are
trying to exploit these technologies
to allow access to their data and
communicate more effectively
with their citizens. But, this is
not just a one-way conversation,
where government simply pushes
information to the public. Citizens, in
turn, must be given the opportunity to
George Kouroupis is Technology and Solutions
Director for ESRI Canada, which provides enterprise geographic information
system (GIS) solutions. He has over 30 years of experience in GIS, software
development and consulting. George also heads ESRI Canada's Community
Maps Program.
leverage this information and provide
feedback. Governments opening their
data, particularly geographic data,
facilitate interactive communication
with citizens. This can only lead to
increased citizen engagement with
their governments.
Another technology increasingly
being leveraged for open data
initiatives is the geographic
information system or GIS. It is
widely used for mapping land
use, natural resources, public
infrastructure, and municipal assets.
The technology enables users to
manage, visualize, analyze, and
publish vast amounts of data. In
addition to being deployed on
individual desktops and corporate
servers, recent advancements have
allowed GIS to be accessed over the
web, on mobile smartphones, and in
the emerging cloud infrastructure.
Its high scalability and powerful
functionality make GIS an efficient
platform for information sharing,
collaborative decision making, and
innovation.
Making GIS data open and
freely available to the public is an
excellent opportunity for governments
to involve citizens and obtain
Volunteered Geographic Information.
This involves citizens contributing
their geographic knowledge and
content, which gets mashed-up with
open maps data, resulting in richer
and more meaningful maps. Imagine
every citizen as a sensor providing
scientific information or observations
to an online map from their mobile
device or computer. Such information
could be valuable during emergencies,
such as an earthquake, and could
assist emergency staff in quickly
locating victims, effectively planning
evacuations, and addressing other
related emergencies.
Connecting Through Maps
With 80 percent of information
having a spatial component, many
municipalities rely on GIS to manage
the information they collect and open
to the public. The data is used to
make better decisions about land use,
environmental management, economic
development, health care delivery,
asset management, elections planning,
and community outreach. GIS can
help better manage resources and
assets to build a sustainable future.
The technology supports
democratizing data by providing
a cost-effective means for sharing
geographic information with the
public. The District of North
Vancouver recognized this early on.
Viewing geographic information as
June 2011 Municipal World 15