In May 2009 the City of Vancouver passed a motion endorsing open data, open standards, and leveling the playing field for open source software procurement. In November 2009 the City of Toronto launched Toronto.ca/open, the
City of Toronto’s official beta data set catalogue, which provides open
access to City data. In January 2010 the City of Edmonton opened Edmonton’s open data catalogue, which makes city data including geospatial data openly available. Typically the terms of use are no cost and a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, modify, and distribute the datasets in all current and future media and formats. Attribution is not required, but encouraged. You cannot use an emblem or logo of the city or claim an association with the City without prior consent.
As part of the City of Ottawa’s “commitment to improving citizen engagement and enhancing transparency and accountability to its residents”, the City has created an Open Data Ottawa site to encourage “digital innovation, improved service delivery, stimulation of economic growth, and a better understanding of our city.” Entrepreneurs, academics, policy-makers and community organizations are some of the groups that have been targetted as beneficiaries of open data from the City. The initial release contains primarily geospatial data, but it is planned that later the site will include other types of data. The supported formats appear to be intended to be CSV, XLS, DWG, KML, and SHP.
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