During my campaign to be Mississauga’s mayor, I pledged to work with Council to make our City more open and transparent, improve trust in our government, and save money without affecting services. No matter how lean a government or corporation may be, there are always ways to find efficiencies to improve doing business to reduce the burden on the bottom line.
During yesterday’s Council meeting, a new corporate policy and procedure for Mississauga’s Open Data program was approved. Open Data is user friendly information about City programs and services that is accessible to everyone free of charge. The data is unrestricted to copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.
The policy enables data to be published in easy, accessible formats adopted by other governments and agencies globally. City data sets can be very valuable because they contain useful information that can be used for research, software, app and website development or for new business opportunities.
Citizens, entrepreneurs, urban planners and those who are interested in analysing data are better empowered to now look for innovative ways to improve City programs and services. Open data can even help ignite new business ventures.
Put simply, the move toward open data is about creating a city that works for you, the taxpayers.
There are more than 400 publications available in open formats such as CSV, KML or Shapefile on the City’s Open Data website. With new data sets being added regularly, the City seeks to include information about more services like 3-1-1 call stats, community centres, MiWay, cycling lanes, parks and trails.
To find a complete inventory of the City’s publications and Open Data catalogue, please visit: mississauga.ca/portal/residents/mississaugadata.