David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Feb 8, 2012, 10:24 am
Non profits and governments... this is how open source works: If someone is doing something that is of value to you, help make it better. There have been two great examples of this type of behaviour on this blog over the past week. On Monday, I blogged about Represent, a project by OpenNorth that ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Feb 6, 2012, 8:12 am
Last week a group of volunteer programs from across Canada announced the launch of Represent - a website that tries to map all of Canada's boundaries. Confused? Don't be. It's simple. This is a nifty piece of digital infrastructure - try visiting the website yourself! After identifying where you are...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Feb 3, 2012, 4:48 am
Dear friends, Below (first in english then in a rough french translation - my spoken is much better than my written so I've relied on Google translate) is my application letter to attend the April 16-18 Annual Open Government Partnership meeting in Brasilia as a Civil Society Representative. The f...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Feb 2, 2012, 8:45 am
Yesterday The Economist Intelligence Unit and Buzzdata launched a $10,000 contest to help enhance The Economist's "Best city in the world" index. Yes. It's a data and visualization competition to identify the best city in the world to live. As part of the contest, The Economist Intelligence Unit h...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Feb 1, 2012, 8:45 am
Readers of my blog will be familiar Kuali - the coalition of universities that co-create a suite software  core to their operations - as I've blogged about several times and argued that it is a powerful model for local governments interested in rethinking how they procure (or really, co-create) the...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 31, 2012, 9:16 pm
After a rough bought of food poisoning... I'm back. For some random reasons I got a PR notice from the people at APEX communications in Toronto who Google insights to see which of the two Superbowl NFL teams Canadians were searching for more. So... okay, just Canadians searched more for the Patrio...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 26, 2012, 8:48 am
I was very, very excited to learn that the City of Vancouver is exploring implementing a program started in San Francisco in which "smart" parking meters adjust their price to reflect supply and demand (story is here in the Vancouver Sun). For those unfamiliar with the program, here is a breakdown....
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 20, 2012, 8:50 am
Most of the time, when I engage with or speak to federal public servants, they are among the most eager to find ways to work around the bureaucracy in which they find themselves. They want to make stuff happen, and ideally, to make it happen right and more quickly. This is particularly true of young...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 19, 2012, 8:50 am
Attached below is my submission to the Open Government Consultation conducted by Treasury Board over the last couple of weeks. There appear to be a remarkable number of submission that were made by citizens, which you can explore on the Treasury Board website. In addition, Tracey Lauriault has track...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 16, 2012, 8:44 am
Some small examples of open data use and public servants who do and don't understand open data from the Province of British Columbia to the City of Vancouver. Open Libraries? For the past several years - ever since the open motion was passed in Vancouver - the city has been releasing more and more...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 11, 2012, 1:33 pm
Wow. Talk about the hypocrisy. So EthicalOil.org which has been leading the charge about how foreign money is influencing environmental groups and the regulatory process. But... apparently it refuses to disclose its donor list. The double truths get better. While they state on their website they on...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 11, 2012, 2:17 am
This piece is cross-posted from the Toronto Star's Op-Ed Page. This week the “ethical oil” argument adopted by the federal government took an interesting twist. While billions from China pour into Canada to develop the oilsands and fund the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline, on Mond...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 9, 2012, 8:25 am
Government Procurement is Broken: Example #5,294,702 or "The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application" by Rich Jones This post is actually a few months old, but I stumbled on it again the other day and could help but laugh and cry at the same time. Written by a freelance computer developer...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 5, 2012, 5:30 pm
Last year during my Open Government Data Camp keynote speech on The State of Open Data 2011 I mentioned how I thought the central challenge for open data was shifting from getting data open (still a big issue, but a battle that is starting to be won) to getting all that open data in some common stan...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jan 4, 2012, 6:09 pm
So I loath making this the first post of the new year, but here we go. Today Canada.com published a story "Tony Clement vows innovative new open government, but critics point to poor record." In it,  Jason Fekete the journalist responsible for the story, quotes a Democracy Watch spokesperson who ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Dec 30, 2011, 8:36 pm
This week, while enjoying a little down time, I've been peeking online from time to time to see what has been going on with the Go Daddy boycott. For those who haven't been following the story, Go Daddy, a internet domain registration company, came out in support of SOPA - a proposed US law that, in...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 26, 2011, 6:45 pm
Over the past few months I've given a number of talks on open data and open innovation to groups of realtors around the country. During these talks I have cautioned that the more the real estate industry tries to protect (e.g. not share) its data, the more it risks making access to data (control) be...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 25, 2011, 4:32 am
Just before its launch in New York on September 20th, the Canadian Government agreed to be a signatory of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Composed of over 40 countries the OGP signatories are required to create a list of commitments they promise to implement. Because Canada signed on just bef...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 21, 2011, 10:18 am
What is the state of the open data movement? Yesterday, during my opening keynote at the Open Government Data Camp (held this year in Warsaw, Poland) I sought to follow up on my talk from last year's conference. Here's my take of where we are today (I'll post/link to a video of the talk as soon as t...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 18, 2011, 5:21 pm
As some friends know, I've been working with Mozilla, helping them design an engagement audit, something to enable them assess how effective they are at engaging and empowering the community. This work has a number of aspects, much of which builds on ideas I've blogged about here and spoken about in...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 13, 2011, 6:07 am
I'm in San Francisco to co-chair the Code for America Summit this week, so lots going on, and some deep blog posts in the works. But first. Fun! Here are some of my favourite quotes I stumbled upon or heard in the last 24 hours. “The 4-Hour Body” reads as if The New England Journal of Medicine ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 11, 2011, 5:14 am
Last year, with only a month of notice, a small group passionate people announced we'd like to do an international open data hackathon and invited the world to participate. We were thinking small but fun. Maybe 5 or 6 cities. We got it wrong. In the end people from over 75 cities around the world...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 7, 2011, 5:26 am
For those who don't know: Today - October 7th - is Ada Lovelace Day. It's a day where you "share your story about a woman — whether an engineer, a scientist, a technologist or mathematician — who has inspired you to become who you are today." It would be remiss for me not to blog about Dr. Conn...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Oct 5, 2011, 3:27 am
At OSCON this year, Jono Bacon, argued that we are entering a era of renaissance in open source community management - that increasingly we don't just have to share stories but that repeatable, scientific approaches are increasingly available to us. In short, the art of community management is shift...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 30, 2011, 11:12 am
I'm so deeply pleased to hear that the Supreme Court has ordered the federal government to allow Insite, Vancouver’s supervised injection site, to stay open. While on one level the case was about a battle of powers between the provincial and federal government - does health policy trump criminal l...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 28, 2011, 4:40 am
There hasn't been a ton of press about the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This is hardly surprising. The press likes to talk about corruption and bad government, people getting together to talk about actually address these things in far less sexy. But even where good coverage exists analysts an...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 20, 2011, 7:59 am
I'm in New York today for the launch of the Open Government Partnership and it looks as the Canada is now a signatory (or at least has signed a letter of intent). No commitments are outlined, but I will link to them when they are posted. The Open Government Partnership was launched by the White Ho...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 19, 2011, 3:38 am
Anyone who read Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope will have been struck with the amount of time the then aspiring presidential candidate spent writing about public education policy. More notably, he seemed to acknowledge that any effort at education reform was, at some point, going to butt heads wi...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 9, 2011, 2:18 pm
I'm excited to share that I'll be interviewing British public policy and open innovation expert Charles Leadbeater on September 19th as part of a SIG's webinar series. For readers not familiar with Charles Leadbeater, he is the author of We-Think and numerous other chapters, pamphlets and articles, ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 8, 2011, 3:11 pm
After writing yesterday's post on the economics of opendata and transit I've really been reflecting on a research question that emerged in the piece: Does having transit data embedded in Google Maps increase ridership? My hypothesis is that it would... but I did some googling on the topic and could...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 7, 2011, 4:09 pm
TransLink, the company that runs public transit in the region where I live (Vancouver/Lower Mainland) has launched a real time bus tracking app that uses GPS data to figure out how far away the next the bus you are waiting for really is. This is great news for everyone. Of course for those interest...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Sep 2, 2011, 5:14 am
The other day I noticed this tweet fly by in the twittersphere       Was this a complaint? In light of the fact the internet was rife with complaints about changes to the movies in the Blue Ray release of the original trilogy, I suspect so. While I do harbor Lucas a small amount of ill will f...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 30, 2011, 8:26 am
So despite the fact that I only left Vancouver once(!) in August, things have been quite busy. Lots of work. September and onwards is going to be a bear however. Lots of travel so I thought I would lay everything out in case their is overlap with readers, friends and/or clients who might be interes...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 29, 2011, 5:22 am
Earlier this month the Vancouver School Board (VSB) released an iPhone app that - helpfully - will use push notifications to inform parents about school holidays, parent interviews, and scheduling disruptions such as snow days. The app is okay, it's a little clunky to use, and a lot of the data - su...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 26, 2011, 12:36 pm
This morning I got an email thread pointing to an article by Justin Longo on #Opendata: Digital-Era Governance Thoroughbred or New Public Management Trojan Horse? I'm still digesting it all but wanted to share some initial thoughts. The article begins with talking about he benefit of open data but...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 24, 2011, 3:30 pm
This Saturday, August 27, 2011 the Province of British Columbia is partnering with the Mozilla Foundation and OpenDataBC to host a open data hackathon. The hackathon will be taking place at Mozilla Labs Vancouver. Their address is: 163 West Hastings Street, suite-200 Vancouver, BC V6B 1H5 (in th...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 22, 2011, 4:41 am
I'll be honest. There was a time when I thought design didn't matter. To my credit, it was a long time ago... but I used to think, if the tool was good enough, the design won't matter, people will use it cause it is helpful. (This may or may not have influenced some fashion choices earlier in life a...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 19, 2011, 12:05 pm
I'm confident that somewhere in Canada, some resource strapped innovative small town has abandoned desktop software and uses a cloud based service but so far no city of any real size has even publicly said they were considering the possibility. That is, until today. Looks like Edmonton's IT group ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 16, 2011, 8:45 am
okay, look at this photo. Tell me that does not look good:   On the left is the classic fish taco from Tacofino, on the right, their halibut special. Both are as good to eat as they look in this photo. Both are pretty minimalist, with the traditional fish taco serving up some lightly fried white ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 12, 2011, 12:36 pm
It would have been easy to blog about the Conservative British Government's appalling choice to muse openly about shutting down social media sites or deny access to certain users in response to the riots... but enough people have commented on how colossally dumb this is (not to mention hypocritical ...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 11, 2011, 5:05 am
This comment, posted four months ago to my blog by Jesse G. in response to this post on GCPEDIA, remains one of the favorite comments posted to my blog ever. This is a public servant who understands the future and is trying to live it. I've literally had this comment sitting in my inbox because this...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 9, 2011, 1:14 pm
...here It's going to be that kind of week. I'm on a working vacation... Goals for my blog this week. If I'm lucky, one on the UK's open data consultation, one on the taco's from tacofino, and one on Oyster Burgers. cause they rock.     Email & Share:
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 5, 2011, 4:33 am
Earlier this week the Canadian Federal Government announced it will be creating Shared Services Canada which will absorb the resources and functions associated with the delivery of email, data centres and network services from 44 departments. These types of shared services projects are always fra...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Aug 3, 2011, 5:20 am
(there is a section on this topic focused on governments below) A hint of how social data could change journalism Anyone who’s heard me speak in the last 6 months knows I’m excited about BuzzData. This week, while still in limited access beta, the site is showing hints its potential – and i...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jul 29, 2011, 3:20 am
My friends over at Greenpeace recently published an interesting report entitled "How dirty is your data? A Look at the Energy Choices That Power Cloud Computing." For those who think that cloud computing is an environmentally friendly business, let's just say... it's not without its problems. Wha...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jul 28, 2011, 1:46 am
This post is a discussion about making bug tracking in Bugzilla for the Mozilla project more efficient. However, I believe it is applicable to any open source project or even companies or governments running service desks (think 311). Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog post titled: Some thoug...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jul 26, 2011, 11:39 am
When the News of the World scandal began to really explode at the beginning of the month some intrepid reporter went and tracked down members of the Bancroft family - the former owners of the Wall Street Journal - and asked them if they regretted selling their controlling stock of the newspaper to R...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jul 25, 2011, 6:18 am
Despite the assurances of US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner it is increasingly likely there will be no debt deal. The United States is going to default on its debt. I know it sounds crazy, but I believe it is going to happen. If it does, this is the black swan event no one imagined or was prepa...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jul 22, 2011, 4:40 am
So it's been a couple of weeks since Google+ launched and I'll be honest, I'm really struggling with the service. I wanted to give it a few weeks before writing anything, which has been helpful in letting my thinking mature. First, before my Google friends get upset, I want to acknowledge the reaso...
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David Eaves posted an article on David Eaves Blog - Jul 20, 2011, 1:26 pm
(for readers less interested in Open Data - I promise something different tomorrow) In February I wrote how 2011 would be the year of the license for Canada's open data community. This has indeed been the case. For public servants and politicians overseeing the various open data projects happening ...
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