Canada's Fourth Open Government Plan

The Canadian Government has launched a series of consultations to begin developing their fourth plan for open government. The Third Plan was completed in 2016. This series of consultations is scheduled to be completed in June 2018.

"The Directive on Open Government is Canada’s “open by default” policy, providing clear and mandatory requirements to departments which will ensure that Canadians get access to the most government information and data possible."

At present the Open Government movement is using a variety of data formats driven by the availability of those formats from government departments. In order to get the most out of open data, the data format needs to be standardized as much as possible. This means using a single open data format. None of the formats being used are particularly robust and none are specifically designed for the presentation of financial data, which is an important part of the overall range of data.

Other countries, leaders in the field, such as The Netherlands and Australia, have found that expressing data in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a useful methodology. It's called Standardized Business Reporting (SBR). With this tool, they are able to facilitate the filing of information with departments at much lower cost to the filers, and make the data available in standardized format. This means that users are given data that is comparable and consistent.

It is hoped that the Government of Canada considers this approach in their Fourth Open Government Plan. For the Open Government website, click here.