Powered by Data recognized at CODS17!
We are honoured to have been awarded the Open Data Accessibility Award during the Canadian Open Data Awards annual ceremony on June 13th, 2017 in Edmonton, Alberta. The Canadian Open Data Awards are part of the 2017 Canadian Open Data Summit and they celebrate national leaders for their exceptional and transformative work in the field of Open Data. The Open Data Accessibility award is given to those helping to improve accessibility to policies and/or processes through Open Data.
Here at Powered by Data, we have been working since 2013 with leaders at nonprofits, governments, and foundations to help them better use, share, and learn from data. This means making sure all of the different stakeholders in the sector have access to the data they need to make informed decisions. To accomplish this, we have focused on getting Open Data published. The key datasets we have focused on are datasets about the entities that comprise the nonprofit sector, as well as the funding transactions that link those entities.
Key datasets we have helped to “liberate” in that area include the Canadian Revenue Agency T3010 tax forms, gaming grant records of the BC government, and granting records of several key funders in Canada. In 2016, we added a new item to that list. In the context of the federal government commitments in their Third Biennial Plan to the Open Government Partnership, the proposal we submitted for the federal government to develop an Open Data standard for grants and contributions data was adopted and forms the basis of Commitment 11: Increase Transparency of Grants and Contributions Funding. Eighty organizations and individuals in the nonprofit sector stepped forward to support it, making it the highest voted on proposal in the consultation.
Doing this work would not be possible without all our partners who have stepped up to open up and publish this important data. This includes the B.C. Open Data Team, the Federal Open Government Team, the Edmonton Community Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
In particular, we would like to single out the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF). OTF is a pioneer in the Open Data movement who back in 2015 became the first funder in Canada to to publish Open Data about their grantmaking. Their leadership has made an important contribution to increasing the number of funders joining the open data movement.
We’d like to thank all these partners for contributing to our success. This recognition at the Canadian Open Data Awards means a lot to us. More importantly it helps validate our approach and provides us with momentum to continue forward. Thanks to everyone who has played a part in Powered by Data’s journey. Here is to many more years of working together to make open data more accessible.