Canada’s Third Biennial Plan to the Open Government Partnership (2016-18) has now been published! The Open Government team is working on improving public services, such as enhancing access to datasets and increasing transparency to budget/finance information.

ENVISION5 is the latest released version of ENVISION, with changes to its interface. ENVISION5 has been enhanced with increased functionality, providing more advanced mapping, reporting and display features. With these improved features, ENVISION5 is now more user-friendly and visually appealing. Using the “trade analysis tool”, you can filter your geographies using a map and select the variables you want to analyse! How-to videos are available in the help section of ENVISION. Book a licence here: http://communitydata.ca/envision.

Recently, a draft plan for two years of Open Government was posted with the intention of receiving feedback and suggested improvements. To date, more than 50 deliverables have been completed, such as the launch of open.canada.ca website and publishing mandate letters online. Now, Canada is working on restoring the mandatory long-form census and developing the International Open Data Charter.

Arief Kartolo, a M.A. student at the University of Windsor has prepared this excellent research report for the Windsor-Essex Working Table that investigates the workings of data consortia in the Community Data Program. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

The Annual Meeting was held on May 26th and 27th in Banff, AB and was a great success! We had one and a half days of very engaged discussion and extremely helpful feedback on the program. It was also a real pleasure to meet such engaged stakeholders in person and see how they are using the data in their communities. Check out the report from the Annual Meeting to see what was discussed and the actions arising for the 2016-17 program year.

Last Friday May 20th, 2016 CCSD's Katherine Scott (VP Research) and Michel Frojmovic (CDP Lead) presented at ECONOUS2016, the National Community Economic Development Conference.  Their presentation (PPT) demonstrated the power of community data and evidence-based story-telling, focusing on the Canadian Council on Social Development’s Community Data Program (CDP).

We are excited for our upcoming annual meeting!  For a day and a half starting Thursday May 26th, we will be meeting in Banff, Alberta with twenty of our consortium leads (plus more via webinar) to plan out the upcoming program year!  For more information, visit the 2016 annual meeting information page.

Led by the United Way Perth-Huron (operating as the Social Research and Planning Council), the Perth-Huron Community Data Consortium is CCSD’s 31st consortium to be established within the CDP.  This consortium represents two south-western Ontario counties with a combined population of 134,212 (in 2011). With the addition of Perth-Huron, the CCSD’s CDP now includes community data consortia representing 18.7 million Canadians (56% of all Canadians), and 87% of Ontario’s population.

Led by the Northern Policy Institute (NPI), the (Rest of) Northern Ontario Community Data Consortium is CCSD’s 30th consortium to be established within the CDP. NPI is Northern Ontario’s independent think tank, enhancing Northern Ontario’s capacity to take the lead position on socio-economic policy that impacts Northern Ontario, Ontario, and Canada as a whole. The organization includes staff in Sudbury, Sault Ste-Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Kenora and Timmins. This consortium represents communities with a population of nearly 500,000 (487,904 in 2011).