I’m engaged in a weird game of cat and mouse with the City of Hamilton – I make City information open and the City plays “catch-up” by finally making that information available themselves.
The latest example?
The Office of the Integrity Commissioner finally provides information on the Internet.
Just before Christmas, I went in search of information about the Integrity Commissioner and the complaint process. Not surprisingly, the City of Hamilton had the information buried in an obscure area of their website hidden within a PDF.
I quickly wrote a blog post providing the information in a more accessible place and requested a copy of the complaint form in Word Format. Once I received the form in Word Format, I uploaded it to the web.
Today, I was pleasantly surprised to see the City, on the first day of business this year, rushed to provide the information themselves.
It was nearly a year ago the City began livestreaming Council meetings in response to the efforts of myself and several volunteers who started providing a livestream (accessible to all) of Council meetings. The City rushed to provide their own, lower quality proprietary format, stream.
Hopefully, and I’m not holding my breath, the City will stop waiting for citizens to force transparency. It’s time for the City to adopt open data and open government.
Until such time, the efforts of citizens will continue.
The question for me is: what’s next?
Any suggestions – what City information should I make available next?