Federal Geospatial Platform – NRCAN
When released openly, data can stimulate economic growth, better decision making, more transparency and efficiency of governments, as well as a higher quality of life and more inclusive societies.
Natural Resources Canada uses the power of geospatial data to help derive solutions to complex issues and questions.
Contributor
Janice L. Sharpe
Senior Director, Federal Geospatial Platform
NRCAN
Transcript
Hello, my name is Janice Sharpe, I am the senior director of Canada's open geo organization, the Federal Geospatial Platform. I'm thrilled to be part of this conference and supporting its theme. An integrated data community for building back better. Canada is well positioned to leverage data to bring its economy back on track as a global leader. Canada is a signatory of the International Open Data Charter and an active member of the Open Government Partnership. And Canada has demonstrated its leadership in open data through the hard work of the Treasury Board Secretariat and all federal departments and agencies who make the open government portal a success.
Now we know that data holds a tremendous potential for societies and economies. When released openly, data can stimulate economic growth, better decision making, more transparency and efficiency of governments, as well as a higher quality of life and more inclusive societies. This results in the ability for decision makers to get our economy back on track in a fair, open and equitable way. And we also know the potential that data holds becomes even larger when public sector information is combined with privately held data. This combination can be an important driver of economic, societal and environmental benefits and can help Canada strengthen its position in the international arena.
Our job at the federal geospatial platform is to push this transparency agenda by focusing on geospatial data. In other words, data that is structured in a way that it can be viewed and or analyzed by location. But our challenge is to ensure that data holders and decision makers have the tools they need to fully capitalize on this asset. So our workshop is called Unlocking the Power of Geospatial Data, and that's a tall order in an hour. But here's what we hope to accomplish.
We want to familiarize participants with open maps, the geo portion of the open government portal, which is where you can find and access Canada spatially reference data. We want to demonstrate how this data can be used to derive solutions to complex issues and questions. And we want to show you the tools, processes and procedures available to each and every federal department and agency to contribute their valuable data to this overall effort. So we hope you will join us for an informative visual workshop that we expect will stimulate your thinking about how you can be part of this fast growing community of geospatial data thinkers, contributors, and users. We'll see you soon.
Courses/ Resources
Discover Series: Discover Data