Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Visualizing Open Government: Case Study of the Canadian Recordkeeping Approach

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Linking Government Data

Abstract

This chapter highlights the necessity of raising societal awareness of what is available to citizens in terms of government information. What is not known cannot be made known. It provides an overview of the organizational structure and information resources context within government organizations as part of linked government data initiatives. It examines some practical approaches used in governments underpinning the persistence and discoverability of information and discusses prodisclosure schemes for government information as a means to facilitate the collection and dissemination of information following linked data principles. The chapter is supported by a case study from the Government of Canada’s implementation of recordkeeping. It provides best practices for an up-front assessment of information resources based on criteria of value that can facilitate the identification, collection and dissemination of government data in a linked form. Visualization techniques are presented as a means to encourage greater understanding of the context for disclosure of information resources of business value through linked government data and information tools and techniques explored in other chapters.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Smith, A. Library of Parliament. The Roles and Responsibilities of Central Agencies. URL http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/prb0901-e.pdf.

  2. Dix, A. and Talis. CSV Meta Description, March 2011. URL http://tiree.snipit.org/talis/tables/.

  3. Australian Government. Australia To Open Office Of Information From November 2010 | Gov Monitor, a. URLhttp://www.thegovmonitor.com/civil_society_and_democratic_renewal/governance/austalia-to-open-office-of-information-from-november-2010-33051.html.

  4. Australian Government. Freedom of Information Act 1982, b. URL http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2010C00387. C2010C00387.

  5. Australian Government. Freedom of Information Amendment (Reform) Act 2010, c. URL http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2010A00051. C2010A00051.

  6. Australian Government. Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010, d. URL http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2010A00052. C2010A00052.

  7. Australian Government. Government Response to the Report of the Government

    Google Scholar 

  8. 2.0 Taskforce, e. URL http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/govresponse20report/index.html.

  9. Australian Government. Project 7: Whole of Government Information Publication Scheme, f. URL http://gov2.net.au/projects/project-7/.

  10. Australian Government. Freedom of Information (FOI) Reform, November 2010. URL http://www.dpmc.gov.au/foi/foi_reform.cfm.

  11. Berners-Lee, T. Linked Data - Design Issues. URL http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.

  12. Brito, J. and United States. Hearings on ’Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives’. 112th Congress, 1st session, Friday, March 11, 2011. Subcommittee

    Google Scholar 

  13. on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform, [Washington, D.C. :, 2011. URL http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Letters/Brito_Testimony-Bio_3-11-11.pdf.

  14. Brown, R. Macroappraisal in the Twenty-First Century: Towards a New Documentary Framework for Public Memory. In The future of memory: the digital archival heritage, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, November 2010, forthcoming. Arquivo de Galicia.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Canada. Open Data Pilot Project, March 2011a. URL http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En%26n=F9B7A1E3-1.

  16. Canada. Government of Canada Open Data Portal - Backgrounder, March 2011b. URLhttp://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En%26n=CA05CAF7-1.

  17. Canada. Speech from the Throne, June 2011c. URL http://www.speech.gc.ca/local_grfx/docs/sft-ddt-2011_e.pdf.

  18. Canada and Lambert, A.T. Final report, Royal Commission on Financial Management & Accountability (Lambert report). Technical report, Canada, Ottawa, 1979.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Canada. Task Force on Government Information and D’Iberville Fortier. To know and be known: the report of the Task Force on Government Information, volume 1. Queen’s Printer,1969.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Heting Chu. Information representation and retrieval in the digital age. ASIST monograph series. Published for the American Society for Information Science and Technology by Information Today, Medford, N.J., 2nd ed edition, 2010. ISBN 9781573873932 (hc).

    Google Scholar 

  21. Caron, D.J., Library and Archives Canada. The Recordkeeping Initiative: Findings of Assessment Projects and the Way Forward. URL http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/government/news-events/007001-6301-e.html.

  22. Caron, D.J., Library and Archives Canada. Shaping our Continuing Memory Collectively: A Representative Documentary Heritage, March 2010. URL http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/obj/013/f2/013-449-e.pdf.

  23. Caron, D.J. and Library and Archives Canada. Memory Institutions in the 21st Century: The Need for Convergence and Collaboration. In The War of Independence Reconsidered: Librarians and Archivists – Past, Present and Future., Banff, Alberta, May 2010. Archives Society of Alberta (ASA).

    Google Scholar 

  24. Reynolds, D. and Epimorphics. An organization ontology, May 2010. URL http://www.epimorphics.com/public/vocabulary/org.html.

  25. Devey, M., Côté, M.-C., Bain, L. and McAvoy, L. Celebrating 10 Years of Government

    Google Scholar 

  26. of Canada Metadata Standards. In International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, DC-2010–Pittsburgh Proceedings, 2010. URL http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/ojs/pubs/article/download/1046/994.

  27. Dunleavy, P. and Margetts, H. The second wave of digital era governance. In American Political Science Association Conference, Washington DC, USA., September 2010. American Political Science Association Conference. URL http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27684/.

  28. Erickson, J. DOIs, URIs and Cool Resolution, a. URL http://bitwacker.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/dois-uris-and-cool-resolution/.

  29. Erickson, J. The DOI, DataCite and Linked Data: Made for each other!, b. URL http://bitwacker.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/the-doi-datacite-and-linked-data-made-for-each-other/.

  30. Fekete, J. and Plaisant, C. TreeML Specification, a. URL http://cs.marlboro.edu/courses/fall2006/tutorials/information_visualization/TreeML.

  31. Fekete, J. and Plaisant, C. DTD describing a tree structure for visualization, b. URL http://www.nomencurator.org/infoVis2003/download/treeml.dtd.

  32. Golub, K. and Tudhope, D. Delivering a Terminology Registry. Poster at LIDA conference,Dubrovnik and Mljet, Croatia, 2-7 June 2008, 2008. URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/trss/dissemination/Lida08-golub.pdf.

  33. Heer, J., Card, S.K. and Landay, J.A. Prefuse: a toolkit for interactive information visualization. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 421–430, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Hudon, M. and Hjartarson, F. Governments meet people: Developing metathesauri in the framework of “government online” initiatives. In Advancing knowledge: Expanding horizons for information science: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, 30 May-1 June 2002, Toronto, Canada, pages 46–60, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  35. ISO 15489-1:2001. Information and documentation – Records management –Part 1 :General. Technical report, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  36. ISO/IEC 42010:2007. Systems and software engineering - recommended practice for architectural description of software-intensive systems. Technical report, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Library and Archives Canada. Disposition. URL http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/ government/disposition/index-e.html.

  38. Library and Archives Canada. Appraisal Methodology: Macro-Appraisal and Functional Analysis, Part A: Concepts and Theory, October 2001. URL http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/government/disposition/007007-1035-e.html.

  39. Library and Archives Canada. How to Register a Controlled Vocabulary, March 2006. URL http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/government/controlled-vocabularies/007004-3000-e.html.

  40. Library and Archives Canada. Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus in SKOS/RDF, May 2011. URL http://en.thesaurus.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En%26n=EAEAD1E6-1.

  41. Library of Congress. FDsys Helps GPO Provide Access to Federal Digital Publications, March 2011. URL http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/news/2011/20110301_news_zwaard_briefing.html.

  42. Matte, F. What we learned from Gomery: Managing the scope of document discovery, 2008. URL http://www.lac-bac.ca/obj/023023/f2/023023-3404d-e.pdf.

  43. Miles, A. and Pérez-Agüera, J. SKOS: Simple Knowledge Organisation for the Web. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 43(3):69–83, 2007. doi: 10.1300/J104v43n03_04.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Obama, B. Remarks by the President in State of Union Address, January 2011. URL http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address.

  45. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Modernising government: the way forward. OECD Publishing, May 2005. ISBN 9789264010499.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Desrochers, P., Smith, S., and Library and Archives Canada. Recordkeeping Directive 101: Everything you wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask. ARMA Conference,2008. URL http://www.slideshare.net/pdesrochers/recordkeeping-directive-101-everything-you-wanted-to-know-but-were-tooafraid-to-ask.

  47. Brown, R. and Caron, D.J.. The Documentary Moment in the Digital Age: Establishing New Value Propositions for Public Memory. Archivaria, 71:1–20, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Brown, R., Caron, D.J., and Library and Archives Canada. Creating Documentation Standards for Government Programs, Services and Results: A Developmental Framework and Guide for Business Managers and Information Resource Specialists, March 2008. URL http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/obj/007001/f2/007001-5000.1-e.pdf.

  49. Rusbridge, C. What are the advantages of DOIs as dataset identifiers in citations? URL http://friendfeed.com/chrisrusbridge/74f80839/what-are-advantages-of-dois-as-dataset.

  50. Sydney Morning Herald, AAP. I’ll end secrecy: Rudd - Federal Election 2007 News - Federal Election 2007. http://www.smh.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/ill-endsecrecy-rudd/2007/11/21/1195321837158.html. URL http://www.smh.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/ill-end-secrecy-rudd/2007/11/21/1195321837158.html.

  51. Baker, T. and Keizer, J.. Linked Data for Fighting Global Hunger: Experiences in setting standards for Agricultural Information Management. In David Wood, editor, Linking enterprise data, pages 177–201. Springer, New York NY Heidelberg, 2010. ISBN 9781441976642.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Directive on Recordkeeping, a. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?section=text%26id=16552.

  53. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Canada’s Performance Report 2008-09: The Government of Canada’s Contribution, b. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/reports-rapports/cp-rc/2008-2009/cp-rc06-eng.asp.

  54. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Policy Framework for Information and Technology, July 2007a. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=12452%26section=text.

  55. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. The Management, Resources, and Results Structure Policy: Instructions to Departments for Developing a Management, Resources, and Result Structure, July 2007b. URL http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/webarchives/ 20071123053135/http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/dcgpubs/mrrsp-psgrr/id-cm/id-cm_e.asp.

  56. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Policy on Access to Information, April 2008. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=12453%26section=text.

  57. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Implementation Report No. 112 -Info Source 2009 Requirements, March 2009. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/atip-aiprp/impl-rep/2009/112-imp-mise02-eng.asp.

  58. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Canada’s Performance 2009-2010: The Government of Canada’s Contribution, November 2010a. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/reports-rapports/cp-rc/2009-2010/cp-rctb-eng.asp.

  59. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Standard on metadata, June 2010b. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=18909%26section=text.

  60. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Policy on Management, Resources and Results Structures, February 2010c. URL http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doceng.aspx?id=18218%26section=text.

  61. W3C. SKOS/FAQs, Janu 2010a. URL http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/SKOS/ FAQs.

  62. W3C. W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group, June 2010b. URL http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/.

  63. W3C. Library Linked Data Incubator Group Charter, June 2010c. URL http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/.

  64. Weber, M. The theory of social and economic organization. Simon and Schuster, July 1997. ISBN 9780684836409.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Woodstox. ValidateXML. http://woodstox.codehaus.org/ValidateXML. URL http://woodstox.codehaus.org/ValidateXML.

  66. Zeng, M.L. and Qin, Jian. Metadata. Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 2008. ISBN 9781555706357 (pbk. : alk. paper). URL http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ ecip0816/2008015176.html.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Library and Archives Canada, 550 Boul. de la Cité, Gatineau, QC, K1A 0N4, Canada

    Pierre Desrochers

Authors
  1. Pierre Desrochers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pierre Desrochers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. 3 Round Stones Inc., Fredericksburg, 20190, Virginia, USA

    David Wood

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Desrochers, P. (2011). Visualizing Open Government: Case Study of the Canadian Recordkeeping Approach. In: Wood, D. (eds) Linking Government Data. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1767-5_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1767-5_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-1766-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-1767-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation