About City of Toronto Open Data


Background

The City of Toronto launched its first Open Data Portal in the fall of 2009 to meet growing demand for open data. Since then, the open data movement has gained increasing momentum within Toronto’s digital and civic spaces. As a result, open data currently serves as a politically charged topic of discussion within civic decision-making as policymakers and the civic community navigate open data policies and address socio-political and technical barriers. The evolution of technology and data literacy mean, however, that in addition to increasing demand for data, expectations for a broader set of functionality have changed as well. This includes being able to visualize data, being able to download data in non-proprietary formats, and meeting accessibility compliance requirements. These factors have necessitated a redesign effort, which is the in-house developed portal you are currently on. When we started designing the new portal, we spoke to the individuals best informed to direct how it should function. Our open data community is a passionate one; it includes developers, policymakers, academics and civic advocates. These communities mobilize around a common goal: that some data should be freely available for everyone to use and re-publish as they wish. When data is freely available, it can innovated upon by anyone to draw insights and use evidence to inform the design of civic services. The open data portal aims to do just this.

Features

# Feature Status
1 AODA (WCAG 2.0) Compliance In Progress
2 Data Request form Planned
3 Data Owner direct contact Implemented
4 Data newsfeed Implemented
5 Catalogue search by taxonomy and keywords Implemented
6 File format conversion and automation Implemented
7 Data Visualization Implemented
8 Data Quality Assessment In Progress
9 Data Stories (case studies) Ongoing
10 Learning Resources Ongoing
11 Migration of all existing toronto.ca/open datasets Implemented
12 Developer notifications (API) In Progress
13 Comment and discuss on datasets Planned
14 Predictive search Planned
15 On-the-fly dataset conversion to non-proprietary formats Implemented
16 Browser-based data submission process Planned
17 Dataset Preview Implemented
18 Community Showcase In Progress
19 Responsive design (mobile-friendly) Implemented

Project Evolution

Date Milestone
2009 Open Data website and catalogue launched
2012 Open Data policy implemented
2015 Public Sector Open Data group created
2016 Request of City Clerk and CIO to “build a proper open data portal”
2017 Open Data Visualization Portal developed
2018 Open Data Visualization Portal Release 1
2019 Open Data Visualization Alpha Launch

Recognizing our Partners

The Open Data team would like to extend a sincere thank you to the City partners who supported us through the portal development process. In particular, we would like to thank key team members from Common Components, Digital Communications, Technical Infrastructure Services, Digital Technology Services, and Strategic Communications for your partnership and contributions. We greatly appreciate your assistance and contribution.