Blog article: Top Moments of 2025: A Year In Review
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What a Year!
2025 wasn’t just busy, it was pivotal. We turned ideas into action and built momentum that will carry us into 2026. Here’s the story of what mattered most.
Telling Our Story Loud and Clear
This year was all about showing up and making open data feel accessible and exciting.
We published 12 blogs that celebrated new features, community projects, and policy traction. Social media wasn’t just numbers, it was conversations. We went from one social platform to three – adding LinkedIn for our professional audience & very recently BlueSky. Our reach grew, engagement turned updates into dialogue, and we amplified our story with purpose.
We hit the stage and the streets: from presenting at The Canadian Open Data Summit (CODS) in New Brunswick, to hosting 14 local meetups, we connected where people build. Partnerships with universities brought fresh voices into the mix, big thanks to YorkU, UofT, and Northeastern Toronto University for collaborating on a blog series that sparked new ideas.
Regular attendance at Civic Tech Toronto and local hackathons kept us learning and co-creating.
One notable event we sponsored was CivicSpark which was a great success, with lots of new ideas, relationships and aspirations: Wrap-up | Civic Spark
Building a Stronger Foundation
Behind the scenes, we tightened processes and set the stage for scale. We drafted a new Open Data Policy designed for action. Piloted processes to support mandatory open data in staff reports (EX 22.13). And new staff guidance made it easier for City teams to publish data confidently.
The first-ever Toronto Open Data Awards Gala was a highlight, and submissions for 2025 blew us away (judging is in the works, stay tuned for more announcements and winners in early 2026). We published 55 gallery posts showcasing community brilliance, plus 17 more after the awards.
We welcomed Ilya Kreynin as Growth & Operations Lead who will gave us a sharper focus on delivery and governance. Our team moved under the new leadership of Fartash Hagani who leads the Enterprise Data and AI teams.
Making the Portal Better Than Ever
We made updates that make open data clearer, faster, and more transparent.
New dataset pages tell richer stories. The Gallery got a glow-up to spotlight community projects and award submissions. We launched a /requests page for transparency and modernized our front-end stack with a Bootstrap upgrade. Behind the curtain, ticket management and issue tracking got smarter, setting us up for clearer metrics and faster resolution times. Stay tuned for an overhaul of (gotta keep a secret). Can you guess what it is?!
Recognizing People Internally
We partnered with TSD on an Internal Data/AI Challenge for City Staff. This was a hackathon for internal talent – which let me tell you, we have plenty! We judged, mentored, and empowered teams to prototype solutions to real problems. The results were fascinating and promising. To our surprise, the winning solution did something to advance Toronto Open Data.
Shout out to our colleague and friend Shovon Saha | LinkedIn who won this year’s Internal AI challenge with his RAG assistant solution.
Listening and Learning from our local friends
Your feedback shaped what we do next.
You told us what needed clarity and transparency, and we built against those themes. We’ll keep closing the loop by sharing what we heard and what we’re doing next. Haven’t shared yet? We’d love to hear from you; sign up for user research and help us improve. Sign up to be a beta tester.
Who’s Talking About Us
We connected with the City of Hamburg to exchange ideas and share code from our Open Data Airflow instance. They loved our approach, adopted key principles, and even inspired improvements for Toronto, proof that our work is making waves globally!
At the Canadian Open Data & GovMaker Summit, we were so excited to hear that other open data teams – like Edmonton’s – are adapting our data quality score for their own purposes, and to nerd out with fellow data afficionados – like CKAN developer Ian Ward – about our use of innovative pipelines to pull data from our partner systems directly into CKAN.
Looking Ahead to 2026
If 2025 was about momentum, 2026 is about impact. We’ll be cooking up a public roadmap to share with everyone very soon. Stay tuned. Happy Team Lunch. Check us out!!
Thank You
To our community, partners, and colleagues: you made this year extraordinary. Your ideas and critiques pushed us to build better and faster. Stay tuned; 2026 is going to be big.
Follow along: https://open.toronto.ca • X • LinkedIn • BlueSky