Full Interview: Andrea Reimer on open cities
Last week, Vancouver City Council passed a motion (PDF) to endorse the principles of “making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.”
This afternoon, Nora interviewed Andrea Reimer, the Vancouver city councillor behind the open city motion. They talked about the costs and benefits of open data, how it can affect civic engagement, and the privacy and security concerns Vancouver will have to consider as it opens up its municipal data.
Nora also asked crowdsourced questions from the Spark community, including Michael, Randall Ross, and Gizmo.
A shorter version of this interview will air on the June 3 and 6 episode of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3. UPDATE: You can also download the interview in OGG Vorbis format.
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[Original image by jmv]
May 27th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Andrea Reimer for Canada’s CTO!
–Bob.
June 1st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Gotta love the irony of Spark distributing MP3's via iTunes. Vancouver City has discovered the benefits of open standards and open source, but outside of Bob McDonald's Quirks and Quarks programme, the CBC still hasn't.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Hi James. AFAIK, most of CBCs podcasts are MP3 files, but there are a few exceptions, including CBC Radio 3's podcasts, which are available as OGG files:
http://radio3.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcastabout.aspx
You might be interested to know that Nora's full interview with Andrea Reimer is available as an OGG file here:
http://podcast.cbc.ca/spark/spark_20090527_reimer...
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 am
Thanks for the links, Dan, but that's not exactly the point, as those OGG files are fairly well hidden and not promoted as heavily as the iTunes/MP3 files. Indeed, the "enhanced" content versions are unavailable to anyone who cannot use Apple's proprietary software and Apple, like Microsoft before them, actively works against open platforms and standards (see http://www.macworld.com/article/140246/2009/04/it... so this is unlikely to change in the future.
I think the CBC's experience with this situation, where first class service is given exclusively to proprietary software due to its ubiquity, is exactly the kind of thing that makes Vancouver's stance on the issue important.
In an ideal world, everything the CBC does as a public broadcaster would be under a creative commons license and would be made available in unencumbered formats and the community would then be able to come up with innovative and interesting ways to combine and present the content they paid for. Obviously this would take a while to happen and there would be many complex issues to deal with, but it would be great if the CBC stepped up to the plate the way the BBC in the UK has.
Thanks,
JR
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Wow, who would have guessed that CBC spark would censor comments? I submitted a lengthy response to Dan yesterday and it appears to have been deleted. How bizarre and sad that the CBC refuses to have an open and honest discussion.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Dan from Spark here.
I assure you, your comment wasn't censored.
It didn't show up on this blog immediately because you entered a fake email address in your comment. The particular fake email address you entered tripped our comment spam filter, and put your comment into a moderation queue.
Your comment appears above. Thanks for weighing in.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Hi James,
Thanks for the .ogg link.
Might this be the thin edge of the wedge? If SPARK! can do it once, why not all the time? I hate to think that Q&Q is more technically advanced than SPARK! One show at a time!
b.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:31 am
[...] could result from opening access to cities’ data. Vancouver city councilor Andrea Reimer likewise hopes that opening municipal data heralds nothing less than an impending culture shift around public [...]
October 8th, 2009 at 6:54 am
[...] 3 months, I put the thing on shuffle and what should turn up as the first track but this CBC Spark interview with Councillor Andrea Reimer from Vancouver talking about their experiences in launching their own “Open City” [...]