Open data can save Canadian taxpayers

A very good case for open data is made by David Eaves on his personal website. David recounts a story where a consultant who was hired to analyze charitable giving in Toronto stumbled upon something he didn’t expect; donations to illegal charities were rampant in the Toronto area and had gone un-noticed by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). In this case, it is estimated that more than $3.2 billion has been saved since 2007 because the fraud was discovered by an analyst outside the government.

Now this is in no way an criticism of the CRA. As David writes, sometimes the person looking at the data may lack the context to identify that something was amiss in the data. This is not the fault of the analysts at the CRA in any way. No matter the skill of our public servants, there are times when things will fall through the cracks.

But, this is a problem with the manner in which we treat government data. The chances of these errors decreases with the number of people looking over the data. David explains how open data could be of great benefit to Canada saying that:

“[f]or many data sets, citizens should not have to make a request. Nor should we have to answer questions about why we want the data. It should be downloadable in its entirety. Not trapped behind some unhelpful search engine. When data is made readily available in machine readable formats, more eyes can look at it. This means that someone on the ground, in the community like, say, Toronto who knows the sector, is more likely to spot something a public servant in another city might not see because they dont have the right context or bandwidth. And if that public servant is not allowed to talk about the issue, then they can share this information with their fellow citizens.This is the power of open data: The power to find problems in complicated environments, and possibly even to prevent them from emerging.”

Well said David! In Canada we have a long way to go before we reach the level of data openness of our neighbours to the south. However, I see glimmers of hope in projects such as Vancouver’s Open Data Catallogue and Toronto’s open data.

Case Study: How Open data saved Canada $3.2 Billion via [FlowingData]