Part 5 - Analysis of Toronto's Open Government Progress Report

“They know the words, but they don’t know the music.” - Jimmy Hoffa, 1992 Hoffa, Twentieth Century Fox

This is Part 5 of a series that examines the newly released Toronto City Clerk Open Government progress report. Please keep in mind that the premise for this analysis is that while the City of Toronto does know the principles of Open Government, they do not truly understand its spirit.

For this section I tried to quick-fire a number of things that provide context to statements made in the progress report.

THE TMMIS WEBSITE
This is, without a doubt, the golden jewel of the Toronto City Clerk's Office, and rightly so. For those unaware, the TMMIS website (do not ask me what the acronym stands for) is where information related to the Toronto Council can be found. Minutes, votes, agendas, reports, committees, by-laws, and livestreaming.

It is an organizational dream.

While there are a few hiccups with regards to their Open Data UI and that the site itself lacks any kind of discernible personality, the TMMIS website is a success story that should be emulated by other jurisdictions.

PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS
The report states that in 2015 a special webpage was created to help Torontonians learn more about Public Appointments and profiles this fact as an Open Government initiative.

This is a reoccurring theme for this progress report. The City of Toronto seems to think that publishing information is Open Government when in fact it is not. Putting information online is not a special ability that deserves a gold star. It is time for one of North America's largest cities to set the bar a little higher.

THE REVENUE SERVICES LOOKUP TOOL
In Part 2 of this series I mention these tools and asked whether or not they were being used. It turns out this question is answered deeper into the report and the tools are popular as they see 15,000 to 20,000 visits per month. Well done :-).

311 TORONTO
This is quite possibly one of the best examples of what I mean when I say the City of Toronto does not understand the spirit of Open Government.

The report mentions that Toronto has a 311 service where people can call in and get access to non-emergency city services, programs and information. Aside from the fact that this service has been around since 2009 and is not exactly "progress," there is something else I find peculiar.

They fail to mention how 311 Toronto can be used in reporting problems within the city. Here is what I mean: Did you know that you can submit 311 service request via Twitter? For example, let's say you see a vandalized bench at the Brickworks, you can take a picture, send a tweet to @311toronto and they will start the process to fix this problem.

THIS is Open Government. This function is way more relevant to Open Government than just highlighting the mere existence of a 7-year-old program. So, why would the city not mention this fact in the progress report?

OPEN GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
The report mentions a forum between the City of Toronto, the City of Guelph, and the MaRS Discovery District whose purpose is to collaborate on Open Government Initiatives. I have no idea what this is and could not find any information online about it either.

So I chose to call 311 Toronto to get more information but unfortunately they could not help me, aside from forwarding me to Toronto's "recorded-message" FOI system. Since that was an obvious dead-end, I opted called the Toronto City Clerk's office directly.

The two people I spoke to at the City Clerk's office did not know about the Open Government report, much less about this community of practice. That is when I was told someone would call me back and below are the details given to me.

As it turns out, this is a network of public servants who meet on two or three times a year (some via conference call) to share best practices and failures when it comes to Open Gov and Public Engagement initiatives. It is akin to a support group for public servants who want to go to the next level of Open Government. While the progress report only references Toronto and Guelph, the network has grown to include other jurisdictions, even some at the provincial level.

Two things:

1. It is commendable that the City of Toronto would be part of this forum. In this era of "hot takes" and clickbaiting, the government needs a safe place to try things and learn without having the media/public down their neck for trying something different. Open Government & Open Data are different by nature and thus prone to trial and error.
2. The spirit of Open Government is the ability for communities and government to learn together. To build together. To fail and succeed together. My only wish is to champion be the city’s Open Government efforts, like I have for many other jurisdictions over the last five years. It is unfortunate the city sees engaged like myself as a liability instead of an asset.

E-POLLING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
This is an interesting tool, albeit very narrow in scope.

Essentially, whenever a residents makes an application to the city regarding street/permit parking or to create a boulevard cafe, the city issues a poll to those residents who will be affected by that application. Those polls are published online and outline the results.

I am not entirely sure of this tools impact, but I do have one recommendations: There is lots of data here and the e-polling webpage should have a link that leads to the Open Data Set on the Open Data Portal.