Vancouver will ask consultants to supply data using open systems

Vancouver city council has endorsed in principle the idea of using open standards for its data whenever possible. With the goal of making information more accessible to the public, the city council endorsed a motion by Councillor Andrea Reimer to “move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps and other formats of media.”

The motion also said that the city “will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns.”

Notably, Vancouver’s city manager was to be asked to ensure: “that data supplied by third parties such as developers, contractors and consultants are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations.”

Unlike proprietary software such as that sold under licence by Microsoft, open source software is free and can’t be tied to a specific manufacturer’s operating system or device. Examples include the Linux operating system, the word processing Open Office suite and the web browser Mozilla Firefox.

In February, CBC News reported that the federal government was calling for submissions of no-charge licensed software through MERX.