The City of Medicine Hat is committed to using technology to promote openness and transparency. Recent examples of this include interactive Transit Route Maps, video streaming of City Council meetings and the enhanced iMap and eServices section of the City's website. The Open Data initiative is the latest demonstration of this commitment.

The open data initiative provides an online open data catalogue for data managed by the City. The initiative will also develop an open data strategy for the City, along with a guide to manage the release of open data. Confidential and sensitive information held by the City will continue to be handled in accordance with existing protocols, and provincial and federal law.

Open data allows the City to leverage the expertise available in the community to creatively use existing information. Open data enables Medicine Hat's research and IT communities to create innovative and sustainable solutions.

Medicine Hat is now among the list of Canadian cities providing open data. The most active Canadian municipalities at the forefront are Edmonton, Nanaimo, Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa.

Medicine Hat has and will continue to provide availability to open data through this innovative approach and design of the open data catalogue and by engaging residents and the global open data community to use this information and develop applications that benefit the community. Through this initiative, Medicine Hat is joining the ranks of other municipalities using Microsoft's open source Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) solution to host the data catalogue.

For More information:

Contact: opendata@medicinehat.ca