Open Data Day - Day of open data

Hi I'm John Milloy, Ontario's Minister of Government Services. I want to welcome all of you to Open Data Day -- the most wonderful day of the year. While I'm not able to be with you, I want to congratulate each and every one of you on the important work you're doing to promote open data, and let you know that the Government of Ontario is behind you. Ontario believes in the power of open data, which is why we made it a central part of our Open Government plan that Premier Wynne launched last October. As a government, we collect and generate vast amounts of data on topics like traffic, student achievement and government finances, which you will be learning more about today. We're committed to making our data available... and being open by default, so that you can use it to find solutions that can help people in their everyday lives, or start a business that will help our economy grow. Since November 2012, Ontario has been unlocking data on our open data catalogue. We started with 63 data sets and that number has grown to 176. And we're working to release more data. Engaging the people of Ontario is an important part of our Open Government plan, and we're taking the same approach with open data. We want to know which data sets are the most important to you, so we can focus our efforts and unlock the data that you think will have the most impact. I hope you will find the presentations by our ministries useful, and will help you generate ideas and build new partnerships to bring those ideas to life. I look forward to continuing to build our open data catalogue and working with you to unlock the data that you think is the most important. Finally, thank you for your time and thank you for your creativity. Have a wonderful weekend discussing open data.