Open Data Policy

The City of Hamilton is committed to the principles of accessibility, transparency, and accountability in government and recognizes that society and the economy can benefit from open data. The City’s Open Data Program is continuing to mature in it’s capacity to enable the community to have access to City data easily and transparently through Open Hamilton.

The key focus of the portal is to make available data that is of interest to the community in both graphical and machine-readable formats.

In summary, the purpose of this policy is to:

• Provide an overview of the City’s Open Data program, including the guiding principles
• Adopt the International Open Data Charter, including Open by Default
• Outline the roles and responsibilities of management staff by which City of Hamilton data is made available to the public as valuable, machine readable datasets.
• Initiate and promote the practice of sharing and publishing data openly by educating the staff and public on:
  • The benefits of open data
  • Process to make datasets available on Open Data Portal (open.hamilton.ca)
  • Utilizing the tools available on open.hamilton.ca to interpret the datasets
• Remove barriers and set rules by which City data is made available to public.
• Promote the graphic visualization of datasets through the Open Data Portal and through other data visualization tools used by the City.

We want your input

In the spirit of open and transparent government, we encourage citizens and businesses of Hamilton to provide feedback on The City’s Open Data Policy.