Category: Transparency

#OpenGov, City Policy, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

Community to create Guelph's open government priorities

Today community members are invited to officially begin sharing what they know about open government with the City, and identifying their priorities for making it a reality in Guelph. The information provided will shape the City’s Open Government Action Plan (OGAP)—a five year road map of the City’s open government activities, scheduled to go to Council this summer. “This plan is being developed in a unique and very collaborative way,” said Mayor Farbridge. “What sets this initiative apart is the […]

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#OpenGov, Branding of Guelph, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

Open Guelph Hackathon: The Winners!

Staff memo. As you know the first ever Open Guelph Hackathon was held this past weekend to commemorate International Open Data Day. Open Data Hackathons are a fantastic and tangible example of what open government is all about – in this case, the City worked as a platform to support and empower the community to leverage our resources in order to create value for the City at large. In just 4 weeks our Open Data Team was able to liberate […]

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Having fun, Public Input, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

City and University co-host first hackathon

For the first time ever, the City and University of Guelph are co-hosting—for the first time—a community hackathon in celebration of the internationally-recognized Open Data Day on February 22. The hackathon is designed for students, local application developers and interested community members to use City data to create innovative mobile and web-based applications and tools for Guelph residents. Making civic information more readily available and relevant to Guelph residents, in transparent and accountable ways is one of four focus areas […]

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Public Input, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

Exciting events on Open Government

Memo from excited staff member. I wanted to highlight a few exciting events on Open Government. We are leading the way in being more accessible, quicker in our response times, more open to sharing information and engaging residents in the work of their local government. We aren’t just developing an Open Government Action Plan for future implementation, we are looking for every opportunity to act, test and learn as we go along. That’s why today the City released its first […]

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Branding of Guelph, City Policy, Having fun, Public Input, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

City’s data catalogue now open

Today the City released its first six datasets on guelph.ca/opendata for public use. The datasets, or collections of raw, electronic information currently include Guelph Transit bus stops; municipal election polling stations and subdivisions; Guelph’s ward boundaries; and recreation program information. Later this week, an additional six datasets will be added to the catalogue. “As we adopt new open government practices at the City, we will continue to release more public information in a variety of different ways,” said Blair Labelle, […]

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City Policy, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

2013 Year End Operating Budget Variance Forecast

Staff memo. At its meeting of September 15, 2013, the Corporate Administration, Finance and Enterprise Committee received the June 2013 Year End Variance Report that identified a projected year end unfavourable variance of $2.36 million (as of June 30, 2013). CAFE Committee further directed staff to provide monthly updates on progress towards mitigating the projected variance. This e-mail is provided as the last of these updates for 2013 and identifies the current adjustments achieved to date to offset through cost […]

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City Policy, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

Information Flow Protocol

Staff memo. You will recall that on Sept. 30, 2013 Council approved an Information Flow Protocol to formalize professional practices related to sharing information between Council and staff. This document serves as a framework to support knowledge exchange efforts to respect Council’s rights to access information while also protecting obligations to privacy and confidentiality. Although the foundational elements of the protocol are now established, this document will be reviewed annually and will continue to evolve in order to better address […]

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City Policy, TransparencyBy Councillor Goller

Audio Recordings of Council and Committee Meetings

Staff memo. Please be advised that we are now publishing audio recordings of the City’s Council and Committee meetings online. We decided to use a very cost effective cloud solution for this service which not only saves this data from negatively impacting our own server bandwidth, but also allows users to customize their experience (if they wish) in streaming, downloading and sharing the audio files. The platform also provides us with some basic analytics which we can use to track […]

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