National Action Plan on Open Government Commitment

The Open Science and Data Platform (OSDP) was officially renewed for another five years through 2023-2028, and thus planning for the next five years began this quarter. A planning retreat was hosted in Ottawa in February where teams and co-leads collaborated and began creating roadmaps to plan for enhancement and optimized delivery of the OSDP through this next five-year phase.

Release 7 of OSDP was officially launched January 24, 2023. This release included a variety of new content including the new “Resources to Understand Cumulative Effects in Northern Ontario” content collection focused on data relevant to the watersheds surrounding the Regional Assessment in the Ring of Fire Area in Northern Ontario.

New Provincial/Territorial geospatial datasets were also onboarded from Saskatchewan (368), Manitoba (118), and Newfoundland and Labrador (7).

Newly onboarded curated scientific publications content includes Transport Canada’s open-access publications, including the Cumulative Effects of Marine Shipping Framework.

The onboarding of Canada Energy Regulator (CER) pipeline registry known as BERDI (Biophysical Economic and Regulatory Development Information) is now the fifth regulatory registry integrated within OSDP, alongside the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada Registry, Fisheries Act Registry, Transport Canada Registry, and the British Columbia Major Projects Inventory.

Work focused on planning future content additions is ongoing, including the exploration of non-government information and data, and Indigenous Knowledge and data.

Resource to Understand Cumulative Effects In Northern Ontario

Government of Saskatchewan Data

Government of Manitoba Data

Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Data

Transport Canada publications

BERDI

Data gaps and availability, as well as lack of detail in certain metadata records are common and can present challenges. Resource limitations can also be a factor related to progress on key indicators.

1.1.1 Preparation for Release 7 of the Open Science and Data Platform continued through last quarter with a focus of ensuring all new content that was ready for public launch of Release 7 January 17, 2023. This involved a heavy focus on user acceptance testing (UAT) in the OSDP testing or “staging” environment to ensure all content was functioning and displaying properly. New content planned for Release 7 includes a new content collection entitled “Resources to Understand Cumulative Effects in Northern Ontario”, focused on data relevant to the watersheds surrounding the Regional Assessment in the Ring of Fire Area in Northern Ontario, new geospatial datasets from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador, and new scientific publications from Transport Canada including the Cumulative Effects of Marine Shipping Framework.

Resources to Understand Cumulative Effects in Northern Ontario

Transport Canada publications

Government of Saskatchewan Data

Government of Manitoba Data

Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Data

Since January 2022, a significant number of content and features have been added to the Open Science and Data Platform guided by feedback and user engagement. The Platform’s catalogue continued to grow, reaching over 125,000 scientific publications and nearing 5,000 datasets through collaborations with federal, provincial and territorial government providers. Additionally, the Open Science and Data Platform’s team collaborated with the Terrestrial Cumulative Effects Initiative to create content collections available through the Platform as of April 2022 in order to highlight data relevant to regions of interest at the watershed level, and to support Indigenous partners' research and projects. Features were added to enhance user experience and use of the Platform, including advanced search via the Navigation Tips page in April 2022 to help users navigate the platform’s features more easily. The What’s New gallery was created to showcase newly onboarded data and articles of interest which was launched in May 2022 and continues to be updated on a bi-monthly basis with newly onboarded content. The Platform’s team continues to collaborate with a wide range of partners to obtain advice and feedback, which included a Government Advisory Working Group on the Platform, Indigenous organizations, academia, non-government environmental organizations and members from industry. A survey was made available through the Platform throughout March and April 2022 to guide future enhancements and user experience of the Platform. Extensive social media campaigns generated significant interest, with over 144,000 views for the period of November 2021 to January 2022, and 132,000 views for the period of May-September 2022, which helped encourage use of the Platform as a key tool to support the sharing of scientific information and data to support open government goals.

New content added in this reporting period included federal and provincial data, for example, from Transport Canada (Cumulative Effects of Marine Shipping), Environment and Climate Change Canada (Great Lakes Nearshore Waters Assessment), and Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The content collection entitled “Resources to Understand Cumulative Effects in Western Canada”, which was created to support understanding of cumulative effects in the watersheds of interest to the Terrestrial Cumulative Effects Initiative, was featured in the What’s New Gallery in July 2022 and on social media through a short datasets demonstration video. In September 2022, a video tutorial was added to the Navigation Tips page, as per a set of recommendations from a user engagement session with graduate students at Dalhousie University’s School of Resource and Environmental Studies held in November 2021. The video offers a high-level tour of the Open Science and Data Platform’s key features including the keyword search and map viewer functions. Future content planning that occurred in this quarter included the onboarding of more provincial data (from Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador) into the platform’s testing environment. Planning also began for a second regional content collection focused on the watershed regions surrounding the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario

Terrestrial Cumulative Effects Initiative content collection

Site Navigation Tips

What’s New

Land Page

Platform User Survey

Social Media Post - Twitter

Social Media Post - Facebook

Social Media Post LinkedIn

What’s New Gallery

Resources to Understand Cumulative Effects in Western Canada