Boston, Massachusetts
May 17-19, 1995

Realizing Digital Libraries

The Data Liberation Initiative

Ernie Ingles, Chief Librarian University of Alberta

Thank you very much. I am very pleased to be able to add to what Nancy has talked about, particularly from the Canadian perspective. I want to say right up front that my topic, the Data Liberation Initiative in Canada, is one that has had many, many hands working on it, all of whom deserve great thanks.

The Data Liberation Initiative has existed for some two years now. Its premise is to encourage, and certainly to create, a political context for our government that will allow for a wider distribution of key data files at a highly reduced cost to the research community.

The paramilitary connotations of liberation are not too strong, given the reluctance and lack of will on the part of many government bureaucrats and offices in Canada. The initiative is aimed at increasing the flow of information from the government to the public, particularly to the research and education communities. Such an increase is intended to widen the base of those who access this information and use it to enhance our nation’s competitive edge. But how are we supposed to do that? By teaching students to make use of Canadian data and by providing access to it, thereby allowing for meaningful research and analysis on issues of public policy.

This point has come to be fundamental to the success of the Data Liberation Initiative’s success. Our object within that regard, then, is to create a future orientation for the program. Such an orientation would include investing in training, strengthening and encouraging research and development, and better informing Canadians of their cultural and social identities. The reality is that publicly funded research organizations have always been at the leading edge in the creation, development, and use of both electronic information and enabling technologies. It is the use of these sources and tools in the ongoing endeavors of teaching and research that has created and placed knowledge in the public domain.

Unfortunately, because of current price structures and attitudes, that domain is limited in scope, and we therefore tend to turn to sources from the United States. This is far from an ideal situation for a sovereign nation, particularly when public policy hangs in the balance.

As to the Initiative itself, let me provide you with a brief background. In April of 1993, the Social Science Federation of Canada hosted a meeting with representatives from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, the Canadian Association of Public Data Users, and other interested parties. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to make Canadian data more readily available to the education and research communities.

The partners’ intention was to create a pilot initiative embracing three broad groupings; the first and foremost was Statistics Canada, which was considered a pivotal partner. It is the primary producer of this sort of information in Canada, and it was certainly hoped that the initiative would then quickly expand to other federal departments, such as Industry, Trade, Environment, and Commerce and Health, once support for the initiative began to build. Statistics Canada was also a good place to start because they were very much a willing partner.

The Depository Services Program (DSP) of Communications Canada was the second partner, and the third group of partners was the Depository Libraries. In this latter case, the large depositories capable of handling this kind of information were particularly important. The Depository Libraries as parties were warranted to undertake siting, according to the terms of an electronic depository agreement; ensuring that data be owned through this initiative; and making sure it was neither redistributed for use other than was stipulated, nor was distributed beyond the depository membership, nor was repackaged in any way for commercial use.

Publicizing the availability of data sets and databases was also one of their responsibilities, as were designating an official DSP contact person in each institution; selecting only data for which there had been a demand or for which a request could be anticipated; identifying and recommending to the DSP products for possible inclusion; providing access to and educating users regarding the content, file structure, and potential uses of the data; responding to various inquiries; and, of course, tracking use and creating various reports for the partnering institutions and departments, as well as collecting various kinds of information for the National Library of Canada.

Data providers such as Statistics Canada had responsibilities which mirrored the depositories’. They, too, were responsible for identifying publicly available data sets and files, providing a supporting technical environment we could all draw on, making information products and documentation available to the depositories, providing user support, publicizing their products, preserving and migrating files as new media developed, and, naturally, keeping archival copies of all data sets.

Finally, the DSP’s responsibilities were to create and support the program; to develop an advisory committee to monitor the depository libraries’ activities; to provide various kinds of technical research and secretarial assistance; to list the products; to collect and administrate fees and funds; to facilitate the preparation of various submissions, particularly to the Canadian Treasury Board; to compile statistics and various reporting mechanisms; and generally to ensure compliance with all of the various agreements.

The project would be overseen by a data depository committee with a broad mandate to articulate and communicate the needs of the data repository network to the depository program, and to assist the program in setting its priorities, policies, programs, and services.

That summarizes what the Initiative, in essence, was intended to do. Over the course of the last two years momentum has been building, and in the last six months it has increased dramatically.

Since the Initiative began in 1993, so much has happened that, like many things in Canada do, mirrors much of what has been going on in the United States, things such as a new government that has a mandate to reduce costs, to restructure, and so on. These things take a considerable amount of time. Part of the process has been an ongoing and in-depth review of all programs, programming, and departmental spending within the government. Nonetheless, within this environment of change, as Nancy referred to it, there has also been an environment of opportunity. The Data Liberation Initiative has been able to build on that opportunity and upon some of its rhetoric, most notably that of the development of an Information Highway.

So, within the last couple of months, as I indicated, interest in the Liberation Initiative has grown. That’s not to say that checks have been written and policies put into place as yet, but we are very optimistic. To give you a sense of why there is that optimism, I will tell you that some key ministers in the Canadian government representing Industry Canada, Science and Technology, and Human Resource Development portfolios are very much in favor of the Initiative, even to the point of having written or, in various other ways, said so publicly.

Also, a couple of key policy papers have endorsed the Initiative, one of which, the report of the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology. Most importantly, the Initiative has received endorsement from Marcel Masse, one of the key ministers in the current restructuring, and one of the most admired ministers in Ottawa. He commissioned a group that has come forth with a report entitled, Strengthening Our Policy Capacity. It is my understanding that Masse’s view on all of this is that good policy needs good data and good data equals good policy. Masse was a government bureaucrat for many years, and has written a strong letter endorsing the Initiative.

In closing, I will read a quote from one such paper to bring back home the point that the best thing that has emerged from the Initiative is the understanding that good data equals good policy, and that the data needs to be in the hands of universities and academics in order for the government of Canada to best serve its mandate.

Academics point to one extremely low-cost way of providing useful policy research; namely, better access to information and data. There is already a major cooperative effort underway between the Social Science Federation of Canada, Statistics Canada and the Depository Services Program of Canada to provide affordable access to statistical microdata files in electronic form.

This initiative should be extended to all departmental databases. Beyond this, there are many useful studies and reports done internally to government which should be made available in a timely way to outside researchers through this initiative, a critical element in proving the relevance of a continuous interaction between government and the universities.

Standing consultative groups of academic advisors can prove helpful on both substantive policy and empirical issues, as well as in the design of research programs. We support the Data Liberation Initiative.

So we have reason to be optimistic, despite the fact that there are still many questions to be answered, particularly in terms of how the program might be administered. There are questions with relation to where our DSP program might finally reside, and where the Data Liberation Initiative may fit within the context of the bureaucracy. Right now it looks like it will more likely find a home within industry Canada than within DSP, nonetheless, it appears to be off and running, and we are all optimistic for its success.