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City of Vancouver adopts open source

May 25, 2009

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The city of Vancouver has approved the principles of making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting the open standards for that data and then seriously considering open source software when replacing existing applications.

However, some of the city's council members have argued that supporting the motion would allow the city to improve transparency, reduce costs and enable people to use the data to create new useful products.

Overall, the city will respect security and privacy concerns while supporting openness, and went through the process as proposed, even though one city councillor did try to vote against parts of the program.

Some feel that open-source software should be favoured, rather than just be put on equal footing with proprietary software.

Additionally, some of the city's staff are excited about the new policy, as they had tried to implement more openness in some areas before, but didn't have a policy framework to work from. The staff is to report back on an implementation plan in October, but some of the changes could begin to happen immediately, nevertheless.

"There's probably another thousand people that we could be talking to out there if we could send them videos," said Andrea Reimer, city commissioner.

She said that videos made at city hall, including videos of council meetings, are currently in a proprietary format that cannot be posted on YouTube. They can only be viewed on the City of Vancouver website by people who have the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

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Source: City of Vancouver, B.C.