What’s the best route to navigate your way home? How many townhouses are in your city? Where are York Region’s manufacturers located?
The answers to those questions and countless others are now available to you through York Region’s Open Data platform. “Maintaining an open and transparent government is a hallmark of good government. The Open Data platform provides hundreds of pages of data to anyone searching,” says York Region Chairman and CEO Wayne Emmerson.
Just what is open data? It’s the data made available by governments that is freely and easily accessible to everyone, Emmerson explains. York’s platform uses seven online personas to represent groups of researchers interested in similar information products: educator and student, realtor, non-government organizations, resident, professional, fact finder and local leader.
“A world of information” is available on the site, the Region reports. A non-government organization, for example, might want to find out information as part of an application for a grant submission, while a professional might want to know more about transportation, roads, health or safety.
The platform also contains maps, dashboards and other data insights that go beyond downloading data. This represents an invaluable resource for students, teachers, residents and anyone else searching for information about York Region, which consists of nine local cities and towns and provides a variety of programs and services to 1.2 million residents and 51,000 businesses with 620,000 employees.
To learn more about the information available and to see how the information can be used, visit york.ca/opendata.