## 3 Case Study: Open Data at the Canadian Municipal Level  
A precursor to explicit open data strategies, one early example of the potential for government to embrace an ethos of openness came from the City of Nanaimo, British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada which effectively abandoned its prior model of internalized and proprietary and infrastructure and information holdings within the realm of geographic information systems and spatial data mapping. Citing the benefits of open innovation through greater usage and access and heightened redundancy and security, the municipal government opted for open source platforms and freely available proprietary tools such as Google Earth in shifting its data imaging (that it previously regarded as a proprietary asset) to Google's cloud-enabled platform [14]. Some five years later, this same municipality would become the first in Canada to adopt a \"Pan-Canadian Open Government License\" for its data holdings (the license, negotiated and agreed to by all government levels in Canada, seeks to enable open data usage by third parties in a manner largely free of traditional proprietary restrictions [15]). Today, more than thirty Canadian municipalities, of all sizes have undertaken open data strategies. One such example, adopted in 2012 by the City of Halifax puts forth the following drivers of doing so (summarized here): restrictive data policies limiting the public good; costly and inefficient public data sharing processes; local community movements seeking greater data access and usage; open data as a driver of economic growth; and open data as a platform for increased transparency and citizen engagement [16]. Whereas the first and second drivers apply mainly to the internal apparatus of information management by the municipality, the latter themes underscore the wider societal and participatory dimensions of open data as a key source of collective innovation across both civic and economic pursuits as well as the interdependencies across both realms. In a manner that previews much of the discussion below, it bears noting that while this strategy was adopted by Halifax City Council prior to local elections in 2012, this effort would receive a considerable boost by the election of a new Mayor that same year publicly committed to an \"open government\" platform. The City of Edmonton would become, in 2010 the first Canadian municipality to launch a formal apps competition--inspired by the Washington DC model. Today, as is the case around the world several Canadian cities and towns have undertaken such initiatives with the aim of spurring public involvement in not only accessing previously government-held data but devising innovative ways to make use of such data via smart devices, consistent with the societal evolution described by [PERSON] and others above. In the case of Edmonton, thirty-two apps were devised by members of the local public, developed from a wider set of eighty-six conceptual ideas submitted online by interested parties, on a range of topics ranging from restaurant inspections, transportation, arts and culture, and many others. The contest criterion for selecting winners (across a number of categories) included four components: (i) accessibility--ability for the application to be used by a broad array of citizens; (ii) usability--usefulness and utility to citizens overall, or any particular demographic of users; (iii) creativity--originality, uniqueness and inventive nature of the application; and (iv) the number of community votes received. City managers were satisfied with this pilot initiative as an early, if modest example of how to spur data usage for public interest pursuits--as well as an important learning platform for other likeminded initiatives undertaken by Edmonton officials to build on this foundation.