The majority of early

respondents are located in

Ontario and Quebec, with 3

regions demonstrating an

emerging yet mature industrial

Open Data capability – these

include the Greater Toronto

Area, Waterloo Region, and

Montreal.

Most respondents are emerging companies, between 1-5 years old. However, 15% of

respondent companies were 21+ years old, demonstrating an ability and willingness

for established companies to integrate open data into their businesses.

There is a strong preponderance among respondent companies towards revenue streams

based on analyzing and interpreting data for clients. As many respondents identified

“difficulty finding/accessing data” as a key challenge, it is reasonable to expect that those

who are familiar with open data have parlayed this knowledge into analytical services for

companies that do not have this capability.

There is a wide distribution of industries represented, a result of the (1) varying availability of data across

jurisdictions and (2) levels of granularity. It is expected that one of the leading industries is Geospatial/Mapping, as

at the Federal and Provincial levels the most frequently released open data sets are geospatial (NRCan is the

leading Federal department with over 110,000 open data sets on Canada’s open data portal).

There is a consistent use of data from all government jurisdictions in Canada –

knowing that many of these companies are location specific due to data availability,

this demonstrates a significant opportunity for governments to create common data

sets and standards to permit companies to scale. It is also interesting that some

Canadian companies have been able to integrate US data sets into their business.

The overwhelming majority of respondent companies use under 50 data sets, which

indicates their businesses rely heavily on them. This reliance underlines the

importance among companies to have access to open data that is released at reliable

intervals and is machine readable.

The overwhelming majority of

respondent companies use

under 50 data sets, which

indicates their businesses rely

heavily on them. This reliance

underlines the importance

among companies to have

access to open data that is

released at reliable intervals

and is machine readable.

Respondents were asked to identify

their top business challenges.

Unsurprisingly, there are a myriad of

challenges facing companies using

open data in Canada, and

respondent companies were

consistent in the areas they found

most challenging. As Canada begins

to understand the needs of

businesses using Open Data, these

challenges present important

guideposts for creating greater

opportunity for businesses.

An overwhelming majority of companies already provide Open Data for consumption by the

wider community, or are willing to consider doing so. This is important to note, as

companies that consume Open Data provided by governments and other sources, are also

will to increase the availability of Open Data within the broader community. By increasing

the availability and quality of data there exists increasing opportunity for extracting value

from Open Data.

The desire for new data sets is strong. Almost half of the respondent companies indicated they would be

eager to pay for additional data sets to improve their business. A further handful of companies identified

that while there are additional data sets they need to be more competitive, they are unable to afford it.

Moving forward, it is important that data providers and stewards address as many of these needs as

possible with free data sources in order to increase Canada’s business competitiveness.