Edmonton Adopts Microsoft’s Cloud-Based Open Government Data Initiative Solution

Microsoft has announced a landmark step in the evolution of its Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) solution unveiled in the first half of 2009. According to the Redmond company, the Canadian City of Edmonton is now the first North American city to embrace OGDI. The software giant revealed that the implementation of OGDI was already complete and that together with Edmonton was working on the next stage of the collaboration, namely building the region's public open data catalogue, the first of its kind.

"Today's launch of the City's open data catalogue demonstrates our commitment to enhancing engagement and collaboration with the citizens and community developers of Edmonton," noted Chris Moore, CIO of the City of Edmonton. "By moving to a more open model and working with Microsoft, we hope to harness the talent and innovation that resides locally to drive Edmonton forward."

Microsoft unveiled OGDI in May 2009, indicating that the new solution was leveraging the company’s Cloud platform in order to kick up a notch transparency and collaboration among governmental organizations, as well as between governmental organizations and the public. According to the software giant, the costs of the OGDI implementation were kept down because, in addition to Windows Azure, Microsoft also turned to open source components.

In fact, when it initially announced OGDI, Microsoft underlined a strong commitment to interoperability. In this sense, the public open data catalogue will offer users and third-party developers the possibility to take advantage of open standards and application interfaces (API) in order to access and share information.

"OGDI-based solutions not only provide easy access to government data, but also demonstrate how cloud computing can help significantly reduce the cost, complexity and time to market for solutions that consume the data," added John Weigelt, national technology officer, Microsoft Canada. "Citizens and community developers will now be able to help solve the business needs of the City of Edmonton, resulting in new solutions in a very short amount of time."