CKAN powers new Open Data portal in Canada

The Canadian government today relaunched its Open Data Portal, data.gc.ca, using CKAN 2.0. The launch was timed to coincide with the adoption of an Open Data Charter by Canada and other G8 countries today, at a summit in Northern Ireland. The portal, which was developed and deployed in-house, includes a number of adaptations to CKAN, most notably a bilingual extension enabling metadata to be entered in English or French and translated, and fixed tags available in both languages. Like CKAN itself the extension is open source and freely available for other sites to use. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that creation of the next-generation Open Data Portal demonstrated "our firm commitment to a more open, transparent and accountable government", and that it would "generate innovation and the economic social benefits that come with it." It makes some new datasets available to the public for the first time, including data on housing, health and environment. The site joins another new Canadian portal, the official data catalogue of the city of Ottawa. Ottawa's portal has also recently moved to CKAN, to take advantage of features including custom RSS feeds, the API, and better search features.