About open data

What is open data about?

Open data is data that can be freely accessed, used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere and for any purpose. The main purpose of the site is to provide easy access and encourage re-usability of public data.

Government of Yukon open data provides an easy way to find, access and reuse the government's public datasets. This service brings all of the government's data together in one searchable website.

Our datasets are created and managed by different government departments. We cannot guarantee the quality or timeliness of all data. If you have any feedback you can get in touch with the department that produced the dataset.

This is a pilot project. We are in the process of adding a quality framework to make it easier for you to access high quality, reliable data.

Background

This open data project is driven by commitments set out in the Mandate letter for Minister Mostyn.

Key mandate letter items include:

  • Support economic diversification in the innovation, science and IT sectors through development of an open data repository
  • Increase the amount of information available to Yukoners by preparing amendments to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, as well as through the open data repository
  • Expand services available online and reduce barriers to the public accessing government services

What is the criteria for including data in Government of Yukon open data?

We will include open data that can be freely accessed, used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere, and for any purpose. We will not include data that:

  • contains personally identifiable information;
  • poses any legal, security, confidentiality, privacy or commercial sensitivity, and other concerns that may prevent data sets from being shared with the public;
  • is outdated and incorrect; or
  • includes only information such as press releases, books, brochures, thesis etc.

What is the technology used for Government of Yukon open data?

We use DKAN to publish our data. DKAN is a Drupal-based open data tool maintained by Granicus.

What are the metadata standards used for the datasets and resources?

The metadata for DKAN dataset is based on the DCAT standard and Project Open Data (POD). Find out more about DKAN and supported standards.

We also referenced The Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus for indexing terms or information resources and also for sourcing controlled vocabulary for subject category (DKAN topics).

How to search for data

You can search for data in several different ways.

From the open data home page:

  • Enter your search terms in the search box.
  • Explore datasets organized by topic.

From the Dataset page:

  • Enter your search terms in the main search box to capture a wider list of datasets.
  • Refine your initial search using the second search box.
  • Explore the complete list of all government datasets available on the site.
  • Filter your search results by topic, formats, publishers, etc.

How to download and view datasets

Depending on the dataset file format, users may have the option to:

  • direct download through the download button;
  • link to the FTP folder for download; or
  • view it through an application viewer provided by the site.

How the government processes data suggestions?

Once you suggest a dataset in the Government of Yukon’s Open data site:

  • If you have provided your email address, you will receive an automatic reply to let you know that we have received your data suggestion. We will use this email address to communicate with you if we need any clarification on your suggestion.
  • If you didn’t provide your email address you won’t get a notification, but you can email eservices@gov.yk.ca to follow up any time.
  • We will consolidate all the data suggestions once a month. We will evaluate your data suggestion to make sure it doesn’t violate our open data publishing criteria and guidelines, that are mentioned above.
  • We will review the data suggestions and identify which department owns the data. The data suggestions will be forwarded to the respective department that owns the data.
  • We will work with the data owner (department) to determine if the suggested data already exists, or if it’s feasible to produce the data. This will depend on the available resources, capacity and ability to release the data.
  • If the data can be produced and released, we will work with the data owner (department) to get the data published.
  • We will publish the status of the suggested datasets in the Open data site as a dataset titled “Suggested datasets status”.
  • If we can not publish the dataset then you will receive an email update usually within 4 weeks, provided we have your email address.

Support

Contact eservices@gov.yk.ca if you have any questions or require assistance regarding the government's open data service.