This is a movement I am very interested in. Taking data which is already in a usable format, accessible via Access to Information request, and just going one step further and making it available.

For example: historical border wait times
You could then mash this up with dates, weather, the economy (especially for economically important crossings like the Ambassador bridge (Detroit/Windsor) and Peace Arch (Surrey/Blaine)).

Should we open it to government open data rather than just federal?

Perhaps we could invite the personalities behind these sites:
http://civicaccess.ca/
http://www.fixmystreet.ca/
http://www.disclosed.ca/

They seem to be using the same concepts.

Oh, I see that the others, at least fixmystreet, is listed under another topic. Makes sense

Open data formats are the roots of interoperability and the roots of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). We could also speak about FLOSS in governments as in England, US, France, Spain...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7841486.stm (The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.)

The project that I am working on inside the federal government (canada@150) has leveraged open source software in a particularly useful way, namely by passing gov't procurement procedures. Initially, it was a battle for me to convince the right people that FLOSS could provide a good, if not better solution than most commercial software. As time has gone on, it has been easier and easier to implement FLOSS solutions in our agency. I think its a big mental hurdle for a lot of people used to paying for software.

Changing habits is a big mental hurdle for a lot (most) of people.

FLOSS is great, and open data formats is wonderful! But these technologies and concepts are opposed to closed source software and closed/proprietary data formats. Its very hard to make people change there minds.

But fortunately, with the Web 2.0 wave, people discover that something different could exist. Different from what they have known for the last 15 years.

Luckily, the actual crisis is going to help us accelerating FLOSS, open data format and Web 2.0 adoption.

I think the key points that will come up in discussion will be how to show that open (and freely available) data and FLOSS solutions add value to the current schema.

Open data for example, allows the public to review, analyse, mashup, and create tools which (if developed by the governments) would cost a signficant amount. It also allows for connections between data produced by disparate agencies, that might not otherwise get linked. (ie Environment Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency: how do border crossings affect water quality in border towns?, etc) The key is finding a simple and concrete way of showing the low barrier to entry and the added value.

A few issues I would like to see discussed:

1) how to get the federal government agencies to disclose as much data as possible about each contract. Currently available information is so brief it's almost useless. eg. "99 OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES NOT ELSEWHERE SPECIFIED"
2) proposing a common machine readable format for disclosing contract data that can be adopted by each agency. Should each agency simply provide a .CSV file for all the contracts? That would definitely ease my job of screen scraping the contracts.