Research Guides: Business Analytics Hub: Open Data

What is Open Data

Open Data is digital data that is made available with the technical and legal characteristics necessary for it to be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone, anytime and anywhere.

Digital data, in this context, is machine readable data, such as CSV, XML, JSON, Shapefiles, APIs. Unlike human readable formats, such as PDFs, HTML pages; machine readable data can be re-purposed, synthesized and modelled by computer applications to generate insights, analyses and/or used to develop web/mobile applications.

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What is Open Data? (2017, November 14). City of Toronto; City of Toronto. https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/open-data/what-is-open-data/

Canadian Sources of Open Data

City of Toronto: Open Data
The City of Toronto’s Open Data Portal is an open source delivery tool to bring people and data together. Whether you’re an app developer, an engaged citizen, or a student trying to learn more about how the city works, the Open Data Portal contains a wealth of datasets for you to explore. We update regularly with new datasets, and welcome your requests.
Ontario Data Catalogue
An open dataset might contain several data files. These files might represent different periods of time, different sub-sets of the dataset, different regions, language translations, or other breakdowns. You can select a file and either download it or preview it. Make sure to read the licence agreement to make sure you have permission to use it the way you want.
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The Ontario Data Catalogue contains a record for each dataset that the Government of Ontario possesses. Some of these datasets will be available to you as open data. Others will not be available to you. This is because the Government of Ontario is unable to share data that would break the law or put someone's safety at risk.
Government of Canada: Open data, statistics and archives
Government data, statistics, analyses and archival information to assist with research and discovery.
Government of Canada: Open Data - Employment and Social Development Canada

International Sources of Open Data

World Bank Data Bank
DataBank is an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. You can create your own queries; generate tables, charts, and maps; and easily save, embed, and share them.
World Bank Open Data
Free and open access to global development data
Open Access Directory (OAD): Data Repository by Topics
This is a list of repositories and databases for open data.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center makes the case-level microdata for much of its research available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time. These datasets are listed below by date of release.
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To download datasets, please log in or create a free account.
OpenAfrica
Published by a grassroots movement supporting open access to Africa's related datasets
CESSDA Data Catalogue: Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives
CESSDA Data Catalogue (CDC) contains descriptions (metadata) of the more than 40,000 data collections held by CESSDA’s Service Providers (SPs). Data sets come from over 20 European countries. It is a one-stop shop for searching and finding European social science data.
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The data described may be quantitative, qualitative or mixed-modes data, cross-sectional or longitudinal, recently collected or historical data.
Data Europa
The official portal for European data.
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Its mission is to support EU policies as a centre of excellence for information, data and knowledge management, and to ensure that this broad range of information is available to the public as accessible and reusable data to facilitate transparency, economic activity and the diffusion of knowledge.
U.K. Data Archive
The UK's largest digital collection of social sciences and population research data.
Harvard Dataverse
Find data across research fields, preview metadata, and download files
Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
A Data Center in NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) — Hosted by CIESIN at Columbia University
United States: Data.Gov
Data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.