2015 MINISTER’S AWARDS FOR
MUNICIPAL EXCELLENCE

PARTNERSHIPS AWARD – SUBMISSION FORM

Thank you for your interest in the 2015 Minister’s Awards for Municipal Excellence. This is a two-part application. The Practice Collection Form must be submitted to the Municipal Excellence team at for posting on the website(

The submission form below is a supplement to the practice submitted to the Municipal Excellence Network (MEnet). By submitting the form below, your municipality will indicate the category in which you have chosen to submit your practice under and also provide any additional information for the Review Committee.

The Minister’s Award for Municipal Excellence evaluation criteria are based on the information in the practice posted to MEnet. The Review Committee members are interested in how well the practice has been planned, communicated, organized, implemented and managed. Information on the improvements experienced using the practice is very important as evidence of the success of the practice in achieving the stated goals. In addition to the information on the practice form, there are four additional qualities that are considered for every submission.

These are:

  • Sustainability- viability of the practice in the long run and documentation of efforts to evolve and improve the practice over time; how the practice supports the long term sustainability of the municipality.
  • Relevance –suitability of the practice to the local conditions, size of municipality and available resources
  • Transferability - effect the practice has or could have on local government throughout the province and the effort expended in order to assist other municipalities in understanding and implementing the practice.
  • Quality of submission - clarity, logic and completeness of practice document and supporting materials

The emphasis for the Partnerships category will be on the quality of the relationships built and/or strengthened by the partnership. Consideration will be given for cooperative actions or strategic partnerships with an appropriate balance of representation and responsibilityandto partnerships with formal agreements in place that ensure continuing cooperation and shared benefits. Initiatives or policies that identify goals, benefits and demonstrated improvement are especially significant. Points will be awarded for the degree of difficulty relative to available resources, level of collaboration amongst partners and extent of measurable improvement due to practice implementation as relevant.

Please e-mail your completed submission by noon on May 29, 2015 to .

If you have any questions, please contactCatherine Dunn, Municipal Excellence Advisor at(780) 427-2225 or toll free: 310-0000 or by email at

Please read the questions carefully. Click on the grey boxes to answer the questions. The boxes will expand as you type. Thank you for your contribution to the Municipal Excellence Network!

Please complete the following questions for the Partnerships Award:

Name of municipality: / City of Airdrie
Name of municipal practice: / Calgary Regional Open Data Portal
Contact person (submitting this form): / Corey Halford
Date: / May 27, 2015
Question 1 - Why do you believe this municipal practice should be considered for a Municipal Excellence Award? Please briefly list the reasons.
Open Data – Data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone without restriction.
When it comes to fostering government transparency and accountability while also fostering creativity, innovation and community opportunity, Open Data is a movement, which supports the achievement of all these components.
When it comes to Open Data in Municipal Government, it is a significant and notable accomplishment when it successfully takes place within a single municipality. The move to Open Data often means abandoning revenues generated through the sale of government data and moving to a governance model that considers the potential unlocking of value from within data that has only been used and consumed by governments for traditional and historical purposes.
The scale and significance of a government moving to Open Data is magnified many times over when you consider what it takes to get 14 municipalities working together to accomplish the goal of bringing Open Data both to their municipality and together within a regional context.
The regional Open Data initiative referred to in this application is not something that took place over night, or over the course of a year. It is the fruit born from 8 years of commitment and collaboration by GIS professionals across the member municipalities of the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP). 8 years of trial and error and frustration, that surrounded the challenge of sharing data/information between government agencies and with the public at local and regional scales. It was a marathon of battles and obstacles, conflicts between local and regional priorities and political willingness. However, because of the perseverance and commitment of the GIS leaders in participating municipalities, after 8 years of effort, a regional Open Data catalogue has been launched.
Based on research to date, the Calgary Region Open Data Catalogue is the first and only regional Open Data portal in existence within North America. This only solidifies the significance of what the local GIS leaders within the Calgary Regional Partnership have achieved.
Question 2 - Who are the partner municipalities and/or organizations involved? Please list them and describe their roles and relationships in the partnership.
The partner municipalities involved in the Calgary Regional Open Data Catalogue are:
  1. City of Airdrie
  2. City of Calgary
  3. City of Chestermere
  4. Town of Banff
  5. Town of Black Diamond
  6. Town of Canmore
  7. Town of Cochrane
  8. Town of High River
  9. Town of Irricana
  10. Town of Nanton
  11. Town of Okotoks
  12. Town of Strathmore
  13. Town of Turner Valley
  14. Townsite of Redwood Meadows
Although all partner municipalities are involved with this Open Data initiative, key leadership was demonstrated by the following municipalities:
  1. City of Airdrie
  2. City of Chestermere
  3. Town of Banff
  4. Town of Canmore
  5. Town of Cochrane
  6. Town of Okotoks
  7. Town of Strathmore
With a project of this scale and magnitude, project management would typically be one of the pivotal key’s to the project’s success. However, support from the staff at the Calgary Regional Partnership and leadership through collaboration of the key partners mentioned above were truly the primary foundations to which the success of this project has been built upon. There was no single leader or champion, it was a team of leaders and champions. The project honestly was a one for all and all for one mentality and the participants poured their hearts into it in order to make it a success.
For context please consider the CRP has 14 municipal members (13 with a population under 500,000.
Question 3 -How has this partnership had an impact on the community and the partners?
There are three avenues in which the partnership has had an impact on both the community and the partners.
First and foremost, the partnership removed all financial barriers that may have prevented a municipality from its pursuit of Open Data. What is meant by this is typically the investment in an Open Data website/portal can cost a municipality between $50,000 and $60,000 just to get up and running while also incurring annual expenses which are equal to approximately 20% of initial implementation costs. That financing requirement is a barrier few partners in the regional Open Data portal would have endeavored to breach on their own. This is where the power of the partnership and involvement with the Calgary Regional Partnership comes into play. The Calgary Regional Partnership funded the Open Data portal, its implementation costs and the ongoing annual maintenance. This effectively removed all financial barriers involved with a municipality’s pursuit of an avenue in which to publish their Open Data. The only other financial barrier each municipality had to address beyond this was determine how to account for the distribution of data at no cost when their previous models may have involved significant revenues from data sales. This was left to each municipality to address.
The second impact was the leveraging of reports, policies and guidelines of the early adopters of Open Data within the partnership. The City of Airdrie for example was one of the first to take Open Data to their senior leadership teams and have it successfully endorsed. The resulting committee reports, metrics, policies and guidelines were openly shared with all participants for their use in proceeding through their respective internal processes. With an initiative such as regional Open Data, someone has to go first and then someone has to succeed - the City of Airdrie did both and was the pioneer. Airdrie’s leadership and collaboration helped foster the successful adoption of Open Data in the other partner municipalities.
The third impact relates to the impact on the community. The City of Airdrie, as part of their business review and justification for moving forward with Open Data completed a Value Stream Mapping (VSM) exercise to determine what it took an external customer, using traditional means, to request, pay for and receive a given piece of data. This analysis identified that the combination of exchanging emails, phone calls, requiring agreements to be signed in duplication, the lag time to get agreements signed, issuing data invoices, receiving payment and finally issuing the data to the customer could take anywhere from 14 to 40 days. When it comes to customer service, a 14 to 40 day response time for a request is far from ideal. Through the use of VSM, the City of Airdrie demonstrated that through the use of an Open Data portal, this whole process could be reduced to a matter of minutes, simply by providing data to external stakeholders 1) at no cost, 2) without restriction and 3) at the convenience of the customer. This business process analysis was a key factor in establishing the business case for Open Data at the City of Airdrie and it was no different in any other partner municipality. When partner municipalities reviewed their processes, their timelines to deliver data though traditional methods may not have matched Airdrie’s, but comparable results were generated. When Open Data can deliver a self-serve customer service experience in mere minutes, compared to days or weeks, it was easy for all partner municipalities to justify the Open Data business case and have it endorsed locally.

In addition to your practice being considered for an award, it is a very valuable tool in expanding the knowledge network offered through the Municipal Excellence Network website!

The information provided on this form will be used in support of the Minister's Awards for Municipal Excellence Program. It is being collected under the authority of section 33 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) Act and will be managed in accordance with the FOIP Act. If you have any questions about this collection, please contact the Municipal Excellence team, 17th Floor Commerce Place, 10155 - 102nd Street, Edmonton, Alberta, T5J 4L4, (780) 427-2225 (Outside Edmonton, call 310-0000 to be connected toll free).