Dataset Requests
As citizens explore and use open data, their feedback plays a pivotal role in increasing the quantity and quality of data provided. Citizens' requests spur the city on in its efforts to ensure that the data is understandable, easily located, appropriately contextualized, and usable by both people and machines.
Before submitting a new request, we recommend that you look at existing requests and search the catalog to make sure you are not submitting a duplicate request.
To ensure that the processes of requesting, organizing and delivering data are efficient and responsible, data requests submitted to the City of Edmonton flow through a series of statuses.
The information provided here identifies how many data requests the City of Edmonton currently has in each status, and provides a description of what each of those statuses mean.
Since automating the intake process that leverages comprehensive workflow (January 2016), the City has received over 367 requests for data. Below you see the status of these requests.
New: Requests in a 'New' status have been received but have not yet been assigned to an owner within the City. When a request reaches this status, the person who made the request will receive an email indicating that it has been received.
Under Review: This status occurs immediately after the 'New' status, once the data request has been assigned to a steward in the City who may be able to supply the data. When this status is assigned, the person who made the request will receive an email indicating that it is 'Under Review'.
In Progress: This status indicates that the request has been reviewed and assigned, and is now being worked on.
On Hold: This status may be assigned any time between 'Under Review' and 'Completed'. It indicates that more investigation or work must be done to meet the request. The data may need to be moved into digital storage, or data collection may require automation.
Completed: This status is assigned to a request when the data has been made public on the portal, and the request has been satisfied. Requesters will receive an email advising them that their data has been published that includes a URL to the new dataset.
The Cancelled, Declined and Rejected statuses are set when the request cannot be fulfilled. In these cases, the requesting parties will receive an email detailing why it cannot be made available:
- A request is Cancelled when a duplicate request is already in progress. This often occurs with popular datasets such as Property Assessments.
- A request is Declined when advice from the FOIP Office or Law Branch indicates the data should not be released due to potential privacy issues, legal risks, or for contractual reasons. Collision Data is an example of a dataset request that would be 'Declined'.
- A request is Rejected when the data requested is not currently collected, it is not directly owned by the City of Edmonton, or it is collected for a specific purpose. An example would be Building Footprints; this information is collected under the authority through the Municipal Government Act for assessment purposes only.
