City hall records soon easier to access with online format

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This article was published 17/9/2015 (1100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mayor Brian Bowman fulfilled one of his campaign commitments Wednesday when he announced some public records will soon be easier to access online.

Bowman told members of his executive policy committee that beginning with the Sept. 30 meeting of city council, records will be produced in a format known as machine-readable, which will allow for easier online searching, record-keeping and management.

"I am proud we are making this shift to provide council records in machine-readable format so we can continue to build on our commitment to open data at the City of Winnipeg," Bowman said.

When Bowman made the commitment during the election campaign, it was labelled as an expensive proposition.

But Bowman told EPC there is no additional cost associated with the switch to the machine-readable format.

Bowman also asked the administration to prepare a report for additional city records to be available in the same format, including 311 statistics and the Winnipeg Police Service CrimeStat data. A report is expected in 90 days.