Open North | Nord Ouvert

Founded in 2011, OpenNorth started as a small Montreal-based nonprofit with expertise in open data and civic technology. Today OpenNorth’s growing interdisciplinary team leads national and international multi-stakeholder partnerships on implementing values-driven approaches and solutions that do more than just utilize data and networked infrastructure to make decisions. We work with a wide diversity of innovative and connected public administrations and community stakeholders to build their efficient, ethical, and collaborative use of data and technology to solve complex problems. We sustain global peer-to-peer networks for knowledge sharing that improves smart and open governance practices for citizens across Canada and the world. As we expand, we are committed to three pillars in our work: Pillar 1: Community Support for Open Smart City Implementation Available at no-cost to communities of all sizes across Canada, the Advisory Service operationalizes the Open Smart Cities definition developed by OpenNorth in 2018 and offers online basic and advanced courses, guidelines, templates, as well as personalized guidance from leading advisors on open smart cities domains of data, governance, people and engagement, and hardware and software. Pillar 2: Applied Research to Solve Complex Problems We bridge geographic and cultural divides by mobilizing and synthesizing knowledge to create practical outcomes for problems institutions and communities face in facilitating data collection, bridging organizational silos, and structuring multi-stakeholder data collaboration Pillar 3: Local-to-Global Scaling Up of Solutions We partner with international organizations to make our local experience and expertise relevant to others and bring back knowledge to our community. Visit our website for more information about our team, our impact, and publications.