Sharing is fun. With that in mind, we have recently shared some of our most popular information from DriveBC with DataBC. DataBC is a key source of open government information to help the public find data, services and tools to help make informed decisions and improve government policies. DataBC liked our data so much, they wrote a blog about it, and we, in turn, would like to share it with you. So, here it is – in honour of National Science and Technology Week!
Savvy travellers rely on DriveBC to stay informed about road conditions in B.C.
The most widely used B.C. government website, DriveBC receives a yearly average of 12 million visits – with its peak month receiving 2.4 million visits. This translates to nearly 8 billion hits and 43 terabytes of data served per year.
That’s a lot of data.
Recently, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure made five-years of that data - DriveBC data from 2005 to 2011 – available for citizens to reuse and repurpose under the B.C. Open Government License.
The historical DriveBC data provides past road events that have been published to the public through the DriveBC website. These events provide information and alerts on construction, adverse road conditions due to weather, accidents and other elements that affect driving safety.
DriveBC is a great example of the Province of B.C. delivering services to British Columbians by harnessing technology. Travellers can access DriveBC when they are on the road from their mobile phones. They can also get regular updates on road conditions by subscribing to email updates or following DriveBC on Twitter. To-date, DriveBC has 1300 email subscribers and 11,290 followers on Twitter.
This popular program aligns with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s mandate for safe roads.
The release of historical DriveBC open data demonstrates the Province of BC’s commitment to enable citizens and sectors to create value from government data.
We expect citizens to do just that with this valuable data.
