How many people have visited the Open Parliament page lately? (https://openparliament.ca/bills/) There are bills passing through there all the time.
I've not personally seen anyone pushing that information out to the public, or to me, especially when a new bill is now in the system. I might not care about all of them, or any of them, but at least I'd know they were there.
ON the other hand, I've seen lots of messages from my union telling me to oppose Bill ### because of the "collective union's" opinion. Their opinion is not my own, and I don't need my union reading bills, crafting an opinion they want me to believe, and then telling me to agree with them simply because they expect me to follow.
Can we use the Open Parliament page to set an good example. It has already set an example to me of an open government initiative that, as open as it is, doesn't advertise itself. It's hard to use open services you don't know exist. Advertising the service and supplementing information for it makes it accessible, understandable, and commonplace.
We all want to create open government but what happens when we do? We need a process in place to expose that openness to the public.
I'm guessing here, but I'd say there are a lot of skeptical people when it comes to making the government more open. This is all the more reason why we need to invest in advertising the successful open initiatives, to get people off the fence, and to struggle less with convincing people that this is possible. It is possible, and it has been done, so shout it from the rooftops.
So, in short, how will we advertise any open government initiative we complete to create a positive example for change? And, can we apply this advertising to the Open Parliament site right now?