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. To ensure that the processes of requesting, organizing and delivering data are efficient and responsible, data requests submitted to the City of Kitchener flow through a series of statuses. The information provided here identifies how many data requests the City of Kitchener currently has in each status and provides a description of what each of those statuses means.

View our open data catalogue. Please let us know by filling in the open data request form if you don't see what you need.

Please note that the following layers are unavailable as open data due to Teranet licensing restrictions: Parcels, Assessment and Zoning.

Details can be found in the Under Review and Declined Datasets table below.

Chart showing the open data approval process. Identify Data: Choose the dataset for open data release.  Evaluate and Clean: Assess data quality, clean and preprocess as needed.  Create Metadata: Develop comprehensive metadata with usage terms.  Licensing and Legal Review: Determine open data license, conduct legal review, and address privacy concerns.  Stakeholder Consultation: Gather feedback from stakeholders.  Obtain Approval: Seek approval from relevant authorities.  Publish Data: Release the dataset on the open data portal.  Monitor and Improve: Monitor usage, address issues, and gather feedback for continuous improvement.

Request Status

Data Update Frequency

Data Categories

Areas Responsible for Current Requests

This chart identifies the City department or external organization responsible for providing the data requested to date.

*(No value) is comprised of requests that have either not yet been reviewed or that have been cancelled, declined or rejected.

Data Stewardship

Under Review and Declined Datasets

Request Statuses

New

Under Review

In Progress

 
Requests that are 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. 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'. This status indicates that the request has been reviewed and assigned, and is now being worked on.
 

On Hold

Completed

 
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

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.
 

Cancelled

Declined

Rejected

 
A request is 'Cancelled' when a duplicate request is already in progress. This often occurs with popular datasets such as roads or addresses. A request is 'Declined' when advice from Legislated Services or the Legal Department indicates the data should not be released due to due to potential privacy issues or for contractual reasons. Land Parcel Data is an example of a dataset request that would be 'Declined' due to our agreement with Teranet. A request is 'Rejected' when the data requested is not currently collected, it is not directly owned by the City of Kitchener, or it is collected for a specific purpose.An example would be GRCA layers; these layers are from another authority and should be used directly from the other agency.