I received this letter from Elections Canada this morning, in reply to a letter I wrote last week requesting that Geographic Information System (GIS) files describing polling division boundaries, along with Street Indexes and Poll Keys, be made publicly available.

As you are aware, Elections Canada publishes the Electoral District Boundary Files in digital format (Shapefiles) of the 37th, 38th, 39th General Elections on the GeoGratis website. However, you are correct in saying that the polling division boundaries are not currently available on the Internet.

Our plan is to include the polling division geographic reference information on the GeoGratis website in the near future. In fact, our Geography department will undertake discussions with GeoGratis representatives to ensure that the digital polling division boundary files are available to the public. At the same time, we will also add the boundary files for the 2008 Elections (Electoral Districts and Polling Divisions). As for the Street Indexes, the Electoral Geography Division at Elections Cnaada is currently working on the feasibility of providing the Street Indexes and other products on Elections Canada website or other internet link.

If you have further questions, etc., etc. .... Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention and for your continued interest in the federal electoral process.

I hope they can put older elections up onto GeoGratis as well, but this would be a great start.

Thanks to the Electoral Geography Division for their commitment to open government data.

Labels: Elections Canada, Open Government Data