(Yicai Global) Nov. 23 -- The adoption of initiatives related to the open data movement can provide a platform for citizens and communities to play a major role in shaping improvements of city life, said Keith McDonald, an enthusiastic open data advocate and former sector lead for the city of Toronto during the recent International Open Data and Urban Innovation Summit in Shanghai.

The summit was organized as part of the Global City Informatization Forum, a Shanghai government initiative to promote urban informatization and social advances.

McDonald spoke of his experiences working in government and highlighted the key role that individuals and communities can play in the adoption of open data-based solutions in urban areas, despite some challenges related to the perceived responsibilities of local authorities.

"I personally never believed the city could do everything, and working in the city, of the attitude you get there is the exact opposite. The open data movement really helps to change that kind of thinking", he said. "We extended invitations to within the community to developers, analytics people and data journalists to talk about what can we do to make a better city, even small entrepreneurs working out of their house could do fantastic things."

City governments can provide the community and individuals wider opportunities to contribute to the development of services based on city data in order to improve the quality of life for citizens overall, McDonald says. This kind of initiative can not only save the government money but also results in quickly-made applications that are often relatively user-centric.

The city of Toronto leveraged its major tech community, utilizing activities such as hackathons, similar to projects seen in Shanghai. Despite, the city's hackathons producing outstanding work, McDonald found that challenges existed related to city ordinances, in how a city government can actually use individual projects created outside of its framework.

Such problems don't exist for applications independently of government, such as that of Citymapper Ltd., an international mobile urban transit application that utilizes open data to provide experiential travel services. These can be made available through mobile appstores. However, for those created in direct conjunction with local authorities, there still remain challenges related to how individuals are appropriately compensated for their work.