General News

County of Simcoe expands open data portal

February 23, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The County of Simcoe has expanded its open data portal, allowing users to better understand the effectiveness of services and supports that are provided to newcomers to the region.

“We are incredibly thankful to the newcomers who have chosen to call Simcoe County ‘home’ over the years and this tool allows us to better support them when we make investments across the region,” said Warden Basil Clarke. “The information gathered on this site enables us to make data-driven decisions and track the outcomes of the programs that we are building up in our communities. It allows us to ensure that the choices we make in Council not only benefit newcomers but help them thrive in Simcoe County.”

This new tool creates more information available for social service offerings. This includes homelessness and shelter data, a census tool, and expanding data available to residents, researchers, and decision-makers across the region.

The data helps to support evidence-based policy-making at the county and local level. It also showcases the immigrant population and pathways, as well as local demographics including education, training, and skills.

The tool also highlights long-term trends in the local labour market, immigrant incomes, immigrant mobility, and migration trends.

County staff developed this tool, which emulates a dashboard created by the Community Data Program. The County’s dashboard publishes Simcoe County-specific data in a free, user-friendly format, enhancing the availability of this key information.

The tool combines local information from the Federal Longitudinal Immigration Database, immigrant information from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, taxation data from the Canada Revenue Agency, and the date of death from the Canadian Mortality Database.

This information is easily accessed online at open.simcoe.ca.

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