ONC follows the federal government of Canada policies on open data which defines them as “machine-readable, freely shared, used and built on without restrictions.”

All ONC-owned data are available free of charge through web services, internet downloads, special requests and through other internet and user-based access tools. These data are provided under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License, open and free for anyone to use. Data owned or co-owned by a data partner may be subject to alternative licensing such as a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license, depending on the established partner agreement with ONC.

A limited amount of ONC-hosted data is not readily accessible. Requests for this data may require that the user pay an administrative fee, which would cover the costs of their delivery to the user. ONC-owned data can be re-used and redistributed without restriction, including intermixing with other datasets.

ONC-owned data hold no discrimination from access or use against any specific fields of endeavour or against persons or groups, including, for example, commercial users.

ONC captures and delivers data owned by others. ONC encourages these owners to follow this ONC policy. Should other data owners wish to follow other policies, for example, restricted use, ONC will review the impacts of following other owners’ policies. Approvals of alternative data sharing approaches in ONC’s data management system will be made on a case by case basis. Approvals are made by the ONC Executive.

This policy is implemented within ONC following best practices described in the ONC Data Policy Implementation Plan, which is updated regularly to ensure data management at ONC continues to follow best practices as they evolve.