The Data Visibility Index
This index does not measure how well any province is doing. It measures how much of its data a person can actually see. No jurisdiction in Canada scores above 47 out of 100.
Every other page on this site publishes data. This one publishes an account of the data, which is the part that is usually missing. It asks four questions of each jurisdiction's published statistics and combines the answers into one score.
What the four questions are
| Question | Weight |
|---|---|
| Published below the province level | 30% |
| Updated at least once a year | 20% |
| Cells filled, of the cells the publisher defines | 30% |
| How recent the latest figure is | 20% |
Every jurisdiction, and how each score is made
| Jurisdiction | Index | Published below the province level 30% | Updated at least once a year 20% | Cells filled, of the cells the publisher defines 30% | How recent the latest figure is 20% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nova Scotia | 46.6 | 0.0 | 58.8 | 98.2 | 26.9 |
| New Brunswick | 46.1 | 0.0 | 54.8 | 99.2 | 26.9 |
| Prince Edward Island | 45.4 | 0.0 | 54.8 | 96.7 | 26.9 |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | 44.9 | 0.0 | 54.8 | 95.1 | 26.9 |
| Alberta | 44.6 | 0.0 | 53.1 | 99.2 | 21.4 |
| British Columbia | 44.6 | 0.0 | 53.1 | 99.2 | 21.4 |
| Manitoba | 44.6 | 0.0 | 53.1 | 99.2 | 21.4 |
| Ontario | 44.6 | 0.0 | 53.1 | 99.2 | 21.4 |
| Quebec | 44.6 | 0.0 | 53.1 | 99.2 | 21.4 |
| Saskatchewan | 44.6 | 0.0 | 53.1 | 99.2 | 21.4 |
| Yukon | 37.0 | 0.0 | 40.9 | 96.0 | 0.0 |
| Northwest Territories | 32.2 | 0.0 | 40.9 | 80.0 | 0.0 |
| Nunavut | 31.4 | 0.0 | 40.9 | 77.5 | 0.0 |
What this index cannot see
Data that exists inside governments but is never published; the index reads publication, not existence. Quality of what is published. Administrative data that is public in PDFs too broken to use, which the Research Burden Index catches and this index only glimpses through timeliness and completeness.
This is not a disclaimer added afterwards. The table that stores this index refuses to hold a version whose blind spot is blank, so no version of it can exist without saying what it misses.
Read these before using the numbers
One component scores 0.0 for every jurisdiction, and that is a fact about this index rather than about Canada. "Published below the province level" is worth 30% of the score and it is currently identical everywhere. The stored formula explains why: sub-provincial publication is measured from the geographies the curated layer holds, and that layer holds the thirteen provinces and territories and nothing smaller.
Be careful how you read that, because the obvious reading is wrong. It does not mean Canada publishes nothing below the province level. Statistics Canada publishes a great deal at census division and census subdivision level, for thousands of places, and this warehouse currently cannot address any of it. So on this component the index is describing a limit of the instrument and reporting it in the position where a reader expects to find a limit of the country. Until the geography this warehouse can hold is widened, treat 30% of every score as a constant that tells you nothing, and read the ranking on the remaining components.
Recorded here rather than fixed quietly, because an index that hides its own ceiling is the thing this site exists to argue against.
The territories are not less organised. Nunavut scores 31.4 and the highest-scoring territory reaches 37.0, against a lowest province of 44.6. That gap is made by decisions taken elsewhere: national surveys that sample the provinces and stop, tables released for ten jurisdictions rather than thirteen, and small populations meeting disclosure rules written for large ones. The index reads what publishers release. Read the score as a description of what is being published about a place, never as a description of the place.
6 jurisdictions currently share one identical score. Only 8 distinct scores exist across 13 jurisdictions. That is not a coincidence, and it is the honest limit of this version: those jurisdictions currently hold the same curated statistics here, so for them the index is partly measuring this warehouse's own coverage rather than the publisher's. It resolves as the curated set widens. This is why the index is marked draft.
A higher score is not praise. Nova Scotia leads at 46.6, which is still under half marks. The leader of this index is not doing well. It is doing least badly.