Draft:Civic Digital Network

The Civic Digital Network (CDN) was a startup non-profit dedicated to building digital public infrastructure (DPI) for Canadian public institutions. Founded by Kurtis McBride under its original name, Open City Network, the organization operated from 2018-22 as a research, development and prototyping shop for DPI. During this time, the Canadian organization put forward designs, coalitions and proposals for projects like the Ontario Data Protocol, Smart Infrastructure Stimulus and the Canada Data Bank.

The founding board members were Kurtis McBride of Miovision, Mike Branch of GEOTAB, Hongwei Liu of MappedIn and Alex Miller of ESRI Canada. Andy Best was its CEO. The Board later expanded to include Jenna Sudds, then Deputy Mayor of Ottawa, Joani Gerber of Invest Stratford and Charles Finley of Toronto.

Based on CDN's collaborative work on digital public infrastructure, Best was later appointed Special Advisor to the Ontario Data Authority by the Government of Ontario. The broader context around the work of the CDN was chronicled in the book Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy.