The Globe & Mail has released another article from its Data Gap series, this time on six data gaps readers have encountered.

"The Globe’s series identified key areas in Canada in which public data are lacking, such as children’s vaccination rates, eviction rates and measures of how far people drive. The country’s data regime is fragmented for a host of reasons, from outdated legislation to a lack of standardization among provinces, and an aversion to collecting some types of data, such as on race or ethnicity.

The federal government pledged in its recent budget to fill some gaps, but Canada’s data system remains a patchwork. And many of the funding boosts in the budget, at a cost of billions of dollars, are going to areas – from skills training to suicide prevention – where it is hard to pinpoint the precise needs because data are lacking. Thus it is unclear whether money is being targeted effectively and whether these programs are having an impact."

Click here to read the full article.