Many leading institutions (governments, media, universities and corporations) share their data.  This is done to ensure that there is transparency in decision-making and reporting. Open data is a relatively new phenomenon and refers to data sources that are available free to be downloaded.  Data sets are open to anyone to modify, reuse and share.  Here are some open data web sites:

• Google Public Data Set
• Five Thirty-Eight – Web site for data-driven journalism and story-telling
• Government of Canada Open Data Sets – Data sets on a wide variety of topics
• City of Toronto Open Data Resources – Variety of data sets regularly updated by the City of Toronto