About
About Whab
An independent public information organisation based in Ottawa. We take material that public institutions already publish, organise it so it can be compared, and explain it so it can be understood by someone encountering the subject for the first time.
History
Whab began in 2016 as a shared spreadsheet. Three researchers working separately on municipal service questions kept running into the same obstacle: the information they needed had already been published, but it was scattered across dozens of formats, described in incompatible ways, and impossible to compare without a week of preparatory work that each of them was doing independently. They started keeping that preparatory work in one place.
By 2018 the shared file had become a small public website with eleven indicators and a stated method. The first institutional membership, from a regional library system that wanted a reliable place to point patrons, arrived that autumn and paid for the first part-time editor. The organisation incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2019.
The years since have been mostly a story of saying no. The pressure on an organisation like this one is always toward doing more: adding forecasts, ranking places, offering opinions on what the numbers mean for policy. Each of those would attract attention and each would compromise the only thing we actually offer, which is that a reader can trust a figure here to be described accurately and completely. The catalogue has grown to thirty-six indicators in ten years. That is slower than we would like and about as fast as the method allows.
In 2023 we published our first full accessibility audit, including the findings we had not yet fixed. In 2025 we began publishing the revision log in full. Both decisions were uncomfortable and both improved the work.
Mission
To make published public information usable by the people it describes, by organising it honestly and explaining it clearly.
Three words in that sentence do most of the work. Published means we add no new collection and keep no private holdings. Honestly means the limits of a figure appear beside it rather than in a document nobody opens. Clearly means the explanation is written for a reader with no background in the subject, because that reader is the one this material was collected for.
We do not think of ourselves as advocates for open data, for any policy, or for any particular reading of the evidence. We think of the work as closer to translation: the material already exists, and it is written in a dialect that excludes most of the people who have a stake in it.
Editorial principles
Description over judgement
We report what a measure shows and what it omits. We do not tell readers whether the result is good, and we do not recommend responses to it. Those judgements belong to people who are accountable for the consequences.
Limits beside the figure
A caveat that appears only in a methodology document is a caveat designed not to be read. Definitions, exclusions and reference dates appear on the panel itself.
No ranking of places
League tables of cities and provinces attract readers and mislead nearly all of them, because the underlying measurement is rarely comparable enough to support an ordering. We publish values, not standings.
Errors published, not buried
Corrections carry the date, the previous value and a plain statement of what went wrong. Pages are never quietly edited.
Nothing behind a wall
Every figure, chart, report and appendix is free to read without an account. Membership funds the work; it does not buy access to it.
Accessibility is not a phase
A chart that cannot be read with a keyboard or a screen reader is unfinished, not merely imperfect. Panels do not publish until they pass.
Leadership
Marguerite Lefebvre-Doiron
Responsible for editorial sign-off and for the methodology standard. Previously fifteen years in statistical publication at the provincial level, with a focus on dissemination and on how reference tables are used by people who did not commission them. Joined Whab in 2019 as its first full-time editor.
Anand Sivaraman
Maintains the source register, the quality tests and the revision log. Background in survey methodology and administrative data linkage. Chairs the internal review that decides whether a proposed indicator can be documented well enough to publish; roughly a third of proposals do not clear it.
Claire Nakashima-Boivin
Responsible for how information is presented and for the platform meeting WCAG 2.2 AA. Runs the cold-read review. Previously worked on public-facing service design in municipal government, where she learned that most presentation failures are comprehension failures first.
Trevor Oyelaran
Handles memberships, the publication schedule, and the annual disclosure. The person who tells editors that a refresh date has slipped, and the person who publishes the notice saying so.
Whab is governed by a seven-member board. Four directors are independent of any funder. Board minutes are summarised in the annual disclosure.
Community partnerships
Partnership means something narrow here. A partner does not fund a particular piece of work, does not see material before publication, and does not appear as a co-author. What partners do is tell us where the material is failing the people in front of them.
- Library systems (19 partners). Reference staff report the questions they cannot answer with what is publicly available. This is the single most useful input we receive, and roughly a quarter of new indicators start there.
- School boards and educators (11 partners). Classroom use of the visualisation gallery, and feedback on which explainers work with students. Several of the educational charts exist because a teacher said the standard chart was teaching the wrong lesson.
- Municipal open data teams (7 partners). Advance notice of schema changes, which prevents broken refreshes, and a route for municipalities to contest how their data has been characterised.
- Accessibility organisations (4 partners). Testing with assistive technology on real tasks rather than on checklists. The data table on every chart came from this group.
Partners are listed in the annual disclosure with the date the relationship began. There is no fee to become one and no obligation attached to being one.
Funding and disclosure
No single funder exceeds nine per cent of annual revenue. Both foundation grants are unrestricted and multi-year. We accept no advertising and no sponsored content.
What funding does not buy
No funder, member or partner reviews material before publication, commissions a report on a subject in which it has a direct interest, or receives advance access to a refresh. Where a member organisation appears in a dataset we publish, that fact is recorded on the panel. Any funder representing more than five per cent of annual revenue is named in the annual disclosure.