Created in May 2011, Open North is a Canadian nonprofit organization that creates online tools to educate and empower citizens to participate actively in Canadian democracy. Although not an advocacy group, it develops tools for civil society and governments to reduce the barriers to effective participation and to help others advocate for themselves. Open North does this through two main strategies:

1. Improve access to government information
   • make it easily available by pulling it out of dark corners of government websites, taking it out of PDFs, and making access to information requests;
   • make it accessible by providing context to numbers, explaining legislative jargon, and using language everyone understands; and
   • make it relevant by letting citizens find information specific to their community, interests, and situation.
2. Make participation easy, fun, and meaningful
   • work with governments to design new participatory processes and to ensure citizen’s voices are heard;
   • increase the number of ways citizens can engage with elected officials and government information; and
   • help citizens connect with each other and organize around issues they care about.