ConnectON

What is ConnectON?

ConnectON is an economic development tool created to support municipal and regional decision making and growth. Municipalities have the ability to upload, update, select, sort and map their own business asset data, as well as view the data regionally, from neighbouring participating municipalities. Asset information and mapping can support a variety of initiatives including strategic planning, business expansion and retention, capital improvement projects, value chain analysis, investment attraction, awareness, marketing and communication. Current municipal partners are participating in asset mapping for the agri-food and manufacturing sectors. As the program grows, there is opportunity to add other sectors. ConnectON is a one system approach for municipalities to maintain their asset data base and augment their data through partnerships. Using tools to directly upload new data, refresh existing data and download data users can map agri-food, manufacturing and in the future other industry sectors.
Who uses ConnectON?

ConnectON was designed for economic development and planning staff at the upper tier municipal level. We have established a collaborative environment working with over 40 municipal partners and other organizations, through common goals and interests. In addition to economic development and planning initiatives, ConnectON can support food charter and emergency response projects. Registered users from member municipalites, regions or organizations have access to the tool. Access is through an assigned user name and password login process.
How do I become involved?

To become involved or for more information about ConnectON please contact us.
What kind of information can I search?

Data can be searched and filtered for individual municipal areas as well as broader regional areas. Using one or many NAICS codes these searches can easily identify asset inforamtion and location as well as geographical relations and value chains.
Can I download maps and information?

Both data spreadsheets and visual map images can be downloaded from the tool. There is a high level of detail as business assets are mapped at the point level (no aggregation). In addition, different mapping layers can be applied in order to further enhance the usefulness and readability of the mapped data.
What does NAICS stand for?

NAICS is an acronym for the North American Industry Classification System. The system is used for classifying business establishments for the purposes of collecting and analyzing business data. For more information on the system please visit Statistics Canada's website.
What are the data sources in the system?

The majority of the data comes from three main sources; municipal data provided by users, farm business registration data provided by OMAFRA and open data sources. Data quality is the foundation of building and maintaining the data within the system. We constantly strive to increase confidence in the asset data. As new partners add their data to the collective data, all participants will have access to a dynamic, growing and comprehensive regional view of business assets.
Who are the partners?

ConnectON is a program of the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance. Over the course of the project a variety of organizations have been involved. These include the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Ontario East Economic Development Commission and the Economic Developers Council of Ontario. For a list of partner organizations as well as some history on the project check out our project background page.
Why is there a data sharing agreement?

A data sharing agreement has been put in place in order to govern the use of the data, enable regional viewing and collaboration, and to protect potentially sensitive data provided by the various organizations. All participating organizations sign off on this data sharing agreement before being allowed access to the tool.