Ontario Observatory
A data workspace for public money in Ontario
Search stays the core, but the product moat is the system around it: salary history, career economics, program ROI, inflation truth, WebGL exploration, and source gates that stop weak claims before they ship.
People on the 2025 list
404,922
$54,352,400,136 in disclosed salary.
Real 1996 bar
$184,638
7% of current disclosures clear it.
Career tracks
11
Fastest path: Nurse Practitioner.
Source pipeline
1/6/4
Live, ready-next, and research/watchlist sources.
WebGL salary layer
Salary Galaxy
404,922 current-year disclosures as a sector-clustered point cloud.
Start here
Three decisions the observatory should answer first
Surface index
One job per product surface, with proof before polish
| Surface | User value | Proof |
|---|---|---|
| Salary Galaxy | Turns a giant public dataset into something people can explore and remember. | Three.js visualization backed by generated salary shards, not decorative mock data. |
| Jobs Intelligence | Shows which roles have a credible road to $100K and which employers pay most inside each track. | Uses resolved Sunshine List trajectories plus Government of Canada Job Bank wage medians. |
| Inflation Reality | Separates nominal Sunshine List growth from the real 1996 purchasing-power bar. | Uses the threshold enrichment table generated from annual CPI context. |
| Programs to $100K | Helps students compare credentials by their credible path to a $100K public-sector career. | Uses salary tracks now, with college/university outcome datasets gated before school-level rankings. |
| Open Data Source Map | Makes the product's source choices auditable before new claims become public pages. | Tracks live, ready-next, research, and watchlist datasets with official catalogue links. |
Ready-next source queue
High-value joins, blocked until their quality gates pass
| Source | Join key | Use | Gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Accounts: Detailed Schedule of Payments | organization name, ministry, fiscal year | Employer and sector pages can show salary disclosure beside disclosed public payments without implying causation. | Recipient aliases must be resolved separately from salary employer aliases, and all joins need a confidence label. |
| School board financial reports | school board name, board identifier, fiscal year | School-board employer pages can add spending, grant, and staffing context around disclosed salary counts. | Fiscal-year alignment, board alias mapping, and per-pupil or expense ratios must be documented before display. |
| College graduate outcomes survey | college name, program/credential family, KPI year | Program-to-$100K pages can compare salary destinations with official graduate employment signals. | Program names, campuses, credentials, and KPI years must be matched before any school-level ranking is shown. |
| Ontario university graduate survey | university, program/discipline, outcome year | Program pages can distinguish strong salary destinations from weak or unsupported school claims. | Only compare programs after discipline labels, years, and sample caveats are preserved on the page. |
| Ontario public college programs: postsecondary field of study table | college, program code, program title, credential type, CIP | Normalizes program names and fields before comparing outcomes or linking pathways to salary tracks. | Use as the identity layer only; ranking requires outcomes and salary-destination evidence. |
| Financial Information Return (FIR) | municipality name, FIR code, fiscal year | City pages can compare disclosed salary counts with municipal operating context and service categories. | Municipality identity mapping and category definitions must be visible before ratios or comparisons ship. |
Moat rules
The constraints that keep the product worth trusting
Every indexable page must answer a real Ontario question.
Every joined dataset needs an official source, visible limitation, and quality gate.
Every spectacle surface must be backed by real data and a practical next action.
Every programmatic page family must be fast, internally linked, and useful on its own.
Source and caveats
What this workspace is allowed to claim
Source: Ontario Public Sector Salary Disclosure, current through 2025. Salary surfaces use resolved records; official source rows remain the ground truth.
Large year-over-year changes can reflect retroactive pay, overtime, collective agreements, role changes, taxable treatment, severance, or extra pay periods.
Corrections and source limitations are part of the product. Report an issue · Methodology