open data in developing countries
DESCRIPTION
Open Data in Developing Countries towards locally sustainable ecosystemsJosé M. Alonso, Program Manager, Open DataWorld Wide Web FoundationREEEP Open Data Workshop, Abu Dhabi, UAE18 Jan 2011TRANSCRIPT
Advance the Web toEmpower People
Open Data in Developing Countriestowards locally sustainable ecosystemsJosé M. Alonso, Program Manager, Open DataWorld Wide Web Foundation<[email protected]>
REEEP, Abu Dhabi, UAE18 Jan 2011
World Wide Web Foundation
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o Mission: Advance the Web to Empower People
o Founder: Tim Berners-Lee
o Seed funding: Knight Foundation
o Launched: Nov 2009o Initial Projects
o Agriculture, Open Data, Entrepreneurship, Web Index
o Mobile and voice Webo Starting in Africa
o Loss of controlo Authenticity, provenance, corruption, falsification of datao Qualityo Legal challengeso Data huggingo Unwelcomed exposureo Procedural changeso Complexityo Investment, ROIo Loss of licensing revenueo Capacity building requiredo Customer serviceo Infrastructureo Digital literacyo Privacyo National security
Some concerns heard/challenges
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Bottom line• It’s tough, expensive,
I don’t see the ROI and I’m not required to do this
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o Increased transparency of governments
o Increased internal government efficiency and effectiveness
o Increased citizen participation and inclusion through extended offers of services closer to people’s needs
o Increased number of services to people due to an increased base of potential service providers
o New business opportunities and jobs for application and service developers
o New synergies between government, public administration and civil society organizations
o New innovative uses of OGD that can help spur innovation and development in the IT sector
So Why Do It? - Open Data Benefits
Additional Considerations for LMICs (I)
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o Web tech developed by, mainly, wealthy country folks
o Affordability(e.g., tools, assistive technologies)
o Exaggerated effects of other barriers(e.g. age, literacy, language, experience)
o Integration with known communications(business and social groups, radio, TV, SMS ..)
Additional Considerations for LMICs (II)
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o Transparency and accountability are critical dimensions for foreign aid and investments
o The potential of ICT to provide basic services (health, education, business, government...) to rural communities and under-privileged populations in developing countries is huge
o Citizen inclusion and participation in public and government matters has been historically low
o New Commercial Opportunities: private companies and entrepreneurs can leverage new ideas and innovative services
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o Promote the growth of the Open Data movement as a means of advancing our mission to empower all people through the Web.
o The long-term vision is that any country in the world would be able to:oobserve the impact of Open Data initiatives, ounderstand the costs and benefits of such
initiatives, ounderstand the processes required for the
implementation, oand find support for engaging and completing this
implementation.
Open Data Initiative – Vision
o Hypothesis: what if we use all of our knowledge in Western world Open Data projects and apply it to low and middle income countries?
o Feasibility studies:o Chile and Ghana
http://www.webfoundation.org/projects/ogd
A starting point: mid2010- early 2011
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Executive level
o Culture of secrecy inherited from the stages previous to democracy, but political will to make information transparently available to citizens.
o First democratically elected government that has RTI Act in its manifesto.o Remove barriers related to exceptions provided by law
and make the system of information sharing transparent.
o Government’s willingness to adopt an Open Data initiative at the agency level is present.o The President of Ghana as prime mover behind
enacting RTI.
Findings of Ghana Study (1/3)
Public Administration level
o Government departments and agencies are interested in creating Open Data initiatives extending to the middle layer of public administration.o National IT Agency (NITA) and Ministry of Communications
understand the potential of such initiatives.o Budgetary and leadership support to key institutions.
o Develop a common methodology for Open Data.o Select and adopt open standard formats for data to facilitate
re-use.
o Improve the capacity of public servants so that they themselves become active consumers of information, thus enabling intra agency sharing of data.
Findings of Ghana Study (2/3)
Civil Society level
o Media and the civil society has played a prominent role in ensuring that RTI Act enshrines free availability of information.
o There is already a movement towards re-use of information driven by organisations like “Population Council” as well as universities.
o Need to increase awareness of re-use initiatives promoted by civil society.o Leverage existing related initiativeso Improve technical awareness and provide training.
o Assist civil society in providing technical training.
Findings of Ghana Study (3/3)
Country level actionso Politicalo Legalo Organizationalo Technicalo Economico Social
Global actionso Directoryo Researcho Sustainability modelso Monitoring and Evaluationo …
Open Data – Strategy
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o Quick OGD portal vs. sustainable long-term OGD initiativeo Portal should be just a consequence not endo Start simple but with long term goal in mind
o Technical approach vs. OGD ecosystemo Actors: Political, Public Administration, Civil Societyo Dimensions: Political, legal, organizational, technical, economic,
social
o The issue with Openo Most not really Open, it’s mostly about the license
o The issue with machine-readable, standard formatso PDFs, Excel, documents not datao Web Architecture and not Web as file server
Some Lessons Learned: Non-Technical
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Raw data now… and better data afterwards
o i.e. start with the low hanging fruito improve over time (steps)
Do not try to enforce an specific architecture
o Chances are you could not deploy ito Try to adapt to existing systems and build on top of
them as a start
More standardization is needed
o e.g. on vocabularies (see W3C new groups)o What’s a dataset? What’s a catalogue?
o Counting datasets is bad
Some Lessons Learned: Technical
Linked Data is a good tactic but it’s tough, needs improvement
o It just doesn’t work (out of the box)o Better tooling is neededo Capacity buildingo But benefits are great
Some Lessons Learned: 5-star scale
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Publishing Reuse
Publishing Reuse
OGD
LGD
Just One Example
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Summary
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o Open Data: Cost‐effective tool for governments to improve service to citizens, civil society and businesses
o Start now. Start simply.
o Start at 3 levelso “it has to happen at the top, it has to happen at the
middle and it has to happen at the bottom.”Tim Berners‐Lee
Thanks!
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