Open Data Labs - Web Foundation

  • Labs
  • Blog
  • Projects
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • English
    • Indonesia

The future of open data and the openness agenda

November 16, 2017 by Open Data Labs Leave a Comment

This post was written by Carlos Iglesias, Web Foundation Senior Research Manager and lead researcher on the Open Data Barometer.

This month I’ll be at the Open Government Partnership Latin American regional summitjoining discussions about the future of the open government data agenda. One decade into active work on open data, the field continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As researchers, we need to be flexible and adapt to these changing realities.

Open data is increasingly recognised as an essential part of transparent and effective government and better government service delivery. It is also heralded as one of the building blocks for innovation – with a growing number of governments and companies using this data to offer new services or products to citizens.

While the global open data community has made a lot of progress, it remains far from the original end goal of openness: data for everyone; the data people need and data people can easily use.

Governments are stalling on open data

Our last Barometer found that nine out of 10 government datasets are not open yet, the data people really want and need is still missing, and the data that is available is usually low quality and incomplete. At the same time, we’ve seen a worrying trend, that the “openness agenda” is being rolled-back in some countries with governments uninterested in pursuing openness and civic participation agendas. In other countries, many in the Middle East and Africa, open data progress has stalled or has yet to take hold.

The bottom line is, despite some progress, we’re a long way from realising open data’s potential. Open data is still hard to find and use for policy, social good or inclusion. The community continues to struggle to demonstrate the positive impact of open data on good government.

The open data community needs to work together like never before to address these challenges and rethink the way we work. We need to flag common areas of concern that threaten our field and agree on how we can move forward with viable solutions and approaches.

A changing Barometer to meet changing needs

The Open Data Barometer (ODB) team, with guidance from its Expert Advisory Group, has decided that some significant changes to the Barometer are necessary; adjusting who, how and what we are measuring to assess progress. We aim to keep improving the Barometer as a policy and advocacy tool, while ensuring its usefulness and sustainability. To do this, we will:

  • Extend the time period between surveys to between 18 and 24 months in order to (1) capture greater variance in government policies and implementation and (2) have the necessary time to maximise the use of the results for policy engagement.
  • Streamline our methodology across the three measurement pillars (policy, implementation, impact), strengthening them while ensuring comparability with past ODB versions.
  • Make sure the methodology, scoring and outputs continue to be 100% transparent and well communicated.
  • Work on alliances with regional and sectoral partners interested in developing specific extensions of the Barometer. This first of these will be a pilot in Africa in collaboration with the OD4D network and Open Knowledge International to provide data for the next African Data Revolution Report.

As part of this shift, we are producing an interim version of the Barometer that profiles those countries that have made an explicit commitment to open data through the adoption of global open data principles (as outlined in the Open Data Charter and the G20 principles).

As we explore these proposed changes in the coming months, we look forward to your ideasfor additional adjustments as we move towards a revamped Open Data Barometer.

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Open Data Barometer, Web Foundation Tagged With: open data barometer, open government partnership

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Archives

  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • March 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014

Jln. Kudus No. 3, Menteng, Jakarta 10310           @ODLabJkt           Open Data Lab Jakarta           Open Data Lab Jakarta          Privacy Policy


© 2008–2025 World Wide Web Foundation. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.