The 2015 Global Open Data Index is around the corner – these are the new datasets we are adding to it! | Open Knowledge Blog

"After a two months, 82 ideas for datasets, 386 voters, thirteen civil society organisation consultations and very active discussions on the Index forum, we have finally arrived at a consensus on what datasets will be including in the 2015 Global Open Data Index (GODI). This year, as part of our objective to ensure that the Global Open Data index is more than a simple measurement tool, we started a discussion with the open data community and our partners in civil society to help us determine which datasets are of high social and democratic value and should be assessed in the 2015 Index. We believe that by making the choice of datasets a collaborative decision, we will be able to raise awareness of and start a conversation around the datasets required for the Index to truly become a civil society audit of the open data revolution. The process included a global survey, a civil society consultation and a forum discussion (read more in a previous blog post about the process). The community had some wonderful suggestions, making deciding on fifteen datasets no easy task. To narrow down the selection, we started by eliminating the datasets that were not suitable for global analysis. For example, some datasets are collected at the city level and can therefore not be easily compared at a national level. Secondly, we looked to see if there is was a global standard that would allow us to easily compare between countries (such as UN requirements for countries etc). Finally, we tried to find a balance between financial datasets, environmental datasets, geographical datasets and datasets pertaining to the quality of public services. We consulted with experts from different fields and refined our definitions before finally choosing the following datasets ..."