Global Open Data Index Insights – Open Data in the Arab world | Open Knowledge Blog

"I recently co-authored with Sadeek Hasna a report that looks at the status of open data in the Arab World and the extent to which governments succeed or fail in making their data available to the public in a useful manner. We decided to use the results of the Global Open Data Index as the starting point of our research because the Index covered all the datasets that we chose to examine for almost all Arab countries. Choosing to use the Global Open Data Index as a basis for our paper saved us time and provided us with a systematic framework for evaluating how Arab countries are doing in the field of open data. We chose to examine only four datasets, namely: the annual budget, legislation, election results, and company registration data. Our selection was driven by the fact that most Arab countries already have published data in this area and therefore there is content to look at and evaluate. Furthermore, most of the laws of the countries we examined make it a legal obligation on the government to release these datasets and therefore it was more likely for the government to make an effort to make this data public. Our analysis uncovered that there are many good examples of government attempts at releasing data in an open manner in the Arab World ..."