Is open data improving governance? - SciDev.Net

"The concept of open data is a simple and attractive one: the information that governments amass as they go about their business should be available for citizens to pour over, helping them solve problems — and hold politicians to account.   But are the governments doing a good job of this and do citizens actually care? These are some of the issues discussed at this week's Open Government Partnership (OGP) summit in London, United Kingdom, where a new working group on open data was launched yesterday. The group is tasked with assisting the creation and implementation of more ambitious open government commitments as part of OGP national action plans. A report, Open Data Barometer, launched ahead of the summit by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and founder of the Open Data Institute and the World Wide Web Foundation, which co-produced the report, offers us some insight. It looks at 77 developed and developing countries, measuring the availability, use and impact of government data. It sourced opinions from open data experts and also incorporated pre-existing reviews to rank countries based on their readiness to capitalise on open data. Although developed countries topped the list, Kenya — the top-ranked developing nation at position 21 — placed ahead of countries such as Belgium and Ireland ..."