Open data movement faces fresh hurdles - SciDev.Net

"The open-data community made great strides in 2013 towards increasing the reliability of and access to information, but more efforts are needed to increase its usability on the ground and the general capacity of those using it, experts say. An international network of innovation hubs, the first extensive open data certification system and a data for development partnership are three initiatives launched last year by the fledgling Open Data Institute (ODI), a UK-based not-for-profit firm that champions the use of open data to aid social, economic and environmental development. Before open data can be used effectively the biggest hurdles to be cleared are agreeing common formats for data sets and improving their trustworthiness and searchability, says the ODI’s chief statistician, Ulrich Atz ... The ODI — which celebrated its first anniversary last month — is attempting to achieve this with a first-of-its-kind certification system that gives publishers and users important details about online data sets, including publishers’ names and contact information, the type of sharing licence, the quality of information and how long it will be available.  Certificates encourage businesses and governments to make use of open data by guaranteeing their quality and usability, and making them easier to find online, says Atz.  Finding more and better ways to apply open data will also be supported by a growing network of ODI ‘nodes’: centres that bring together companies, universities and NGOs to support open-data projects and communities. Although of the 13 nodes, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates host the only two that are based outside the developed world, Atz is confident this will change over the coming year due to the intense interest shown by developing countries such as Indonesia ... Tim Davies, the open-data research coordinator for the World Wide Web Foundation, also sees great possibilities for developing nations as the momentum continues to build.  Because lower-income countries often lack well-established data collection systems, they have greater freedom to rethink how data are collected and how they flow between governments and civil society, he says ..."