FOIA This! The Depressing State of Open Data | Global Investigative Journalism Network

"In our latest look at FOIA around the world, we examine the state of open data sets. According to the new report by the World Wide Web Foundation, the news is not good.

“The number of global truly open datasets remains at a standstill,” according to the group’s researchers, who say that only seven percent of government data is fully open.

The findings come in the fourth edition of the Open Data Barometer, an annual assessment which was enlarged this year to include 1,725 datasets from 15 different sectors across 115 countries. The report summarizes:

Only seven governments include a statement on open data by default in their current policies. Furthermore, we found that only 7 percent of the data is fully open, only one of every two datasets is machine readable and only one in four datasets has an open license. While more data has become available in a machine-readable format and under an open license since the first edition of the Barometer, the number of global truly open datasets remains at a standstill.

Based on the detailed country-by-country rankings, the report says some countries continue to be leaders on open data, a few have stepped up their game, but some have slipped backwards."