Building the Evidence Base for Open Data | Center For Global Development

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-05-16

Summary:

" ... Proponents of open data say it improves governance, increases civic engagement, and encourages research and innovation, among other positive attributes. There is a basis for some of this in the literature; for example, increasing access to information has been found to have positive impacts on reducing corruption—including in the education sector in Uganda and the health sector in Argentina. But there isn’t much evidence for open data’s contribution to other goals in low- and middle-income countries as of yet. The Open Data Research network and World Wide Web Foundation are making a good effort to improve this, collecting stories on the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries. At this point the repository seems to pose more questions than contain answers. Case studies will examine the effects of open data on topics including poverty reduction, human rights, improved energy resource development, and even university governance—but most of this work is still in progress.  We explored the potential and pitfalls of open data in Africa in our Data for African Development Working Group, in partnership with the African Population & Health Research Center, and find that open data has been slower to catch on in Africa than other regions. Many national statistics offices and other government departments are either hesitant to publish their data, don’t have the capacity to publish and manage data according to international best practices, or do not understand what data users want to know and how to get information to them ..."

Link:

http://www.cgdev.org/blog/building-evidence-base-open-data

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.psi oa.africa oa.recommendations oa.reports oa.government oa.data oa.south

Date tagged:

05/16/2014, 22:40

Date published:

05/16/2014, 18:40