Liberating the Data in Government Gazettes
South Africa’s #GazetteLiberation campaign marks the start of a continental initiative
Government Gazettes are a crucial source of civic information, but are out of reach of most citizens because authorities either charge for access or otherwise make access difficult.
Our new #GazetteLiberation initiative seeks to change this, through OpenGazettes, which makes gazettes available and searchable online for free.
Why are Government Gazettes important? They record everything from government tenders and regulations, to changes of names (both for people and places) and estate notices after deaths, as well as company registrations and deregistrations, financial statements, land restitution notices, liquor licence applications and transport permits. Board and legal notices are also published in the Gazette, as is key information about insolvencies and liquidations.
“Gazettes are full of actionable information, not just for civic watchdogs like the media and social justice organisations, but also for ordinary citizens who want to find out about something as simple as whether the tavern next door has a license,” explains African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) managing editor, Amanda Strydom.
OpenGazettes is spearheaded by the civic technology team at Code for South Africa (Code4SA), in partnership with the Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII) and ANCIR, with support from Indigo Trust and Code for Africa. ANCIR is helping a network of newsrooms across South Africa use OpenGazettes to investigate issues of public interest.
“We spend an inordinate amount of time pouring over Gazettes at both national and provincial level. Far too much time is wasted with nonsense such as tracking down missing issues,” says Mail & Guardian associate editor Phillip de Wet. “In a world where the media’s constraints grow ever more dire, OpenGazettes is pure succour.”
A key feature of the new database is that it allows investigators to explore the links between company shareholders and government tenders. The database is built on analysis software called Aleph. Civic technologist Friedrich Lindenberg created Aleph while an ICFJ Knight Fellow at ANCIR, and later refined it while working with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in eastern Europe. Code4SA has customised and strengthened the software to power OpenGazettes.
“Gazettes are the government’s official way of communicating to the general public. Our initiative aims to improve civic participation in government processes, by making citizen access to government information much easier,” says Code4SA director, Adi Eyal. “Having machine searchable versions of the Gazettes online will make it easier for everyone — including government officials — to track important information.”
ANCIR has already experimented with ways to use digitised gazettes to help track issues such as mineral concessions in places like Mozambique, where the Big Shots prototype project helps citizens figure out who really owns the country’s mineral wealth.
Access to government gazettes in South Africa is, however, often limited, Eyal stresses, with physical copies only consistently available at Thusong Service Centres and some libraries. National and provincial copies are printed weekly, along with separate issues for liquor licenses, tender bulletins and legal notices. Some provinces, such as the Free State, charge for access to back copies.
“It would take entire teams in newsrooms and civic organisations to keep up to date or to search through backdated physical copies. OpenGazettes changes that immediately,” Eyal explains.
The project echoes other Code4SA initiatives, such as OpenByLaws, which makes the country’s municipal regulations searchable online, and the MuniFinance initiative to open up government budget data at city level across South Africa.
OpenGazettes is a work in progress. The initiative launches with 12,345 gazettes dating back to 2012, with a handful of older gazettes going back to 2000. This is just the start: we aim to digitise all gazettes going back over 100 years to the Union of South Africa to create an invaluable searchable record of the country’s history.
We need your help to do this.
You can contribute any copies of national or provincial Government Gazettes in your own library, in any format (hard copy, PDF, scan, etc), by simply uploading them here.
OpenGazettes will make all contributions publicly available as part of the biggest collection of free and searchable government gazettes on the continent.
Join the #GazetteLiberation campaign!
Code for South Africa: Code4SA is South Africa’s leading civic technology lab, based in Cape Town. It has been instrumental in pioneering public uses of open data and open source software tools that empower citizens across the country, as part of its mission to give citizens ‘actionable information’ so they can make better informed decisions about issues that affect their lives. Code4SA makes its data and code available for re-use free of charge.
African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting: ANCIR is the continent’s largest association of muckraking media, with member newsrooms in 15 countries. ANCIR coordinated the original Panama Papers investigations in Africa, and manages afriLEAKS.org as a secure channel for whistleblowers and sourceAFRICA.net as the continent’s largest repository for investigative evidence and leaked documents.
Southern African Legal Information Institute: SAFLII is an online repository of legal information from South Africa that aims to promote the rule of law and judicial accountability by publishing legal material for open access in support of the global Free Access to Law Movement. SAFLII’s projects have been commended by the Southern African Chief Justices Forum, The South African Parliament as well as the Office of the Chief Justice.
Indigo Trust: is a UK based grant making foundation that is is part of The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (SFCT) and that focuses on funding technology-driven projects to bring about social change, largely in African countries. The Trust’s principal areas of interest lie in transparency, accountability and citizen empowerment with a strong emphasis on supporting African digital pioneers. Indigo Trust helped fund the OpenGazettes initiative.
Code for Africa: CfAfrica is the continent’s largest federation of civic technology and open data laboratories, with affiliate members in 10 African countries and funded projects in a further 12 countries. CfAfrica manages the $1m/year innovateAFRICA.fund and $500,000/year impactAFRICA.fund, as well as key digital democracy resources such as openAFRICA.net and GotToVote.cc. CfAfrica helped fund the OpenGazettes initiative.
