The business side of open data: how developing countries can learn from the UK
- This blogpost was originally published on tumenye.rw by Claude Migisha, the Code for Africa/Open Knowledge open government fellow for Rwanda who is working on access to information and ICT for development.
In September I was invited to attend the first Africa Open Data Conference in newly sworn-in President Magufuli country - Tanzania. At the conference, one of the speakers suggested that we need to change the way we advocate for open data in developing countries. The shared opinion was suggesting that we need to stop using words like “public accountability” and “transparency” but rather call it “availing public data for private sector growth”. This was quite enlightening, I have to say.
Because open data is relatively a new field, I then started to explore the possibilities of having public data availed under open standards for social and business purposes. Recently, at the Open Data Institute (ODI) summit in London, I learned about the Open Data Challenge Series (ODCS), which gives support and prizes to teams developing products or services using open data for social good. The programme is run jointly between the ODI and Nesta, both UK-based organisations. Participants develop products or services to solve issues within a wide range of societal issues like: crime and justice; education; energy and the environment; housing; food security; and jobs. For each theme the winning team gets a cash prize worth between £40,000 and £50,000.
All of this sounds good but what is the impact? A recent report by PwC UK revealed that for every pound spent on the OCDS could generate between £5 and £10 for the economy in three years. Isn’t that interesting? Especially if the main raw material used is data unexploited in many corners for the world.
From this example, among many others, one question remains. Are developing countries realising the benefits that open data may bring? Or this is far advanced and not preoccupying them for now? Well we may argue but the reality is that data is powerful and most governments sit on taxpayer-generated data spending little to no effort on making it easily searchable, reusable or even shareable. Perhaps open data presents a huge potential business side that once exploited may foster innovation and therefore drive economic growth in these same countries?
The reality is that often data is available but there is no demand. What is lacking? A catalyst, simple technologies, data literacy or trust in public data? Or maybe local data-literate champions?
One example is education data in Rwanda. Everyone agrees that this is a critical sector that affects all of us. One interesting achievement in this sector in beautiful Rwanda is the way students who sit national exams can use their assigned numbers - or “unique identifier” - to check their results online once released. Now imagine if the institution in charge of publishing that kind of data could share more on schools performance countrywide like the subjects studied, quota of examinated students, etc. I am not talking about sharing these in a press release. I am talking about files in Excel, CSV or any other format that may allow those interested to manipulate the data for social good purposes. Why not let innovators create a subscription-based website allowing users to visualise and rank schools by any variable? Which parent could resist such a product? It might not completely eliminate the traditional “viva voce” but at least allow parents to take evidence-based decisions that directly affect the future of their children.
Open data has the potential to create tailor-made innovations for the same people data was generated from directly or indirectly. This kind of market-driven approach can significantly boost online presence pushing many people to invest in smart devices as well as internet usage. In other words relevant content created through market-driven innovations can play a crucial role in increasing online traffic in Rwanda.
There are still a multitude of challenges developing countries face such as lack of infrastructure, weak political systems, high cost technologies and the perpetual digital divide. These impede having functional open data ecosystems. Nevertheless I do think that even if we can’t implement now, we should at least learn from what is happening elsewhere and take time to plan for the future.
The open data arena is still pretty much new to many of us but worth following closely as it contains more potential benefits than harms. With two new agendas currently happening worldwide - namely the data revolution and big data - the new currency is data. This is not just raw data, but processed data which is open for interested parties to add on its value through building products.
Originally published at www.tumenye.rw on November 22, 2015.
