The relative financial health of Johannesburg and Cape Town; and four other things Open Data taught me this week
Open Data is a term that has quietly added itself to the messy jumble of ideas that make up my general knowledge. In South Africa openness has been central to our post ’94 ideals and is topical as we sense a closing of public access. I suspect however that it’s mostly scientists, actuaries and the occasional political commentator that use the term beyond cocktail party chatter.
For a recent class I was asked to find some Open Data and put it to use. Here are the five things I learned in the process:
- South Africa is a founding member, and current chair, of the Open Government Partnership but only ranked 48th in the world for Open Data.
Our government has committed to ‘ promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance’ but has made little concrete progress so far. We do not have a national Open Data policy (while some local municipalities and government departments do) but in April 2016 the South African Information Technology Agency held a conference to chart a way forward and their summary presentation is well worth a read.
2. Open Data has some financial promise but the value is in better analysis, better data and better cooperation amongst government officials.
Government seems to see the value of Open Data primarily in improving transparency; and perhaps in fostering public private partnerships and creating business opportunities. The experience of other countries however seems to be that these are not the primary benefits of Open Data. The likelihood of commercially viable apps or projects emerging is slims, especially if the data sets are limited and narrow, as they currently are. On the transparency front open access to data should improve the quality of analysis as outsiders take a fresh, perhaps more skilled look, and as pressure mounts for government departments to beef up their own capacity to make good analysis of the data they share.
The biggest benefit seems to be simply cost savings from efficiency. Other government employees or departments usually become the biggest users of open data; and sharing good data reduces the need for communication, meetings and discussions.
3. All municipal budgets are now available as Open Data sources.
This was a commitment made by the treasury at the launch of the 2016 budget; and yesterday at the medium term budget speech, the department made good on it’s promise. At first glance the portal is very public friendly, including it’s own analysis and visualization tools. Please go have a look for your own municipality and play around at www.municiplemoney.gov.za.
4. Clean data sets are hard to find.
Until the treasury launched the municipal finances portal finding interesting data sets was very hard. STATS SA has a portal where you can download all their census and survey data; very useful but hardly a new Open Data development. I was looking for education data and while the Department of Education list a number of data sets that are available they can only be accessed through an application and approval process. There are external agencies that have cleaned data sources but I wanted the raw stuff direct from government.
5. Cape Town and Johannesburg have managed an impressive turnaround strategy of sorts over the past five years, but Cape Town still under spends. Look at the pretty comparison table I could ‘build’ on that shiny new website I just told you about…here!
