Global Open Data Index 2016

Open Data Durban received the opportunity by Open Knowledge International (OKI) to contribute to the Global Open Data Index (GODI) 2016 for several southern African countries. Open Knowledge International defined GODI as “an annual effort to measure the state of open government data around the world. The crowdsourced survey is designed to assess the openness of specific government datasets according to the Open Definition.” With a deadline of just 8 days, I was eager to take up the challenge of measuring the GODI for South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Lesotho.

This intense data wrangling consisted of finding the state of open government data for the following datasets: National Maps, National Laws, Government Budget, Government Spending, National Statistics, Administrative Boundaries, Procurement, Pollutant Emissions, Election Results, Weather Forecast, Water Quality, Locations, Draft Legislation, Company Register, Land Ownership. A quick calculation: 15 datasets for 8 countries each, results in 120 surveys! As you can imagine, this repetitive task took hours of google searches until late hours of the night (the best and most productive time for data wrangling I reckon) resulting in my sleep pattern being completely messed up. Nonetheless, I got the task done. Here are some of the findings.

Below is part of the survey for Pollutant Emissions in South Africa.

Challenges

OKI has a forum in which members from around the world can chat about projects and also ask and resolve questions. I must admit, I took full advantage of this since I am a new member of the community still with my training wheels on. The biggest challenge I faced during this process was searching for Mozambique government data. Mozambique’s national language is Portuguese so all the government data is published in Portuguese which I have no knowledge of. For Mozambique, I used google translator to help me find the relevant data sources. However, I was not confident that I was providing a fair index. Luckily enough, OKI members from Brazil will be reviewing my submission to verify the data sources.

Trends

The African Development Bank developed Open Data Portals for most of the countries. At first sight, these portals are quite impressive with data visualisations and graphics, however, these portals are rarely updated or organised well. The environmental departments are lagging as there is barely any records on Pollutant Emissions or Water Quality. A land ownership register was also very difficult to find. On a positive note, Election Results were easy to find and up to date for almost all of the countries. Government Budget and Expenditure data are available but important detailed information such as transactions was lacking with most countries.

Helping out with the GODI was a fulfilling experience as it is a volunteer based programme for people around the world. It is always great to know that the open data community extends beyond just Durban or South Africa but is an international community who are always collaborating on projects with a joint objective of advocating for open data.

-Tricia

Tricia is an OpenGov Fellow with Open Data Durban and she loves to bake.