Opening climate change data in Uruguay
Piloting the Open Up Guide for Climate Action
The production and use of data is essential to track and project trends, impacts and effects of climate policies. Coordinated and coherent approaches from across different government agencies are deemed essential to ensure effective implementation of strategies and climate efficiency with scarce resources. The private sector and civil society can also play the roles of producers, users or intermediaries when it comes to climate data. While Latin American governments, including Uruguay, have made significant progress in collecting data related to climate change, these types of data sets are not the priority yet in open data initiatives.
Understanding how open data adds value to the climate change agenda is integral and finally, after a little more than a year of work, we present the final report of the pilot project for the implementation of the Beta version of the Open Up Guide for Climate Action in Uruguay.
The project was born from a collaboration between the Open Data Charter (ODC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) who, with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), developed the first version of an Open Up Guide for Climate Action. It sweeps a series of relevant data for climate action that respond to a process of consultation and work with the climate change and open data communities, and presents a non-prescriptive list of priority data to be opened in the sector. The Guide seeks to facilitate a baseline assessment, based on national circumstances in terms of data governance and climate priorities. It also serves for the identification of necessary and priority data, evaluation of the current state of accessibility and generation of opportunities to reuse them.
Taking this into account, we proposed to do the pilot in Uruguay because, in addition, in its 4th National Open Government Plan, the Government had assumed Commitment 1.3 “Mitigation and adaptation to climate change: Monitoring, reporting and verification of commitments” which establishes Design and implement Monitoring, Reporting and Verification System (MRV) for compliance with the measures adopted within the framework of the Determined Contribution at the National Level (hereinafter NDC), within the framework of the National Policy on Climate Change (PNCC).
As national counterparts of the pilot we worked with the Agency for the Development of the Government of Electronic Management and the Information and Knowledge Society (AGESIC) and the National System of Response to Climate Change and Variability (SNRCC), who collaborated in the grounding and adaptation at the national level of the data proposed in the Guide, in the organization of participation events and in the management of the opening of data identified as feasible to open in the short term.
After traveling a joint path of data inventory, publication prioritization and even a hackathon in person to promote the publication of data, we are pleased to share the final report with the work and publication recommendations for Uruguay. This report collects the lessons learned in this implementation that will also feed into the following iterations of the Guide. For example, among the data that make up this version of the Guide, are oceanographic data which did not previously appear, and which are critical data for climate action and for countries like Uruguay with large coastlines.
Here is the link to download and view the final report of the work carried out in Uruguay. We hope this year to continue working to promote open data on an issue so relevant to humanity.
Are you looking to open up data for climate action? Send us your questions or comments to info@opendatacharter.org.
