The future of data is open!
‘We should ensure that open data makes a difference in people’s lives.’ Tholakele Nene travelled to Buenos Aires to find out how
Gone are the days when the term “data” was used exclusively among scientists and technical people and sounded like jargon to everyone outside these industries. Over the years more professionals have opened up to the idea of using data for impact, to tell stories, to seek justice and to educate.
From these multiples roles, with the assistance of technology, came the need to open data for communities, government and the like. The drive for open data has taken on many faces in civil society, challenging NGOs and professionals across the world to explore creative ways to analyse, visualise and use data.
As a creative, evolving and tech-savvy media organisation, Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism has created multiple tools to store, visualise and simplify data for stakeholders to use in the environmental sector. One of its cutting-edge data-driven geojournalism projects, #MineAlert, was among the 1,500 participants gathered at the recent International Open Data Conference (#IODC18) in Buenos Aires, where 70 countries were represented.
#MineAlert attended an Open Heroines hackathon and participated in the “Justice data with a gender perspective” group building on an app set up by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to make data about gender issues available to communities in Latin America. The group approach was to create an international database that would serve as an index for tracking femicide cases across the world, including Africa, with the aim being to assist in curbing femicide.
The existing app focuses on Latin America and because #MineAlert was part of this group, it had to be extended to South Africa. It was interesting to see how there are various laws across the world that deal with gender-based violence but do not explicitly speak to femicide. Poor collection of data in femicide cases makes it difficult to track whether there’s a growth or decline over the years.
Part of an open community
This was #MineAlert’s first open data conference and it was interesting to see how far, wide and cross-sectoral open data has reached, from projects aimed at improving water services in Tanzania to ground-breaking data-driven investigative work that improves health services and challenges existing social systems and policies.
It was exciting to listen to like-minded industry giants share the daunting processes of collecting data to create stronger stories that will have impact. We talked about how sometimes data needs to be created from scratch using various technological tools and about working with experts in different fields to find the best way to interpret the data.
“We use data to prove injustices and systematic problems, it is the spine to our stories,” said Minneapolis Star Tribune’s data editor, Mary Joe Webster.
Impact! Impact! Impact!
The atmosphere at the conference was that the work we do in our respective industries should always have impact. This was a generic theme throughout the conference, with multiple speakers emphasising that “data matters when it’s used” and that digital tools are necessary to create visually compelling, informative communication in the 21st century.
“We should ensure that open data makes a difference in people’s lives. We need to scale up on open data and participation in things that matter for ordinary citizens,” said the chief executive officer of the Open Government Partnership, Sanjay Pradhan.
Challenges in the open data realm
The International Open Data Conference was celebrating 10 years since its inception this year, and even though many successes have been achieved a number of common issues still arise across sectors that hinder organisations and activists from fully doing their data-driven work. Some of these include:
- Concerns around data washing, when organisations request information and they get the information but parts have been omitted, and/or there are policies promoting the sharing of information but it is difficult to get data from the custodians.
- Being sent from pillar to post to source information to deter you, and then having to rely on crowdsourcing as an alternative.
- Lack of accountability and clarity on what information is public and not public.
- Sustainability of platforms in terms of funding.
What’s next?
In 2019 all roads lead to Kenya, where the next IODC will be held. A topic sure to be the talk of the conference in 2019 is open contracting, and the importance of this in upholding transparency and providing citizens with meaningful and fair participation.
#MineAlert manager Tholakele Nene secured an Open Heroines travel grant to attend #IODC18, aimed at increasing the presence of women in open data initiatives
