Dadeldhura Celebrated International Open Data Day for the first time
Open data regards to the open government. It denotes to the rights of citizens to access, achieve, study, use and re-use of the government data. Open government data is the transparency of the data. The norms are that each data should be easily accessible, use and re-usable, distribute and redistribute-able for the citizens. Another, mainly it also should be machine-readable, open format and having no any copyrights; that is called open government data. First time, the California meeting conducted on 30 October 2007 had rendered the theory of the “Open Data” mentioning the following 10 norms:
- Completeness
- Primacy
- Timeliness
- Ease of Physical and Electronic Access
- Machine Readability
- Non-Discrimination
- Use or Commonly Owned (Open) Standards
- Licensing
- Permanence
- Usage Costs
The United States America, Britain, Canada and New Zealand countries declared to open the public information for the citizens in 2009 AD. Likewise, it took a day celebration for each March 2 since 2010 and nowadays many countries have been celebrating the “International Open Data Day” as a special day. It is celebrated to enhance the capacity of service providing local offices and local governments creating positive pressure through providing an opportunity to the citizens for monitoring of the governmental activities and expand the awareness about the importance and significance of the open data.
Amargadhi Nagarpalika and Nawadurga Gaunpalika, both local governments of Dadeldhura district have also celebrated the “International Open Data Day, 2019” dated 2 March in its own areas, first time. The local government itself was the organizer and the REDC/SUSASAN was in facilitation side. There were Local Government representatives, governmental officials, stakeholder representatives, CSO representatives, SUSASAN national partners (CECI Nepal, Young Innovation and Freedom Forum representatives), REDC board members, journalists from FM/Radios and newspapers.
In Amargadhi, the rally was started from Bus park Dadeldhura with inspiring slogans of the International Open Data Day, open data, transparent and accountable government and citizen rights to information. Every participant had taken one or two play cards of the slogan; the slogans were like:
- ‘Public information for citizens’,
- ‘Access to information increase to citizen engagement’,
- ‘Current era is the era of information and technology’,
- ‘Practice of open data, feeling of good governance’,
- ‘Only open data makes the accountable government’,
- ‘Open data open government, strong base for democracy’,
- ‘Access on information for WMGs is very necessary’ etc.
When the rally arrived in Amargadhi Nagarpalika Office, the mass gathered in a hall and organized a formal program chaired by Nagarpalika Deputy Mayor Mrs. Sangita Bhandari. In Nawadurga Gaunpalika, there were organized a formal program in ward no. 3 Dandaban chaired by the Gaunpalika Vice-Chairperson Mrs. Dambari Devi Oli. The keynote presentation presented by the Chief Administrative Officer Mr. Iswari Datta Paneru in Amargadhi and SUSASAN DPC Mrs. Menka Shahi in Nawadurga, the presentation contents were:
- Open data,
- Historical background,
- Objective,
- Legal provision in Nepal
- Open data in the context of local level,
- Right to information for citizens
Menka Shahi, Deepak Bohara and Mr. Hikmat Singh had informed about the first-year tools under the data portal and second year tools: E-citizen Charter and Municipal Mobile App launched. The first-year tools were handover to the local government and did the MOU agreement between the local government and SUSASAN Project. Finally, the Chairperson finale the program referring to own political agenda and latest agenda of open government and good governance implementing by the Nagarpalika/Gaunpalika in a close coordination with the SUSASAN project. The participants observed the Municipal/Community Techno-Hub.
In conclusion, it is a positive and good initiation of the local government that the celebration is celebrated at the first time in Dadeldhura district. It supports to spread out the message of the open data, its importance and advantages for the good governance. It can be easily imagine that the local government will be proactively organize and celebrate the international open data day in future coming celebrations inviting the stakeholders and like minded organizations. Definitely the local government has owned the theme of the celebration that the government has to disclose its all of the data for its citizens in open format, having no copyrights claims, machine-readable , able to use and re-usable, distribute and redistribute. It creates a faith and belief to government and citizens between each other which makes a close engagement Only a close engagement between the government and citizen supports to make an accountable and transparent government system and establish the good governance.’
Author: Deepak Bohara, Field Person, SUSASAN project, REDC, Dadeldhura
