Open Data in Developing Countriestowards locally sustainable ecosystems José M. Alonso, Program Manager, Open Data World Wide Web Foundation REEEP Open Data Workshop, Abu Dhabi, UAE 18 Jan 2011

1. Advance the Web to
Empower People
Open Data in Developing Countries
towards locally sustainable ecosystems
José M. Alonso, Program Manager, Open Data
World Wide Web Foundation
<josema@webfoundation.org>
REEEP, Abu Dhabi, UAE
18 Jan 2011

2. World Wide Web Foundation
o Mission:
Advance the Web to Empower People
o Founder: Tim Berners-Lee
o Seed funding: Knight Foundation
o Launched: Nov 2009
o Initial Projects
o Agriculture, Open Data,
Entrepreneurship, Web Index
o Mobile and voice Web
o Starting in Africa
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3. Some concerns heard/challenges
o Loss of control
o Authenticity, provenance, corruption, falsification of data
o Quality
o Legal challenges
Bottom line
o Data hugging
o Unwelcomed exposure
• It’s tough, expensive, I
o Procedural changes don’t see the ROI and
o Complexity I’m not required to do
o Investment, ROI this
o Loss of licensing revenue
o Capacity building required
o Customer service
o Infrastructure
o Digital literacy
o Privacy
o National security
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4. So Why Do It? - Open Data Benefits
o Increased transparency of governments
o Increased internal government efficiency and effectiveness
o Increased citizen participation and inclusion through
extended offers of services closer to people’s needs
o Increased number of services to people due to an increased
base of potential service providers
o New business opportunities and jobs for application and
service developers
o New synergies between government, public administration
and civil society organizations
o New innovative uses of OGD that can help spur innovation
and development in the IT sector
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5. One Example
http://www.intheair.es/
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6. Additional Considerations for LMICs (I)
o Web tech developed by, mainly,
wealthy country folks
o Affordability
(e.g., tools, assistive technologies)
o Exaggerated effects of other barriers
(e.g. age, literacy, language,
experience)
o Integration with known
communications
(business and social groups, radio,
TV, SMS ..)
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7. Additional Considerations for LMICs (II)
o Transparency and accountability are critical dimensions
for foreign aid and investments
o The potential of ICT to provide basic services (health,
education, business, government...) to rural communities
and under-privileged populations in developing countries
is huge
o Citizen inclusion and participation in public and
government matters has been historically low
o New Commercial Opportunities: private companies and
entrepreneurs can leverage new ideas and innovative
services
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8. Open Data Initiative – Vision
o Promote the growth of the Open Data movement
as a means of advancing our mission to empower
all people through the Web.
o The long-term vision is that any country in the
world would be able to:
o observe the impact of Open Data initiatives,
o understand the costs and benefits of such initiatives,
o understand the processes required for the
implementation,
o and find support for engaging and completing this
implementation.
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9. A starting point: mid2010- early 2011
o Hypothesis: what if we use all of our knowledge in
Western world Open Data projects and apply it to low
and middle income countries?
o Feasibility studies:
o Chile and Ghana
http://www.webfoundation.org/projects/ogd
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10. Findings of Ghana Study (1/3)
Executive level
o Culture of secrecy inherited from the stages previous
to democracy, but political will to make information
transparently available to citizens.
o First democratically elected government that has RTI
Act in its manifesto.
o Remove barriers related to exceptions provided by law and
make the system of information sharing transparent.
o Government’s willingness to adopt an Open Data
initiative at the agency level is present.
o The President of Ghana as prime mover behind enacting RTI.

11. Findings of Ghana Study (2/3)
Public Administration level
o Government departments and agencies are interested
in creating Open Data initiatives extending to the
middle layer of public administration.
o National IT Agency (NITA) and Ministry of Communications
understand the potential of such initiatives.
o Budgetary and leadership support to key institutions.
o Develop a common methodology for Open Data.
o Select and adopt open standard formats for data to facilitate
re-use.
o Improve the capacity of public servants so that they
themselves become active consumers of information,
thus enabling intra agency sharing of data.

12. Findings of Ghana Study (3/3)
Civil Society level
o Media and the civil society has played a prominent
role in ensuring that RTI Act enshrines free
availability of information.
o There is already a movement towards re-use of
information driven by organisations like “Population
Council” as well as universities.
o Need to increase awareness of re-use initiatives
promoted by civil society.
o Leverage existing related initiatives
o Improve technical awareness and provide training.
o Assist civil society in providing technical training.

13. Open Data – Strategy
Country level actions
o Political
o Legal
o Organizational
o Technical
o Economic
o Social
Global actions
o Directory
o Research
o Sustainability models
o Monitoring and Evaluation
o…
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14. Some Lessons Learned: Non-Technical
o Quick OGD portal vs. sustainable long-term OGD initiative
o Portal should be just a consequence not end
o Start simple but with long term goal in mind
o Technical approach vs. OGD ecosystem
o Actors: Political, Public Administration, Civil Society
o Dimensions: Political, legal, organizational, technical, economic,
social
o The issue with Open
o Most not really Open, it’s mostly about the license
o The issue with machine-readable, standard formats
o PDFs, Excel, documents not data
o Web Architecture and not Web as file server
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15. Some Lessons Learned: Technical
Raw data now… and better data afterwards
o i.e. start with the low hanging fruit
o improve over time (steps)
Do not try to enforce an specific architecture
o Chances are you could not deploy it
o Try to adapt to existing systems and build on top of
them as a start
More standardization is needed
o e.g. on vocabularies (see W3C new groups)
o What’s a dataset? What’s a catalogue?
o Counting datasets is bad

16. Some Lessons Learned: 5-star scale
Linked Data is a good tactic but it’s tough, needs
improvement
o It just doesn’t work (out of the box)
o Better tooling is needed
o Capacity building
o But benefits are great
Publishing Reuse
OGD
Publishing Reuse
LGD
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17. Just One Example
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18. Summary
o Open Data: Cost‐effective tool for
governments to improve service to citizens,
civil society and businesses
o Start now. Start simply.
o Start at 3 levels
o “it has to happen at the top, it has to happen at the middle
and it has to happen at the bottom.”
Tim Berners‐Lee
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19. Thanks!
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