Open data underpins equality

Speed read

First step was to boost use and awareness of open data

Now it must be better applied to policy and growth initiatives

Such data is also vital to monitoring national progress on the SDGs

[LONDON] Open data is entering a phase of consolidation and creation of services and policies for development, meaning it is increasingly being put to use to help people, a UK conference has heard.

Conference participants agreed that open data is becoming more useful to policymakers after an initial stage of creating capacity and raising awareness. “Now it’s time to turn that information into services that can actually take hold,” said Liz Carolan, the head of the ODI’s global development work. “For example, we’re working with local partners in Burkina Faso to publish election results in real time during the upcoming election. Data is not the headline here, the headline is its impact on people’s lives.”

Speakers at the Open Data Institute’s annual summit said that open data could do much more for development if it were applied better to policy and growth initiatives.

At present, only 17 national and local governments have signed up to the International Open Data Charter, a set of principles launched this year and meant to encourage governments to open their data by default.

Having more open data is imperative to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), launched in September, as it is crucial to monitoring national progress on them, according to the UN.

“Data helps us to innovate and to navigate towards better decisions,” said Nigel Shadbolt, a computer scientist at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and cofounder of the ODI. “Open data sits at the bottom of the pyramid and everything else feeds off it. It has to be in a standard format, readable and, above all, free.”