Open Data and Open Government : Opportunities and Challenges

Open Data and Open Government : Opportunities and Challenges

This week I attended a Workshop on the need for a Global Policy on Open Data at the Internet Governance Form at Nairobi. Christopher Corbin from UK was in the Chair and my co panelists included Professor Anne Fitzegerad from Queensland University, Ms Waltraut Ritter from Knowledge Dialogues, Hongkong, and Dr Rajshree Dutta from CSDMS, India. The session was quiet lively with interesting interventions from Dorothy Gordon of Ghana, Maria Lee Hoon of IDRC and other participants from World over. The event was actively followed on the webcast and twitter thanks to the tweets of @MGPSI and @josemalonso.

The key theme of the Workshop was on the need for a Global Policy framework for Public Sector Information online. This article is about the thoughts I shared at the Workshop.

Open Government is a concept with which no well meaning democratic Government can disagree with. Open Government is all about transparency, public participation and collaboration which will bring in efficiency, reliability and accountability in delivery of public services. India has taken the policy initiative of enacting the Right to Information in 2005 which ensures that all information can be shared with people who seek them. It further calls for an obligation of the Government to disclose voluntarily information to the citizens. Section 4(1) of the RTI Act 2005 requires Government to digitize all records and make them available over a network. Accordingly, India is building an Open Data Platform (data.gov.in) which will place all information and data of the Government, except a negative list, in the public domain.

However, what needs to be understood is that Open Data Policy is more than mere technology, or a data.gov portal or just doing it for the sake of transparency. Open Data Policy has a lot to do with Governance, Social, Economic, Political and Legal Issues. The real issue is that how do we ensure that all relevant data is put in an organized for. It’s necessary to define the metadata standards to be able to link the datasets of multiple Government departments.
The benefits for an open Data policy are immense. Once data is put in an open domain on a platform, entrepreneurs, developers and innovators will have access to this data and they will be able to build mashable applications on top of this and offer useful services on mobile platform. Infact this is the most critical aspect as ultimately putting Data on an Open platform is not an end in itself. Data must lead to enabling services which will be useful for the people.

A challenge that Governments face in migrating to an Open Data platform and an Open Government policy is that there is lot of resistance from within the Government as many functionaries feel that it’s extra effort that they have to put and more importantly most functionaries do not want to let go of the control over data and information that they have now. Given the potential an Open Data regime and Open Government policy has for Governance and Accountability, it is worthwhile for Governments to build in awareness and capacity building of Government functionaries from top to bottom to ensure that the implementation of the policy does not see roadblocks. It will require extensive Change Management sessions as it’s an attitudinal and mindset change, we are seeking to achieve.

On the key issue of whether the Global Policy on Public Sector Information can be built upon the OECD and the European Union policy that have been adopted by almost 50 UN Nations, I felt that it might be a bit premature. The level of development of Information Infrastructure and issues of Access and Diversity may require each country to formulate its own road map towards an Open Data Policy. There are Governance and Political issues also and while advocacy towards an Open Data policy is important, what we need to provide is a resource toolkit, knowledge repository about the best practices and metadata standards along with assessment reports on the benefits of an Open Data Policy framework, which will ultimately help more nations to embrace Open Data Policy. The toolkits and metadata standards will be critical from the point of view of integrating data across regions and countries so that applications and services work seamlessly without any borders and boundaries. There are cultural and privacy issues also which differ from nation to nation and each country will need to address them in its own way. The business modeling of sharing revenues from the applications and services developed by innovators and developers with Governments also needs to be addressed.

Another key issue is that in countries where regions and communities are yet to get access to Broadband, what use will an Open Data Portal be? This challenge can be met by first adopting a Right to Information policy which allows people to get access to all information, in electronic mode or in manual mode. The next step can be to provide all information voluntarily on an Open Data Portal and ultimately adopt an Open Government Policy framework. The next step will be to link up Data with Services which ultimately benefit citizens in getting access to better services, innovators to create new business models and revenue streams and Governments to improve Governance and bring in transparency and accountability. All this should be accompanied by extensive awareness building, training and capacity building campaigns to enable smooth transition to an Open Data regime.