Within less than a year, the United Kingdom and United States have put hundreds of thousands of rich datasets on the Web in machine readable formats. Thousands of applications have been built — the vast majority without taxpayers’ money — by civic hackers to analyze, mash-up, and map these data. Potential benefits of an Open Government Data (OGD) practice include new services, new insights, increased citizen participation, new businesses and better governance. Though other countries, provinces and cities are exploring OGD, there has been little activity in low and middle income countries (see map at left). Given the potential benefits and reasonable costs, it is importance to assess how relevant an OGD initiative might be in these countries as well.
The World Wide Web Foundation, with the our partner Fundacion (CTIC), is taking the first steps in this direction. We are starting a new project to conduct an assessment of the feasibility and potential of an OGD program in three diverse countries — Chile, Ghana and Turkey. The bottom line questions are: Is the country ready to engage in an OGD initiative? If so, what support might they need? If not, why not, and what lesson can we take away from this assessment?
Read More
Stephane and I will have much more to relay from this exciting visit. This post relays a number of additional observations, as well as still and moving images, from our 31 January – 1 February visits north of Ouaga (the towns of Dori, Kaya, Kongoussi and a small village 10km west of Kongoussi) with farmers who’ve developed techniques for promoting natural regeneration of trees on the edge of the Sahara Desert. A video mapping the trip can be found in