By Leonida Mutuku, Project Lead at the African Open Data Network

Corruption is one of the main governance issues that the OGP movement aims to address. However, it has been noted by OGP that several anti-corruption commitments made by countries do not move the needle and our research has found that oftentimes it’s due to the complex nature of corruption in government. This is more so the case when the commitment aims to create and avail open data to be used in anti-corruption efforts.

Open data has the potential to increase transparency and, therefore, oversight in the delivery of government…

“We cannot define the needs of our collective future based only on a particular point of view. We need a mix between different kinds of cultures and perspectives when we are building standards, or having conversations around data that will affect the rest of the world. ” — Juan Pane, CDS and Lead Data Analyst for ODC and CAF’s Data Taxonomy for Pandemic Preparedness, in an interview with Open Data Charter.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another wake up call on the importance of high quality, interoperable data spaces to make collective decisions for the common good.“ …

The Government of Catalonia’s Directorate General for Transparency and Open Data (DTDO) wanted to open up their data to more sectors in order to help overcome the health-related, employment-related and economic crises that have been caused by COVID-19. In order to achieve this recovery, they realised that they needed reliable, disaggregated, complete data that will enable them to determine what resources the government has and how to tackle the public health crisis. With this aim in mind, the Government of Catalonia, together with the ODC, organised their first COVID-19 Data Meet-Up in September 2020.

The Meetup aimed to define which…

Led by the National Digital Platform (PDN) of the Executive Secretariat of the National Anticorruption System (SESNA), the government mapped 27 datasets that are priority for their country, grouped in three categories: Public Health, Socio-political and Economic needs. One workshop per topic was held between October 27- 29.

Mexico’s learnings and highlights are summarised as follows:

For Public Health

1. Data is necessary for action.
   Having inaccurate data regarding the number of COVID-19 cases prevents the authorities from making decisions and will in turn make any community feel helpless amidst a crisis.
2. Data structures must be dynamic.
   Governments must think in terms of data structures that allow the dynamism of a pandemic. It…

By Paul Stone, IWG Co-Chair (2018–2021)

A big part of opening up data is a cultural shift. But it’s not just about culture, new technical knowledge and skills are required to actually make it happen. The great thing is though, these new capabilities are applicable to more than just open data.

Interoperability is quite a mouthful of a word, but it seems to be making a comeback in the world of tech buzzwords. Why? Because the world is waking up (and perhaps partly accelerated by responses to COVID-19) to the fact that collaborating over data can lead to some innovative…

Por ODC & ILDA

¿Cuál es el potencial de los datos abiertos para identificar posibles casos de corrupción? ¿Cuáles son los desafíos actuales más importantes que enfrenta América Latina en la materia? ¿Qué rol tiene OGP en promover compromisos de calidad de datos abiertos para luchar contra la corrupción?

Estas son algunas de las muchas preguntas que nos hicimos junto a la Iniciativa Latinoamericana por los Datos Abiertos (ILDA) en una co-producción de una serie de tres podcasts donde indagamos en el potencial de los datos abiertos para luchar contra la corrupción, con un foco particular en latinoamérica.

• Conducción: Natalia…

As established in its Open Government Plan 2019–2020 (extended until June 2021), the government of Catalonia is pleased to share its recently published Guide for the homogenization of metadata in the open data catalogue.

This project responds to the specific commitments on:

• Promotion of common criteria for the publication of information subject to active advertising (1.2.2)
• Harmonization of open data criteria and standards used (2.2.6)
• Identification and execution of other open data quality actions (2.2.7)

Although the Guide is focused on facilitating the internal work of those responsible for open data in the Catalan Government and giving coherence to the…

by Marisa Miodosky and María Lago, BA City Statistics Bureau

The pandemic has made evident that data is crucial for policy making. Circulation measures, economic subsidies for negatively affected sectors, and vaccines provision schemes (among other decisions) were designed based on data. At the same time, there has been an increasing awareness about the importance of having good data that is periodically collected, accurate and reliable. In Argentina, this has been the case for infection rate, deaths, occupation of intensive care beds and some other indicators related to the health system.

The production of care-related activities data by different sources…