[foundation-board] Fwd: Updates on the Global Open Data Index

Wed Jan 11 19:40:03 UTC 2017

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Walsh <paul.walsh at okfn.org>
Date: 11 January 2017 at 07:14
Subject: Re: Updates on the Global Open Data Index
To: Karin Christiansen <karin at karinchristiansen.org>

Hi Karin,

Ok, so the changes to the Survey/Index for this year and going forward are:

*Methodological*

- Completely revised question set. It maps to the old set, but has less
ambiguity in the language, and allows us to collect more contextual data
for each answer. The additional contextual data is not part of the scoring
algorithm, but we envisage it being of use for research on the survey
results. A badly formatted description of the methodology is at
http://global.survey.okfn.org/methodology/ , and I have other documents I
can share if needed that, for example, map between the old questions and
the new ones.

- The weighting of questions to create the score for each place was
changed.

- We allow submitters to submit multiple URLs to datasets, so we can
capture the real distribution of data publication, and not arbitrarily
limit submissions to a single URL

- We added a new concept of "dataset characteristics" which is a list of
features that the submitter must confirm the dataset conforms to. This is a
quality check to ensure the right thing gets submitted.

- New data categories, and the breakdown of some existing categories into
new ones (e.g.: Draft Legislation -> National Laws and Draft Legislation)

- We collect submissions for the entire calendar year, and then do the
review in Q1 of the following year, with a publication of results in March.
This aligns us with the Barometer. (previously we would launch in the
Nov./Dec. of the year being assessed.)

*Technical*

Changes to the methodology required important technical changes to the
platform. Previously the entire platform was "hardcoded" around the
methodology the Index launched with in 2013. It is now possible to define
new methodologies and question sets with relative ease, and the algorithms
for calculating scores and so on will "just work".

An important value add of this is that, over the year, we get regularly
approached about using the Survey codebase for slightly different
assessment processes. This was never possible do to the aforementioned
hardcoding, and now it is possible. We'll be reaching out to various actors
in our network, in the SCODA network, and beyond who have talked to us
about this over the years, to explore additional use cases for the Survey
and Index code.

Lastly, there have been two distinct code bases - the "Census" platform
which is dynamic and collects data, and the "Index" platform which displays
a snapshot of results. The Index only ever worked with the Global Open Data
Index project, and the 60+ local Census sites running via our network could
not use it. We've merged them into the "Survey" platform can now produce an
Index website for any survey run on the platform.

*Organisational*

The intention is to merge the Index with the Barometer. Merging at this
stage will mean that data is collected via our platform as currently, and
then the public merger will align across the datasets assessed the and
definitions of them, research process, presentation of results, countries
sampled, and governance of the project.

Nothing is finalised here - apparently we are waiting on the Web Foundation
for next steps, and this is expected to be resolved over the coming weeks.

Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Best,

Paul

*--------*

Karin Christiansen

karin at karinchristiansen.org

 07816839533

@_karin_c

Karin16b
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