[Okfn-pk] Suggestions by Mr. Mohsin

Mon Mar 9 08:24:16 UTC 2015

Hello Mohsin,

First of all welcome to this discussion list. I am reproducing your
suggestions, from my personal email, here:-

i) Ask corporations, specially dealing with food and health care products,
to open their manufacturing & raw material policies [data] so that
consumers can make rational choices rather than emotional following of
brands under the influence of advertisement.

ii) An online platform / forum / wiki to raise public awareness about how
Government works in Pakistan and provide answers to frequently asked
questions about Government functions / services.

All the current members of Open Knowledge Pakistan (OKP) discussion list
are requested to provide their views / opinions on the suggestions of Mr.
Mohsin and how Open Knowledge Pakistan can undertake such initiatives.

My opinions in this regard are as under:-

i) We can establish Open Product Data Working Group under the umbrella of
OKP to campaign for Open Product Data in Pakistan by contacting and writing
to leading local products manufacturers and request them to Open their
products data. There is the working group titled: "Open Product Data"
working under Open Knowledge (Intl.) to build a public database of product
data. Here are the links of their websites:- http://product.okfn.org and
http://product-open-data.com. After obtaining data from local products
manufactures we can add that to Global Open Product Data database besides
establishing our own local portal which will allow users to easily
access data.

ii) As regard public awareness on how Government Work, we can launch an
online portal like following:- http://answers.oaklandnet.com/ to answer
questions about different functions / services provided by the Government
of Pakistan. The aforementioned website is using open source platform
titled Honolulu Answers
<http://www.codeforamerica.org/apps/honolulu-answers/> and Ms. Sheba Najmi,
Founder, Code for Pakistan <http://codeforpakistan.org> played a vital role
in developing this platform. We can deploy Honolulu Answers
<http://www.codeforamerica.org/apps/honolulu-answers/> in Pakistan and
request Ms. Sheba Najmi for her suggestions / guidance.

With regards,

*Nouman Nazim*
Ambassador / Group Lead
Open Knowledge Pakistan <http://pk.okfn.org/>
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