[Open-data-census] reflections about the relevance of open data census' datasets

Wed Oct 16 03:39:17 BST 2013

Hi all,

we finally finished to revise Brazilian datasets. while doing so, I asked
myself to what extend the suggested datasets might be culturally biased.

Some examples:

   - some data is not necessarily organized at the federal level - for
   instance transportation data (bus and train) is mainly a state issue in
   Brazil. A reason could be the urbanization pattern of Brazil - in huge
   parts of the territory there is almost no civilization and therefore there
   is no railway neither. Railway is almost nonexistent in Brazil and is
   predominantly used for cargo and not for passenger transportation. So, this
   data set is not really relevant for Brazil.
   - same about pollution data that is measured in metropolitan areas but
   there is no federal data. Also, due to the vast territory occupied by
   Amazon rainforest a medium indicator or measurement system does not really
   make sense.

On the other side, I do not understand why we do not consider *security data
*, like military expenses. In my opinion this might be a federal issue in
most of the countries. *Other datasets that should be included are datasets
related to activity of Supreme Courts, Federal Courts of Auditors and
campaign finance data.*

In Brazil big amounts of health, education and social assistance are also
financed by the the federal government.

I am wondering what might be the best approach to select relevant datasets
for the census.

Maybe we should only consider data that is mandatorily organized on a
federal level in all of the countries.

Has someone made similar experiences while filling out the census?

-- 
Daniela Mattern
Coordenadora Geral
IT3S - Instituto de Fomento à Tecnologia do Terceiro Setor
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