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

Wed Oct 16 09:02:30 BST 2013

I agree with Daniela. I had the same experience especially with the
transport data which for Kenya, has almost nothing to do with the
government and will probably not for a long time, leave alone having
timetables. The public transport system is run in a completely different
way from what I have seen in Europe. This dataset was not relevant for
Kenya nevertheless the state of open data is judged on that. I would say
the case is the same for many countries in Africa (i stand to be corrected)
and hence while there are some arguments for standardizing data across
countries on other discussion threads, it may also be worth thinking about
contextualising open (government) data across different countries.

Best,
Emmy

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 4:39 AM, Daniela Mattern
<daniela.mattern at it3s.org>wrote:

> 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
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-- 
---
Regards,
Emmy Chirchir
Tel: +49 176 271 412 61
Twitter: @ChirchirEmmy

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