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

Wed Oct 16 09:46:26 BST 2013

Emmy and Daniela;

We also brought this up when looking at the Canadian context, the
questionnaire is set up for a centralized national government system (UK)
and does not account for federal or republics which have many layers of sub
national elected entities.  Also, because the questionnaire did not allow
for a 'not applicable' response people either responded no or unsure on
things like transport or in the case of Ireland postal codes as they do not
have any at the moment.

I think your idea about military spending to be very interesting.

I think we need to be reflexive about governments types, methodology, the
nature of the questions, and so on.  And really appreciate your questions
and suggestions.

Cheers
Tracey

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 9:02 AM, emmy chepkirui <emmychepkirui at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>> IT3S - Instituto de Fomento à Tecnologia do Terceiro Setor
>> Fone: 0055-11-36285787
>> Celular: 0055-11-987 356 563
>>
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>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> ---
> Regards,
> Emmy Chirchir
> Tel: +49 176 271 412 61
> Twitter: @ChirchirEmmy
>
> Too brief? Here's why! http://emailcharter.org
>
>
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>

-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
http://datalibre.ca/
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