[Open-data-census] open government data or open data

Mon Dec 15 19:26:33 UTC 2014

Hi all,

I  have  raised  a  couple  of  issues  off-list  and want to continue
clarifying  them in hope to make future versions of ODI more clear. I realize
they  might  be  a  little  bit  too late, I'm sorry in advance that I
didn't look carefully and didn't brought them before ODI assessment was over. 

I'm going to  separate  them  into  two emails. One with general issue
and one with geodata examples.

General issue  -  Is  ODI  government open data review or any open data
review?  Nowhere  at http://index.okfn.org/methodology/ it is  clearly
states  either.  It seems to mention "government data landscape",  but
 at  the same time "citizen perspective" (meaning any data?).

Suggested answer to this is - consult the FAQ: http://index.okfn.org/faq/

I did and I still don't see it addressed as clear as it could be. Yes, it does mention
that  "in  2013,  the first edition of the Index reviewed the state of
open government  data in 70 countries". But that:
a) does not necessarily imply that it is still the same in 2014.
b) too late in the text
c) preceded  but  the  list  of the datasets, where some of them are
having  "Government"  before  the  data  set name and some don't which
might add to the confusion.

Suggestions:

1.  Add  some clarifications to methodology (this is where some people
tend to look first).

2. Make gov data more explicit right in the beginning sentence. Something
like (my CAPS):  "The  Global  Open  Data  Index  is a project that measures and
benchmarks  the  openness  of GOVERNMENT data around the world, and then presents
this information in a way that is easy to understand and use."

These  suggestion are not just neat-picking, they are
based  on  some  criticism from outside people, they did stumble on
that. Being a reviewer myself, it felt natural to assess government data, but
I'll  show  an  example in the next email, that it seems like at least
few reviewers were confused.

---------
Maxim Dubinin