[Open-data-census] open-data-census Digest, Vol 18, Issue 3

Mon Nov 3 14:04:18 UTC 2014

Thanks Graeme,

I think that Simon was referring to the transnational level criteria for
government spending data.

@Christian, @Mor would be good to clarify chained / dependent questions. It
is true there is no proper guideline on that.

All the best
Pierre

On Mon Nov 03 2014 at 2:20:18 PM Graeme Jones <jonesiom at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Pierre
>
> 2/ and 4/  I had a specific email exchange with Christian / Mor to clarify
> chained or independent (independent) to ensure consistency ;O)
>
> 3b/  I think experienced people in the #opendata community typically side
> with the lowest common denominator, you are benchmarking to improve so
> hopefully not already perfect or nothing left to do!
>
> 3b/  similarly the issue is often willing volunteers and/or unpaid hours.
> I might have been able to persuade someone else to independently
> contribute/review Isle of Man submissions but difficult to justify
> unquantified unpaid hours to do the same for other jurisdictions -- last
> time I did submissions for about 16 countries and this time I allocated any
> spare unpaid hours to briefly review Jersey (ran out of time on Guernsey)
> but added some data on other jurisdictions such as UAE, US Virgin Islands,
> etc.
>
> people that know what/how to look are thin on the ground in big countries
> never mind little countries, hence the importance of mentors office hours
> initiatives etc
>
> 3b/  the push towards a localised UK OGL and financereports.gov.im were
> large steps in an offshore country and required *lots* of unpaid hours on
> lobbying, slidedecks, favours such as indirect legal opinion from HM
> Attorney General, frontline staff training on data cleansing, etc.
> sorry, perhaps I have missed something, but the financereports.gov.im
> microsite shows govt spending in a timescale at least as good as most of
> the best countries and better than most other countries and under a
> localised UK OGL -- the OGL in conjunction with independent criteria is
> largely why the Isle of Man is higher in the charts
>
> in fact the end result of a ranking last year was the Isle of Man
> Government requested membership of the Open Government Partnership, surely
> exactly what anyone in the open government movement should aspire to
> achieve?
>
> also scheduled discussions already include a shift to real time reporting
> of the national accounts with data visualisation as a
> minister/voter/taxpayer frontend
>
> Best regards,
> Graeme Jones
>
> On 3 November 2014 12:00, <open-data-census-request at lists.okfn.org> wrote:
>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 11:20:20 +0000
>> From: Pierre Chrzanowski <pierre.chrzanowski at gmail.com>
>> To: open-data-census <open-data-census at lists.okfn.org>
>> Cc: "okfn-fr-members at lists.okfn.org" <okfn-fr-members at lists.okfn.org>,
>>         "Simon Chignard - data.gouv.fr" <simon at data.gouv.fr>
>> Subject: [Open-data-census] Serious inconsistencies in the application
>>         of      the methodology
>>
>> Hi list, I am forwarding a message from Simon Chignard who is concerned
>> about the lack of quality and consistency in the current submissions.
>>
>> I think his feedbacks should be carefully taken into account for the
>> reviewing process.
>>
>> Best
>> Pierre
>>
>> Ps : text below is a Google translate from email wrote in French to okf
>> france members list
>>
>> ---
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I spotted this weekend which seems to me to be serious inconsistencies in
>> the application of the methodology of the Open Data Index since 2014. I
>> alert you that the question of the reliability of the tool.
>>
>> 1 / An example: the assessment of open Zipcodes / Postcodes.
>>
>> Consider the postal code file for Spain, Sweden, Canada and France.
>>
>> In these four countries, the situation is the same: a more or less public
>> operator (Correos, Postnummer, Canada Post and La Poste) sells, on demand,
>> the postal code file.
>>
>> Yet, these are the scores on the same file:
>>
>> Zipcode / Canada: 55%
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/ca/postcodes
>>
>> Zipcode / Spain: 45%
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/es/postcodes
>>
>> Zipcode / France: 10%
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/fr/postcodes
>>
>> Zipcode / Sweden: 55%
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/se/postcodes
>>
>>
>> 2 / What is at issue
>>
>> The question posed here is that of chaining or independence criteria.
>>
>> In France we (collectively) have considered that the criteria chained.
>> This
>> means that if the data is not available then we put red all other
>> criteria.
>> However, in all other countries I could see they took each criterion
>> separately. They consider that given legally sold and closed may still be
>> available online, be current, be downloaded in bulk, etc ...
>>
>> I took the example of Zipcodes but there is the same problem for other
>> evaluations, for example here:
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/si/companies
>>
>> 3 / An assessment that differs between countries
>>
>> When we look in detail on the evaluation, we also see that the application
>> of the criteria is more or less strict.
>>
>> An example: Zipcode / Slovania: 55%
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/si/postcodes - the commentary states:
>> Data is available from Post of Slovenia, purpose is hidden in HTML format,
>> not available in bulk and Additional skills are needed to extract it.
>> Geodetska uprava (Slovenian equivalent of UK Ordnance Survey) resells bulk
>> data with GIS Additional information.
>>
>> Just scrap the data then it deserves a score of 55%?
>>
>> One for the road: Finland / Spending: 90%
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/fi/spending - Certain assets data are
>> available on Finnish data portal Avoindata.fi. More information from Netra
>> Will Be ouvert in the future.
>>
>> There was clearly a problem for the application of the methodology
>> described, for evaluating a current and non-availability "in the future."
>>
>> 3 / A reviewer who is also the editor for a country
>>
>> I looked in detail ratings for the Isle of Man, who gets such good scores
>> for Government Spending file (100%).
>> That evaluation and comment:
>> http://global.census.okfn.org/entry/im/spending
>>
>>
>> The proposed link is this one: http://financereports.gov.im - it in no
>> way
>> corresponds to the criteria of the methodology.
>>
>> The problem seems even more serious for this country - and unlike the
>> response Mor was Peter - it is one and the same person who proposed the
>> evaluation and validated once.
>>
>> 4 / Why is that a problem?
>>
>> It was therefore clearly major inconsistencies in how to apply the
>> criteria
>> for each country. But if the goal is to produce a ranking of countries -
>> not to assess individually), it is a problem. And even a serious problem
>> to
>> the extent that 10 places to play close to 10%!
>>
>> The only solution, to me it seems, is that the OKF can ensure that the
>> assessment is consistent for all countries .. if it is the credibility of
>> the ranking is questioned.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>> PS: also the issue had already been raised in 2012 for the classification
>> of W3C
>> https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/euopendata/2013-February/001153.html
>> - so I do not feel that the only problem is discovered now.
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