[open-development] Kenya Open Data Portal (>Reflections on national portals and non-national data)

Fri Jul 8 10:41:55 UTC 2011

Hello Mark, Jonathan,

The license appears to be as Mark suggests.

The wealth of spending data on the new site certainly looks interesting: are
you going to look at how this could provide some new opportunities for
matching spending and aid funding?

It also raises an interesting question I think about the design of national
government data portals (brought to mind for me because I'm looking at aid
data a lot at the moment for http://aidinfolabs.org, but very applicable to
all governments, particularly for .e.g in Europe).

The question is: how far should 'national data portals' be defined by 'data
produced by the government', or by 'data of relevance to the citizens'
regardless of it's origins.

For example, in IATI feeds we have details of over 260 aid / world bank
projects in Kenya (see them on the IATI Explorer here: http://bit.ly/naI9wu),
totalling by my rough calculations £975,981,840* of commitments. This data
comes from other governments and agencies, but could be of great use to
citizens. Should this data be listed in the national government data portal?
Or is it up to civil society to create a separate portal onto this relevant
data that comes neither from the national government nor domestic civil
society? Or do we expect users to be aware of the other possible places (
data.worldbank.org etc.) where they should look to find data?

With a lot of focus on portals right now, could it be interesting to think
about some principles (not just for developers; build around citizens rather
than governments?) that could guide inclusive development of them?

All the best

Tim

*Calculated by going to http://tools.aidinfolabs.org/query/, fetching
'Activities CSV' for a query on Keyna related projects. Adding the totals of
USD and GBP commitments separately, and converting USD to GBP at today's
exchange rate.

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Mark Brough <
mark.brough at publishwhatyoufund.org> wrote:

> This looks really cool!
>
> http://opendata.go.ke/browse?q=expenditure&sortBy=most_accessed&sortPeriod
> =week
>
> Some information here:
> http://opendata.go.ke/page/about
> ("In short, anybody is free to use this data for commercial or
> non-commercial purposes. See the terms and conditions for a more detailed
> explanation.")
>
> License seems to be here:
> http://opendata.go.ke/page/terms-of-service
>
> In short:
> * Non-commercial (c.f. above...)
> * Attribution
> * Represent accurately
>
> "the Kenya ICT Board and the government agencies whose information is
> provided on this website impose no restrictions to the non-commercial
> reproduction, re-publication and re-distribution of any information
> published on its website"
>
> Looks like an exception to this is where data is provided by third parties
> and their copyright is "expressly reserved"
>
> "Where any information is presented in a structure and format that is
> copyrighted by a third party providing a service to the Kenya ICT Board,
> users are to respect the intellectual property rights of any third party
> who expressly reserves its copyright in any information, data element,
> data structure, software program or other property."
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-development-bounces at lists.okfn.org
> [mailto:open-development-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan
> Gray
> Sent: 08 July 2011 11:15
> To: Tim Davies
> Cc: LinkInfo4Dev; ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net;
> open-development at lists.okfn.org
> Subject: Re: [open-development] Kenya Open Data Portal
>
> Tim: did you manage to find a license anywhere on how people can use the
> data?
>
> J.
>
> 2011/7/8 Tim Davies <tim at practicalparticipation.co.uk>:
> > Hello all,
> > I suspect many of you may have already seen this, but Keyna today
> launched
> > it's own Open Data Portal at http://opendata.go.ke/ joining countries
> like
> > UK and US, and institutions like the World Bank in running an open data
> > programme.
> > The site is running the US-based commercial 'Socrata.com' platform and
> has
> > some interesting visualisations and mapping set-up by default.
> Personally
> > I'm frustrated to see the 'data is for developers' framing all over it -
> > with big '+Developers click here' buttons, and nothing inviting or
> > encouraging other forms of use of data, but if a wider eco-system of
> data
> > use can develop, aware that using data requires not just the data, but
> > capacity building too - then this could be a really interesting and
> positive
> > development.
> > Lots of discussion and other analysis on twitter #opendatake and the
> > blogosphere.
> > Tim
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > http://www.timdavies.org.uk
> > 07834 856 303.
> > @timdavies
> >
> > Co-director of Practical Participation:
> > http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk
> > --------------------------
> > Practical Participation Ltd is a registered company in England and Wales
> -
> > #5381958.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-development mailing list
> > open-development at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-development
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>
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-- 

http://www.timdavies.org.uk
07834 856 303.
@timdavies

Co-director of Practical Participation:
http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk
--------------------------
Practical Participation Ltd is a registered company in England and Wales -
#5381958.
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