[open-government] [open-economics] [okfn-discuss] Anyone interested? Creating an "Open Knowledge Index"

[Guo Xu]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for pointing out to the link. We haven't thought through the
entire process, but the epsiplatform scorecard is a useful departing
point - I thought of at least including the legal framework in one of
the subindices.

Once we have defined all the categories (I will write up a proposal
and put this out for circulation and discussion) we can essentially
crowd-source this, maybe first for the European countries. If we get
good feedback, we can apply for funding to carry this out for the
remaining 150+ countries, as well as extending the dataset back in
time so we can look at the development over time.

I believe crowd-sourcing would be useful. We could for example put out
a Google Doc Spreadsheet where we ask people to fill in values (along
the source) etc.

Thanks again for feedback, glad to see that there is a lot of feedback
on this idea :)

Guo

On 4 July 2011 13:21, Daniel Dietrich <daniel.dietrich at okfn.org> wrote:
> Dear Guo
>
> This is an interesting proposal. epsiplatform has done something similar for EU countries in 2009: http://www.epsiplatform.eu/examples/scorecard and is about to carry the research out again soon.
>
> So apart from defining the criteria for the index the real challenge would be to carry it out in as many countries as possible. Any idesas on this?
>
>
> Daniel
>
>
>
> On 03.07.2011, at 03:21, Guo Xu wrote:
>
>> Dear list(s),
>>
>> The OKCon has passed and generated many ideas for exciting future projects.
>>
>> One of the promising ideas I discussed with several participants was
>> to compile an index to track progress in opening data - both over time
>> and across countries. This would serve several purposes:
>>
>> 1) Enable the public to make cross-country comparisons (i.e. which
>> country performs well?) and track longitudinal developments (i.e.
>> which country has improved on opening data?)
>> 2) Serve as a useful tool for conducting open knowledge research (e.g.
>> correlating the index with socio-economic variables - does open
>> knowledge really foster innovation and growth?)
>> 3) Ideally, increase impact of OKF in public - making the "Open
>> Knowledge Index" a citable measure of open government
>>
>> There are many indices out there - for tracking democracy, corruption,
>> innovation and human development - so why not a measure to track
>> progress in opening government? Such an index (leaving aside
>> methodological problems for now) could greatly increase visibility of
>> OKF's work: A success case here is Transparency International - before
>> Ti published its corruption index, journalists had a hard time reading
>> and understanding all the reports - with the creation of the
>> Corruption Perception Index, Ti has become one of the most known NGOs
>> in fighting corruption.
>>
>> So why not have an Open Knowledge Index, released annually in a report
>> and during the OKCon? This would greatly increase media attention!
>>
>> I have some professional experience in creating indices (my research
>> institute has been compiling the German innovation index for a while
>> and we are currently drafting the funding proposal for an index of IT
>> infrastructure resilience). The Open Economics WG itself has developed
>> some experience with creating composite indices with the Yourtopia app
>> we submitted previously at the Apps4Development competition. I would
>> therefore volunteer to coordinate such an index within the Open
>> Economics group, mainly as an open academic project. The first step
>> would be to construct a prototype; in the longer run, we might also
>> consider applying for research grants in order to create the index
>> annually.
>>
>> Just wanted to start a discussion and see who would be interested - we
>> are planning to discuss this in greater detail during our regular
>> Skype meetups.
>>
>> Guo
>>
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>
>
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