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

Mon Jul 4 14:20:59 UTC 2011

Hello to all,

My name is Lucas Mation, I am an economist working at the Institute of
Applyed Economic Research (IPEA <http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/>). I joined
the group last week, during the OKC in Berlin. It was a great conference and
I come back to Brasil full of ideas, contacts and inspiration.

Regardins Guo´s idea (which I very much like) :
1) I think that constructing an index (a statistic, something that agregates
information) is a second step. The first step would be to collect the data,
i.e. quantify OGD initiatives in different places. What we really need is a
standard (although flexible) questionare that we can use to investigate
diferent areas of a specific government level.
2) I spoke about a similar idea with  Frabizio Scrollini Mendez (copied,
uruguaian PHD Student in Government Studies at LSE) during the OKC. What we
were talking is having a standard questionaire (link in 1) that could be
applyed to map what areas of the gvt. are what areas aren´t providing OGD
and with which quality. The idea was to apply this in different countries in
Latin America. Frabizio, if you are interested please join this list:
open-economics at lists.okfn.org
3) Creating a cross country index is just one of the ways to agregate that
information. But we can have less agregated ways if displaying it also.
4) I can´t help much with creating the questionaire. But once that exists I
can find a way to implement it in the Federal Government in Brasil. It will
be interesting to compare different areas, etc.

abraço
Lucas

 Eu sugeri um estudo classificando as várias bases de dados.
f.a.scrolini at lse.ac.uk

9) Frabizio Scrollini Mendez, uruguaio, PHD Student in Government Studies,
LSE. Eu sugeri um estudo classificando as várias bases de dados.
f.a.scrolini at lse.ac.uk

Dear Guo,

That is a cool idea.

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 8:56 AM, Guo Xu <digitalepourpre at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/scorecardand 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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> okfn-discuss mailing list
> >> okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> >> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
> >
> >
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> >
>
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