Open Data for Development in Latin America and the Caribbean

October 6, 2012

How to Open?

Published by:
Danielle Pereira

Tags:
changeable format, datasets, democratic control, Innovation, Open Data, Open Government Data, public data, public policy, transparency

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In order to be regarded as open, public data must be comprehensive, accessible, primary (no statistical treatment), current, machine readable, non-discriminatory (e.g. not requiring registration), non-proprietary and its licenses must ensure such principles without limiting its freedom of use.

Several publicly available data are not really open. They may have been published in proprietary formats – i.e. not readable by software – and with restrictive licenses; they may be available in HTML tables, plain text files or PDF. Developers must, therefore, translate these data, cross-reference them and publish them according to the rules and principles set forth.

Institutions that wish to open their data must prepare an activities plan. This task includes from determining which data will be published to how it’ll be published and viewed, to strategies to promote the use of such data by communities and activists.

The international movement for government data opening is based on 3 laws proposed by David Eaves:

If data can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist.
If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage.
If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower.

In order words, the first step towards opening data is identifying the information controlled by governments, companies, etc. Then it must be converted into a machine readable format and, finally, made accessible to all.

We have listed a series of documents below which may be used as guidelines by governments, developers and others interested in data opening processes. Check out:

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