Innovations for Peace and Development
  • Home
  • About
    • About IPD
    • Meet the team >
      • IPD Leadership
      • Faculty Affiliates
      • IPD Alumni
    • What is geocoding?
    • Partners
    • Annual Reports
  • Research
    • Banking Bad
    • Climate Change and Transparency
    • Data4Development
    • Data4Peace
    • Gender, Ethnicity, and Elections
    • Governance and Corruption
    • Human Vulnerability
    • Political Economy and Sovereignty
    • Reimagining Safety and Security
    • Science Politics
    • Weaponizing Waste
    • Previous Research Areas >
      • Property Rights and Poverty
      • Law4Development
      • Global Indices Project
      • Agricultural Development
      • Training Modules for PAGL
      • Global Health, Nutrition, and Evaluations
      • Civil-Military Relations
      • Chinese Development Finance >
        • The CDF Project
        • CDF News Feed
        • Meet the Team
        • Blog and Digest Archives >
          • CDF Blog
          • CDF Trends Report
          • AIIB Maps
      • Open Aid >
        • Background
        • Publications & Working Papers
      • GIS & Analytics >
        • Background
        • Resources
      • Conflict & Development >
        • Background
        • Publications & Working Papers
      • Climate Change >
        • Background
        • Publications & Working Papers
      • Experiments >
        • Background
        • Publications & Working Papers
        • CPS Transparency Special Issue
      • Food Security >
        • Background
        • Publications & Working Papers
        • Resources
      • Health >
        • Background
        • Publications & Working Papers
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Practicum

Is Open Data Just A Flash in the Pan Movement?

7/13/2013

0 Comments

 
Originally posted on AidData's First Tranche here.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Open data has generated a lot of buzz recently, prompting governments to make increasing amounts of data publicly accessible and catalyzing new partnerships with private sector and civil society actors around the use and reuse of this information. How much of the open data movement is flash versus substance? As an AidData Summer Fellow with the Center of Environmental and Agricultural Policy Research, Extension and Development (CEAPRED) in Nepal, I have witnessed firsthand that ensuring that open aid reporting programs are responsive to the real needs of citizens is key to maximizing their impact. My recent participation in Open Nepal’s Data Literacy Bootcamp underscores this point.

On June 3rd and 4th, I participated in Open Nepal Week’s Data Literacy Bootcamp in Kathmandu, supported by the Open Aid Partnership. A coalition of organizations, including Freedom Forum, Young Innovations, NGO Federation of Nepal, Development Initiatives, and Development Gateway, trained with over 80 Nepali journalists, developers, coders, and civil society representatives to find, extract, and analyze public data. Participants learned how to consolidate data and create visualizations using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platforms and Java applications. A 48-hour competition enabled participants to put their new knowledge to practical use as they conceptualized business plans for digital or web applications leveraging open data. Sponsors Google, the World Bank Institute, and African Media Initiative, envisioned the competition as empowering citizens to utilize open data.

Varsha Upraity, a Research Officer at CEAPRED, proposed an idea for an app that would report on whether the user is meeting their daily nutritional requirements, and make recommendations for local market, clinics, and support groups. Engaging remote and severely disadvantaged communities proved to be an obstacle in planning Varsha’s app, which would be primarily web or SMS-based and thus inaccessible to many high-need areas. Inevitably, some users would be left out. This raised a critical question: how could we prevent this from happening?

Designing a data-driven application responsive to the needs of even the most disadvantaged communities is a challenge that is not unique to Varsha’s experience. Transparent data reporting and visualizations offer a powerful way to inform the public about development progress. Yet, there are broader questions for policy makers and open data advocates regarding how the Open Data movement defines its goals and what success should look like. The answers are critical to informing the degree to which inclusivity and consideration of citizens factor into the creation of new apps.

Experiences such as the Nepal Open Data Literacy Bootcamp remind us that open data and the applications it spawns can help build the capacity of citizens to track and evaluate information on their country’s development. It is equally apparent that merely releasing data or developing new data driven apps does not necessarily address issues of inclusivity, representation and participation across society.  However, these issues remain largely unaddressed in spite of the rapid growth of the Open Data movement. I would submit that, as the Open Data movement evolves in Nepal and elsewhere, these issues should be front and center and inform the design of solutions that leverage both data and human capabilities.


Madeline Clark is an IPD Graduate Research Affiliate and AidData Summer Fellow with the Center of Environmental and Agricultural Policy Research, Extension, and Development (CEAPRED) in Nepal. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Africa
    Aid
    Aiddata
    AIIB
    Asia
    Childhood
    Development
    Education
    Experiments
    Geocoding
    Health
    Malawi
    Maps
    Nepal
    Open Aid
    Open Data
    Peru
    Poverty
    Rcts
    Security
    Student Spotlight
    Ubongo
    Uganda

    Archives

    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    August 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    February 2014
    July 2013

    Authors

    RSS Feed

Copyright 2021- Innovations for Peace and Development
Questions? Email ipdutexas@gmail.com
Innovations for Peace and Development
BEL 2.14, The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX, 78712