Intro to Open data - presentation made as part of Food and Agriculture Organization meeting with Statistician Generals from around Nigeria + other government reps. **References are in the ppt notes

1. Open Data
Toks Fayomi
FAO Open Data Meeting
January 29th, 2015
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike v4.0 License

2. Topics
• Open Data Defined
• Open Data Benefits
• Global and National Case Studies
• Open Data in Agriculture
• Government’s Role

3. Open Data Defined

4. Open Data Defined
• Open Definition
• Open Data Format
Outline

5. Open Data Defined
“Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify,
and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve
provenance and openness”
Open Definition

6. Open Data Defined
“Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and
redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the
requirement to attribute and sharealike.”
Open Data Definition

7. Open Data Defined
• Availability and Access: the data must be available as a
whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction
cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The
data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable
form.
• Re-use and Redistribution: the data must be provided
under terms that permit re-use and re-distribution
including the intermixing with other datasets.
• Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use,
re-use and re-distribute - there should be no
discrimination against fields of endeavor or against
persons or groups.
Open Definition

8. Open Data Defined
• Open format
– Platform independent and machine-readable
– Most common open formats: CSV, ODS, ODT, TXT
• Machine-readable
– Data, both in its format (CSV) and its structure, can be
read by a computer without human aid
– Data is clearly structured in a logical way
• Open license
– grants permission to access, re-use and re-distribute a
work with few or no restrictions
Open Data

9. Open Format
Open Data Defined

10. Machine-Readable
Open Data Defined

11. Open License
Open Data Defined

12. Open License
Open Data Defined
Open licenses enable creators to allow more freedom in what others can
do with their works. Benefits of this freedom include:
• allowing others to circulate the work freely - potentially giving it a
greater circulation than if a single group or individual retained an
exclusive right to distribute;
• not forcing users to apply for permission every time they wish to
circulate a copy of the work in question - which can be a time
consuming affair, especially if the work has many authors;
• encouraging others to continuously improve and add value to a work;
• encouraging others to create new works based on or derived from the
original work - e.g. translations, adaptations, or works with a different
scope or focus.

13. NOT OPEN DATA
Open Data Defined

14. NOT OPEN DATA
Open Data Defined

15. NOT OPEN DATA
Open Data Defined

16. Benefits of Open Data

17. Benefits of Open Data
• Promotes better Governance
• Supports Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Outline

18. Benefits of Open Data
Better Governance, Better Citizens
• Transparency and democratic control
• Participation/Engagement
• Sense of responsibility
• Self-empowerment
• Collaboration

19. Benefits of Open Data
Better Governance, Better Citizens (2)
• Improved efficiency of government services
• Improves efficiencies in sharing data across government
and with public
• Proactive automated publishing rather than manual
retrospective approach
• Improves data quality through enabling verifiable public
contributions

20. Benefits of Open Data
Innovative Companies,
Empowered Customers
• Supports decision making
• Spurs innovative business models, products, and
services
• Improves on products and services
• Customers are informed – price/product
transparency

21. Global Case Studies

22. Outline
• Findmyschool.co.ke
• Climate.com
• Ordanancesurvey.co.uk
• Canada’s Agriculture Data Portal
Global Case Studies

23. Findmyschool.co.ke
Global Case Studies

24. Global Case Studies
Findmyschool.co.ke

25. Climate.com
Global Case Studies
• 60 years of detailed crop yield data
• Weather observations from one million locations in the
United States
• 14 terabytes of soil quality data - all free from the US
Government
• Provide applications that help farmers improve their profits
by making better informed operating and financing
decisions
• Key product is “Total Weather Insurance”, an insurance
offering that pays farmers automatically and without proof
of loss for bad weather that may impact their profits.

26. Climate.com
Global Case Studies

27. Climate.com
Global Case Studies

28. Ordanancesurvey.co.uk
Global Case Studies

29. Ordanancesurvey.co.uk
Global Case Studies
“The data from the Ordnance Survey,
the UK’s National Mapping Agency,
underpins around £100 billion a year
of economic activity for a production
cost of around £100 million a year”

30. Canada’s Agriculture Data Portal
Global Case Studies

31. Nigerian Case Studies

32. Outline
• Open Data in Nigeria
• BudgIT
• Edo State Open Data Portal
• Nigeria’s MDG Information System
• National Bureau of Statistics
• AMIS
Nigerian Case Studies

33. Open Data in Nigeria
• Launch of the Open Data Initiative, January 2014
• Goals of the Open Data Initiative are :
– to increase cooperation between Ministries,
Departments, and Agencies and improve citizen
engagement,
– strengthen the Nigerian innovation ecosystem to create
jobs and attract foreign investment
• Specific activities of the Open Data Initiative are:
– to create a government-provided open data portal
– to release an Open Data Action plan
Nigerian Case Studies

34. Open Data in Nigeria
• An Open Government readiness assessment and action
plan, including a vision statement, country commitments and
key recommendations;
• A roadmap for creation of innovation ecosystem by
leveraging open data;
• A technology roadmap, which includes recommendations
for establishing cloud-based government infrastructure,
mobile service delivery platform, a proposed list of initial
pilot services, a scale-up implementation plan and changes to
the existing regulatory environment; and
• Investment cost estimates for technology, capacity building
and change management activities.
Nigerian Case Studies

35. BudgIT
Nigerian Case Studies

36. BudgIT
Nigerian Case Studies

37. BudgIT
Nigerian Case Studies

38. Edo State Open Data Portal
Nigerian Case Studies

39. Edo State Open Data Portal
Nigerian Case Studies

40. Edo State Open Data Portal
• Critical success factors:
– Identify and engage stakeholders, determine readiness and
what data should be released.
– Establish Open Data Team: start with a digitization team that
works with MDAs to capture analog data and digitize them
into machine readable formats
– Create new positions: institutionalized with the appointment
of Open Data Managers (administrative and technical)
through a competitive process
– Focal Persons for MDAs: This established continual
communication process between the Open Data Team and
MDAs
– Portal Design and Development: Partnered with the OKF
Nigerian Case Studies

41. MDG Information System
Local Case Studies
• Using data to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals
• Data points, marked on a map of the country,
provide information from the number of full
time teachers in a school to whether a water
point is working to whether a health center
provides family planning services.

42. MDG Information System
Local Case Studies

43. MDG Information System
Local Case Studies

44. MDG Information System
Nigerian Case Studies

45. National Bureau of Statistics
Nigerian Case Studies

46. National Bureau of Statistics
Nigerian Case Studies

47. National Bureau of Statistics
Nigerian Case Studies

48. Agricultural Market Info. Systems
Nigerian Case Studies

49. Agricultural Market Info. Systems
Nigerian Case Studies

50. Open Data in Agriculture

51. Use of OD in Agriculture
• Supports decision making in agricultural domain
• Increases productivity
• Reduces risks
• Improve nutrition and food security
Open Data in Agriculture

52. Types of Data
• Maps with irrigation info
• Maps with land use
• World statistics about the prices
• Data about the availability of agricultural
equipment
• Info about imports
Open Data in Agriculture

53. Use of OD in Agriculture
The use and wide dissemination of these data
sets is strongly advocated by a number of global
and national policy makers such as:
– Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN
– The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition
G-8 initiative
– DEFRA & DFID in UK
– USDA & USAID in the US
Open Data in Agriculture

54. Open Data in Agriculture

55. Open Data in Agriculture

56. OD in Agriculture
Open Data in Agriculture
How Open Data can
be harnessed to help
meet the challenge of
sustainably feeding
nine billion people by
2050

57. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
– Supports Capacity Development pillar of AMIS
aims to increase the availability and quality of the market
information produced and used by AMIS countries, with a
particular focus on statistical national capacities.
Open Data in Agriculture

58. Government’s Role in Open Data

59. Government
Government’s Role
• Support the whole value chain of the use of
data through four distinct though interlinked
roles:
Supplier - Leader - Catalyst - User

60. Government
Government’s Role
• Supplier
Governments need to release the data they hold which is
needed for economic growth and business innovation, to
do so publicly and regularly, and to steadily improve quality
and access.
• Leader
Need to provide both policies and active leadership and
encouragement to other institutions to release data
important to economic growth and business innovation.
This includes public institutions at regional and city level,
state owned enterprises, and private sector companies
providing important public services.

61. Government
Government’s Role
• Catalyst
Government should serve as catalysts for the use of open data by
nurturing a thriving ecosystem of data users, coders, and application
developers and incubating new, data-driven businesses.
• User
Promote the use of public data within public institutions at national,
regional and city level. This will also mean investment in skills and
tools.
Governments should be leading, and proactive customers for
innovative private sector products and services using open data,
including advanced analytic services to improve internal decision
making and to help create new services. In addition, using one’s own
data can give greater understanding of how the data could be made
more usable and useful.

62. Government as a Supplier
Government’s Role
• Release data which businesses and others request and need
Government’s future programs of data release need to be driven not
only by the knowledge of the officials of different ministries on what
could be released but also by a public system by which businesses
(and others) can request, discuss and prioritize the data that they
want. Making this work effectively requires three supporting steps.
1. Government institutions need to make details of their overall
data holdings publicly visible.
2. When data is requested, businesses must get a quick answer.
3. Because of the importance to the wider economy, individual
ministries should not be permitted to refuse data without a wider
and fast review by the government as a whole of the overall
arguments for and against data release.

63. Government as a Supplier
Government’s Role
• Prioritize the release of “core reference data”
Examples: maps, address databases, demographic data
from the Census, data about roads and other transport
links, official data about registered companies and
other businesses and data about public procurement.

64. Government as a Supplier
Government’s Role
• Ensure that data can be found
A challenge for potential users to find the data that
they need within the structures of government. In
addition to division into separate ministries at national
level, data also resides at regional and municipal levels.
A national Open Data portal can help address this
issue if it has a collection of the richer metadata on
each dataset needed to assist locatability.

65. Government as a Supplier
Government’s Role
• Ensure continuity of supply of data
It will also be important to ensure that ministries do
not unilaterally withdraw data which has previously
been published without adequate consultation and
notice.

66. Government as a Supplier
Government’s Role
• Release fine-grained and disaggregated data
because it can be used in the context of individual
business transactions or it can be analyzed in different,
innovative, ways using big data analytics and other
techniques. So it is important to ensure that the right
level of detailed data is released. Each public
institution should have a concrete plan for releasing
specific datasets in a more disaggregated form.

67. Government as a Leader
Government’s Role
• Actively participate and promote the use of
open data
Individual ministries should not only give leadership to
other data suppliers in their sector; they should also be
seen to give leadership to the uses of data in their
sector too. Individual ministries should be given a
target to promote the use of Open Data both from
the ministry itself and from other data suppliers within
the Sector.

68. Government as a Leader
Government’s Role
• Extend the release of data beyond government
ministries
Some of the most valuable and sought-after data may
not be owned by a government’s ministries themselves,
but by state owned enterprises, private operators of
public services, academic institutions or by publicly-
funded researchers.

69. Government as a Catalyst
Government’s Role
• Ensure that Open Data portals are more
collaborative and demand driven
Leading governments in Open Data are not only
focused on sustaining a supply of high-value data.
They are actively encouraging and enabling businesses
and citizens to help lead the evolution of their Open
Data portal(s)

70. Government as a Catalyst
Government’s Role
• Ensure that government data is properly
explained, and that issues can be raised with the
relevant expert officials
Even with good metadata a government dataset can be
hard to understand and to use. Developer-activists may
be prepared to gain understanding by trial and error
over a period of time out of personal interest, but
potential business users may be more easily
discouraged.

71. Government as a Catalyst
Government’s Role
• Reach out not just to developers but to
innovators and entrepreneurs in specific sectors
It is important for governments to see the use of
Open Data as an issue of business innovation of all
types, and not solely or primarily an issue for the ICT
sector. Software developers or ICT service companies
are not the sole - or even necessarily the best - source
of ideas. The most successful drivers will come from a
business problem which the innovator seeks to
address.

72. Government as a Catalyst
Government’s Role
• Actively support and incubate innovation using Open
Data and create institutional structures to do that on a
sustainable basis
For instance the UK have created an Open Data Institute to
“convene world-class experts to collaborate, incubate, nurture
and mentor new ideas, and promote innovation.” Governments
should therefore consider how they could establish similar
“centres of excellence” for Open Data to engage and bring
together both the data suppliers from within public institutions
and the data users in the private sector. Such a centre could
specifically provide incubation facilities for startup businesses in
Open Data and have a role to promote national expertise and
capability in Open Data and to assist local businesses in
competing globally in the supply of data-rich services.

73. Government as a User
Government’s Role
• Develop Open Data skills within the government
institutions, regions and municipalities
The re-use of Open Data has opportunities for the
efficient and collaborative operations of government itself.
Other jurisdictions have found that once data is freely
available as Open Data there is a surprising and
serendipitous reuse of data within government itself.
However, fully exploiting this potential requires the
development of “Open Data skills” among the relevant
officials.

74. Government as a User
Government’s Role
• Ensure that the Government is using data
services and products from the private sector
Governments should be leading, and proactive,
customers for innovative private sector products and
services using open data, including advanced analytic
services to improve internal decision making and to
help create new services. This public procurement
demand will help stimulate early investment.

75. Government’s role summarized
• Make existing data available to public
• Release data that businesses see value in
leveraging
• Document data – review data standards,
technologies and best practice for data sharing
and documentation (includes metadata)
• Data maintenance - consistently collect, update
and report data under the same format
• Iterate and Improve - engage with end users
Government’s Role

76. In summary…
• Open Data: free to use, re-use, and re-distribute
• Open Data Benefits: promotes better governance and
spurs innovation
• Global and National Case Studies: many cases that can
we can learn from and possibly replicate
• Open Data in Agriculture: better decision making,
better and more sustainable food production
• Government’s Role: Provide data, develop and
implement policies, encourage innovation

78. Q&A/Discussion

79. Thank you
Toks Fayomi
tfayomi@sloan.mit.edu
FAO Open Data Meeting
January 29th, 2015