Amon Sa­ba Saakana

Trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are pow­er­ful ideals. Gov­ern­ments pro­fess it and cit­i­zens de­mand it as an in­di­ca­tor of true de­vel­op­ment in any so­ci­ety. Af­ter all, gov­ern­ments hold a sub­stan­tial body of in­for­ma­tion in pub­lic trust. From cen­sus da­ta and land al­lo­ca­tions to traf­fic pat­terns and crime sta­tis­tics, gov­ern­ment's in­for­ma­tion repos­i­to­ries are filled with valu­able da­ta that ought to be ac­ces­si­ble to all. Far too of­ten, how­ev­er, it is not.The ma­jor­i­ty of gov­ern­ment-man­aged da­ta-da­ta that the pub­lic has right of ac­cess to-is locked away in sys­tems and for­mats and be­hind men­tal­i­ties that de­ny in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lever­age it for so­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit. Put an­oth­er way, not hav­ing a clear, for­mal pol­i­cy for mak­ing pub­lic-da­ta ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic is op­po­si­tion­al to the de­vel­op­ment of a tru­ly knowl­edge-based so­ci­ety.

Re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ments across the world are recog­nis­ing the need to go be­yond just a pledge of trans­paren­cy and open­ness. Tan­gi­ble steps are be­ing tak­en to demon­strate com­mit­ment to mak­ing gov­ern­ment more ac­ces­si­ble, ac­count­able, ef­fi­cient, and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry. These steps in­volve strate­gic use of tech­nol­o­gy re­sources to cre­ate new av­enues for col­lab­o­ra­tion and shar­ing. The same must ap­ply at home.Un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, the pub­lic has to ex­plic­it­ly re­quest ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion from the Gov­ern­ment. Now, with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of In­ter­net ac­cess and In­ter­net-en­abled tools, the Gov­ern­ment can demon­strate lead­er­ship by vol­un­tar­i­ly putting pub­lic da­ta in the pub­lic do­main, mak­ing it freely avail­able for use and re­pur­pose. This is com­mon­ly re­ferred to as open gov­ern­ment.

Open gov­ern­ment is part of a glob­al open da­ta ini­tia­tive. It is a move­ment to make non-per­son­al da­ta eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble so that it can be used to cre­ate new ap­pli­ca­tions; sup­port more in­formed de­ci­sion-mak­ing; make shar­ing da­ta with­in the pub­lic sec­tor and with pub­lic stake­hold­ers more ef­fi­cient; and sup­port trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in gov­er­nance.The Gov­ern­ment makes cer­tain types of da­ta or da­ta sets such as such as de­mo­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion, ge­o­graph­i­cal maps and sur­veys, crime sta­tis­tics, con­sump­tion records and eco­nom­ic sta­tis­tics avail­able to the pub­lic at large, typ­i­cal­ly via the In­ter­net in an open for­mat spread­sheet or data­base

In the abun­dance of wa­ter, the fool is thirsty

As the na­tion's largest em­ploy­er, ma­jor re­al es­tate own­er and con­troller of many of the key ser­vices, util­i­ties and nat­ur­al re­sources, the sheer vol­ume of in­for­ma­tion and da­ta gen­er­at­ed in the day-to-day life of most gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments is be­yond the abil­i­ty of pub­lic sec­tor re­sources to ad­e­quate­ly analyse in­ter­nal­ly, let alone utilise op­ti­mal­ly.Giv­en the eco­nom­ic, so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges at a na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­el, a move­ment to open gov­ern­ment pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ty to ini­ti­ate a new con­ver­sa­tion on na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. It helps to re­bal­ance the re­la­tion­ship be­tween gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor as part­ners in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

In the abun­dance in­for­ma­tion, the abil­i­ty to cre­ate so­cial­ly and com­mer­cial­ly use­ful ap­pli­ca­tions, prod­ucts and ser­vices de­pends not just on gov­ern­ment's will­ing­ness to re­lease da­ta but on the ca­pac­i­ty of busi­ness­es, stu­dents, schools, civ­il so­ci­ety and in­di­vid­u­als to ef­fec­tive­ly use it.

Col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

Open gov­ern­ment, there­fore, re­quires that key pub­lic sec­tor and pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing the me­dia, "cham­pi­on" the open da­ta cause. Ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing and pub­lic aware­ness are vi­tal to shift­ing mind­sets and long-held views about in­for­ma­tion own­er­ship and con­trol.A frame­work must be de­vel­oped that de­fines a con­sis­tent ap­proach to da­ta, li­cens­ing and for­mats across pub­lic sec­tor bound­aries. This is nec­es­sary to stim­u­late de­vel­op­ment of con­tent, prod­ucts and ser­vices, which in turn, can lead to greater trans­paren­cy, civ­il so­ci­ety en­gage­ment and good gov­er­nance.

There are many use­ful in­ter­na­tion­al mod­els that can be ref­er­enced. How­ev­er, it is im­per­a­tive that we de­fine a mod­el that first­ly con­sid­ers lo­cal needs and strate­gic goals.Ul­ti­mate­ly, open gov­ern­ment is about mak­ing the bold philo­soph­i­cal state­ment of our se­ri­ous com­mit­ment to true trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. It is about tak­ing the eth­i­cal stance to­geth­er with the nec­es­sary steps to demon­strate to our­selves and the world that we can trans­late word in­to man­i­fest ac­tion.

Ben­e­fits of open gov­ern­ment

Open gov­ern­ment pro­vides sev­er­al im­por­tant ben­e­fits to so­ci­ety and rep­re­sents a tan­gi­ble demon­stra­tion of the pow­er and util­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy-based de­vel­op­ment.

Trans­paren­cy

It aids trans­paren­cy, not just in terms of what the raw da­ta re­veals, but in how the raw da­ta is in­ter­pret­ed in the con­text of oth­er sets of in­for­ma­tion.Know­ing that the pop­u­la­tion of one area is in­creas­ing, for ex­am­ple, makes da­ta show­ing the num­ber and lo­ca­tion of roads, schools, po­lice sta­tions and su­per­mar­kets, more rel­e­vant. It al­lows the pub­lic to see where there is grow­ing need for pub­lic ser­vices and makes the gov­ern­ment more ac­count­able for its in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment strat­e­gy.

So­cio-eco­nom­ic val­ue

It can re­lease so­cial and com­mer­cial val­ue bound up in the da­ta. Maps and oth­er ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion utilised by plan­ning and in­fra­struc­ture de­part­ments al­so have a va­ri­ety of oth­er so­cial and com­mer­cial us­es from iden­ti­fy­ing ac­ci­dent hotspots to cre­at­ing tourist maps.In­no­va­tors and en­tre­pre­neurs can lever­age the da­ta to cre­ate new ap­pli­ca­tions and ser­vices. In New Zealand, the pub­lic re­lease of spa­tial da­ta was es­ti­mat­ed to have added some US$1.2 bil­lion in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty re­lat­ed ben­e­fits.

This was equiv­a­lent to slight­ly more than 0.6 per cent of their gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP). By open­ing up da­ta at rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal costs to the pub­lic purse, gov­ern­ments can boost the in­no­va­tion quo­tient of so­ci­ety.

New so­cial part­ner­ship

Crit­i­cal­ly for the Caribbean, it rewrites the part­ner­ship be­tween gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il in­sti­tu­tions in so­ci­ety. Such a part­ner­ship af­fords busi­ness­es greater op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op rel­e­vant in­dige­nous prod­ucts and ser­vices. At the same time, it pro­vides gov­ern­ment with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove ser­vices to cit­i­zens with­out ad­di­tion­al bur­den to the pub­lic debt. Open gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­tates a more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and an In­ter­net strate­gist with US-re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House.

He is al­so the founder of­Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ing Caribbean-fo­cused dig­i­tal con­tent, apps and train­ing pro­grammes.Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing

Face­book:face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing