Open Data: The new raw material of the 21st century

Code for Pakistan recently published Pakistan’s first Open Data Playbook. In this blog post, we also lay out the importance of open data and how to implement and benefit from it.

Data is being used to make informed decisions and is revolutionizing governance across the globe. At the same time access to data remains a challenge for organizations, entrepreneurs, and citizens who can use this data to develop applications and services that can benefit the public as well as the government.

Governmental entities are one of the sources producing voluminous data. These data assets have been locked away in siloed systems, in less-than-ideal formats, and there is little knowledge of how to share this data within the departments or with other individuals and/or organizations. However, government data is only part of the picture. Data will deliver the greatest impact if it can be linked and compared to data held by a range of different private and public sector organizations.

Information is the oil of 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine ~ Peter Sondergaard

Proactive release of data, also known as open data that is free to access and free to use, can provide radical solutions to long-standing problems around the world. Making data open and accessible to the public enables the government to tap into the knowledge and expertise that exists far beyond its walls. The benefits are endless.

Governments are realizing the importance of open data leading to better citizen engagement, increased transparency around government operations, and better decision-making. The European Union Open Data Portal, the British government’s efforts under the banner of Opening up Government, and the Global Open Data Index are three examples of initiatives that bring together and make available large amounts of data about industry, health, education, and employment, among other fields.

Whether you are a public servant or not, it’s clearly more important than ever to understand the importance of open data and how to implement and benefit from it. At the same time, understanding the complex topics can be challenging for the uninitiated. This is particularly so for people from countries where there may not be a strong history of transparency and access to data. That’s why Code for Pakistan has published Pakistan’s first open data playbook which explores the background of open data, its importance, provides concrete information on how to produce open data, and provides an outline on how open data creates value and can have a positive impact in many different areas.

This playbook targets a broad audience including those who have never heard of open data before and those who consider themselves seasoned ‘data professionals’. Civil servants, activists, journalists, researchers, politicians, and those who have never heard of an API can all make use of the playbook. It covers the whole journey from how to get started with open data, to how to tell the community about the work that you have done. It also covers how raw data can be processed, how it can be converted into a dataset, how to choose and apply an open license, how to publish a dataset and how to make it discoverable for the public.

We want this playbook to be the primary source of knowledge for the new generation of open data innovators and a blueprint for how they can participate in strengthening the movement towards open governance. We also want to encourage policymakers to learn more about open government, the Open Government Partnership, National Action Plans, and other open government initiatives.

To improve the playbook further we are looking for stories from Pakistan in which open data has been used to promote transparency, participation, and accountability within the government. In addition to this, we are also looking for actionable suggestions that can be undertaken to mainstream the open government approach in policymaking.

Since we are working in open space, if you do find a piece of jargon or terminology with which you aren’t familiar or want to contribute to improving the playbook, please feel free to reach out to us at info@codeforpakistan.org.

Written by Ebtihaj

Ebtihaj is currently working as the Government Innovation Lead at Code for Pakistan. He has over 5 years of experience of working with the government and holds great insights on how governments operate and how to transform their processes digitally.