ODB Global Report

Third Edition
WWW.OPENDATABAROMETER.ORG

The Barometer was supported by the Open Data for Development (OD4D) program, a partnership funded by
Canadas International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the World Bank, United Kingdoms Department for
International Development (DFID), and Global Affairs Canada (GAC). This was a collaborative work of the network
carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.
You can contact the Barometer team by emailing: [email protected]
Members of the media can contact and request further information by emailing: [email protected]
2015 Web Foundation - Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported license.

CONTENTS
Executive summary and key findings 05
Readiness 11
Policies and data management approaches

12

Government action at the national and subnational level 13

Civil rights and the role of citizens

14

Business and entrepreneurship 16

Implementation 17
Open government data availability 18
Open government data quality 21
Impact 23
Impact examples 25
Impact and the SDGs 26
Rankings 29
Top ten 30
Bottom ten 31
Full rankings 31
Conclusions and recommendations 37
Methodology 39
List of tables and figures 41
Acknowledgements 43
About the Open Data Barometer 45

1
Executive Summary
and Key Findings

Executive summary and key findings

Once the preserve of academics and statisticians,

data has become a development cause embraced
by everyone from grassroots activists to the UN Secretary-General. Theres now a clear understanding
that we need robust data to drive democracy and
development and a lot of it.
Last year, the world agreed the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) seventeen global
commitments that set an ambitious agenda to end
poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change
by 2030. Recognising that good data is essential to
the success of the SDGs, the Global Partnership for
Sustainable Development Data and the Internatio-

nal Open Data Charter were launched as the SDGs

were unveiled. These alliances mean the data
revolution now has over 100 champions willing to
fight for it. Meanwhile, Africa adopted the African
Data Consensus a roadmap to improving data
standards and availability in a region that has notoriously struggled to capture even basic information
such as birth registration.
But while much has been made of the need for
bigger and better data to power the SDGs, this years
Barometer follows the lead set by the International
Open Data Charter by focusing on how much of this
data will be openly available to the public.

Open data is essential to building accountable and effective institutions, and to ensuring public access to information

Open data is essential to building accountable and

effective institutions, and to ensuring public access
to information both goals of SDG 16. It is also
essential for meaningful monitoring of progress on
all 169 SDG targets. Yet the promise and possibilities offered by opening up data to journalists,
human rights defenders, parliamentarians, and
citizens at large go far beyond even these.

When made freely available to everyone via the

Web, without charge, in formats that are easy to
share, combine and cross-reference, open data is
not just a tool to hold governments accountable. It
is also a driver of innovation that can improve education and healthcare, create new businesses, and

stimulate scientific progress. As the World Bank

has noted, sharing Open Data and the methods for
using it will accelerate progress and help to make the
SDGs possible.
Yet our research shows that much more remains to
be done to unlock open data as an SDG accelerator.
Only a small portion of countries provide open and
free online access to datasets critical to the SDGs,
such as public spending, health, education, maps,
or census data. Implementation and impact of open
data commitments is stalling, and open data availability and capacity remains heavily concentrated in
the rich world.

What is open data & why is it important?

In a well-functioning democratic society, citizens need to be informed and have access to
information on government policies and progress. Open data data which is freely available
and shareable online, without charge dramatically reduces the time and money citizens
need to invest to understand what government is doing and to hold it to account. At the same
time, because open data is made available in bulk and in formats that simple computer programmes can analyse, comparing and combining data from different sources becomes faster
and easier, even across national boundaries. This greatly enhances the ability of policymakers,
scientists and entrepreneurs to find solutions to complex development problems.
According to the open definition, to be truly open, data should be:
1. Available online so as to accommodate the widest practical range of users and uses.
1. Open-licensed so that anyone has permission to use and reuse the data.
1. Machine-readable so that large datasets can be analysed efficiently.
1. Available in bulk so that it can be downloaded as one dataset and easily analysed by a
machine.
1. Free of charge so that anyone can access it no matter their budget.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Covering 92 countries in the present edition, the Barometer ranks nations on:

1.

Readiness: How prepared are governments

for open data initiatives? What policies are in
place?

2.

Implementation: Are governments putting their

commitments into practice?

3.

Impact: Is open government data being used in

ways that bring practical benefit?

At a glance, here are this years key findings on the state of open data around the world:

Open data is entering the mainstream.

The majority of the countries in the survey (55%)
now have an open data initiative in place and a
national data catalogue providing access to datasets available for re-use. Moreover, new open data
initiatives are getting underway or are promised for
the near future in a number of countries, including
Ecuador, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Nepal, Thailand,
Botswana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda.
Demand is high: civil society and the tech community are using government data in 93% of countries
surveyed, even in countries where that data is not
yet fully open.

Despite this, theres been little to no progress on the number of truly open datasets
around the world.
Even with the rapid spread of open government
data plans and policies, too much critical data
remains locked in government filing cabinets. For
example, only two countries publish acceptable
detailed open public spending data. Of all 1,380
government datasets surveyed, almost 90% are still
closed roughly the same as in the last edition
of the Open Data Barometer (when only 130 out
of 1,290 datasets, or 10%, were open). What is
more, much of the approximately 10% of data that
meets the open definition is poor quality, making it
difficult for potential data users to access, process,
and work with it effectively.

Data availability

Open Data

10.14%

10.08%

Data available online

6.58%

76.30%

78.84%

76.19%

25

50

75

100

% of data

3rd edition

2nd edition

1st edition

Figure 1: Evolution of the availability of online data and open data.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Executive summary and key findings

Open-washing is jeopardising progress.

Many governments have advertised their open
data policies as a way to burnish their democratic
and transparent credentials. But open data, while
extremely important, is just one component of a
responsive and accountable government. Open data
initiatives cannot be effective if not supported by a
culture of openness where citizens are encouraged
to ask questions and engage, and supported by a
legal framework. Disturbingly, in this edition we saw
a backslide on freedom of information, transparency, accountability, and privacy indicators in some
countries. Until all these factors are in place, open
data cannot be a true SDG accelerator.

Implementation and resourcing are the

weakest links.
Progress on the Barometers implementation and
impact indicators has stalled or even gone into
reverse in some cases. Open data can result in net
savings for the public purse, but getting individual
ministries to allocate the budget and staff needed

to publish their data is often an uphill battle, and

investment in building user capacity (both inside
and outside of government) is scarce. Open data is
not yet entrenched in law or policy, and the legal
frameworks supporting most open data initiatives
are weak. This is a symptom of the tendency of
governments to view open data as a fad or experiment with little to no long-term strategy behind its
implementation. This results in haphazard implementation, weak demand, and limited impact.

The gap between data haves and have-nots

needs urgent attention.
Twenty-six of the top 30 countries in the ranking
are high-income countries. Half of open datasets in
our study are found in just the top 10 OECD countries, while almost none are in African countries.
As the UN pointed out last year, such gaps could
create a whole new inequality frontier if allowed
to persist. Open data champions in several developing countries have launched fledgling initiatives,
but too often those good open data intentions are
not backed up or resourced properly, resulting in
weak momentum and limited success.

Position

Country

Score

Income

HDI Rank

UK

100

High Income

Very High

USA

81.89

High Income

Very High

France

81.65

High Income

Very High

Canada

80.35

High Income

Very High

Denmark

76.62

High Income

Very High

New Zealand

76.35

High Income

Very High

Netherlands

75.13

High Income

Very High

Korea

71.19

High Income

Very High

Sweden

69.26

High Income

Very High

10

Australia

67.99

High Income

Very High

OECD

G20

Table 1: Economic and development classifications of the top ten countries in this years Open Data Barometer.

Governments at the top of the Barometer

are being challenged by a new generation of
open data adopters.
Traditional open data stalwarts such as the USA
and UK have seen their rate of progress on open
data slow, signalling that new political will and
momentum may be needed as more difficult
elements of open data are tackled. Fortunately, a
new generation of open data adopters, including
France, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, South Korea

www.opendatabarometer.org

and the Philippines, are starting to challenge the

ranking leaders and are adopting a leadership attitude in their respective regions. The International
Open Data Charter could be an important vehicle
to sustain and increase momentum in challenger
countries, while also stimulating renewed energy in
traditional open data leaders.

Country
Traditional leaders

New challengers

Global rank

Regional rank

Rank change

UK

no change

USA

no change

France

+1

Canada

+3

South Korea

+9

Mexico

16

+8

Uruguay

19

+6

Philippines

36

+17

Table 2: New generation of open data adopters challenging the usual global and regional ranking leaders.

These findings reveal that the open data movement

is at a turning point. With the SDGs still high on
the political agenda, recognition of datas importance to development is at an all-time high. The
international community can seize the moment by
giving initiatives such as the International Open
Data Charter and the Open Data for Development
Network (OD4D) the backing and resources they
need to translate growing open data policy commit-

ments into successful implementation and impact.

If we allow this moment to slip away, however, open
data could fade into a ghost town of abandoned
pilots, outdated data portals, and unused apps.

www.opendatabarometer.org

2
Readiness

Readiness

Effective open data initiatives require collaboration

between the state, private sector, and civil society.
A balance is needed between governments with the
capacity to create, manage, and publish data, and
third parties with the technical skills, freedoms,
and resources to use data as a tool for change. Are
governments ready to take full advantage of open
data as a tool for development?

5.

Government action at the national and subnational level: Is the groundwork being laid
for the benefits of open data to be used at all
levels of government?

6.

Civil rights and the role of citizens: Are citizens

and civil society empowered to participate in
government decision-making using open data?

In this section of the report, we analyse:

7.

Business and entrepreneurship: Are businesses and entrepreneurs able to take advantage
of the economic opportunity offered by open
data?

4.

Policies and data management approaches:

Do governments have adequate policies and
protocols in place for ensuring open data can
be made available over the long term?

POLICIES AND DATA MANAGEMENT APPROACHES

To guarantee open data will be available over the
long-term and be used to deliver impact, it must be
rooted in a clear policy framework and benefit from
a consistent global data management approach. We
set out to examine whether or not this is in place
across the countries studied.

Only six countries of the 92

studied had an explicit policy

commitment to make government
data open by default, guaranteeing
a general right to reuse.

Existing policies usually promote and encourage

some open data principles, including machine readability or the adoption of data standards, but are
weak on the specifics of implementation guidelines
and standards for data publication, such as the
specific datasets to be published and the metadata
and formats required. The publication of data is not
frequently considered part of a governments key
performance indicators, and the strategies rarely
make more than a passing mention to which institution or agency is responsible for implementation.
The absence of clear processes, timelines, resources, and delegated responsibilities mean there is
little pressure on anyone to deliver.

Strength of open data policies

Strength of data management

30

Number of countries

24
Number of countries

12

Many governments develop open data programmes

as part of a more general open government and
transparency agenda or occasionally as a component of a more general information management
programme. In such cases, a clear open data
definition doesnt always exist, and as open data is
not the sole focus of these initiatives, the concept
often remains diluted and lacks strong principles to
guide it. For example, only six countries of the 92
studied had an explicit policy commitment to make
government data open by default, guaranteeing a
general right to reuse.

But even among this group, we see substantial

differences some countries, such as the USA,
Italy and Moldova, have complete open-by-default
policies, while others, such as the UK, Canada and
Austria, have non-binding policies. Some countries,
including France, Greece and Switzerland, have
stated their intention to include an explicit statement in the law in the near future and others, like
Finland, Macedonia and Japan, have stated their
intention to actively release high-value public data,
but have not explicitly guaranteed it will be truly
open data. Actual implementation of these policies
is irregular. Long-term strategies (defined as lasting
a period of at least two years) are also rare.

16
12

20

10

6
0

Score (0-10)

10

Figure 2: Strength of open data policies and data management approaches.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Score (0-10)

10

Furthermore, we have found almost no evidence of

quality control processes for the data before publication. Only a few countries (e.g., the UK, South
Korea, Norway) appear to have some measures in
place; a few other countries (e.g., France, Austria)
have organised working groups to address quality
issues. We have not found convincing evidence that
governments are adopting and implementing specific processes for the release and update of the data
or the technical standards to be used. Around nine
in 10 countries with an open data initiative in place
make at least some minimal description of the
datasets available through basic metadata. However, the quality and extent of such metadata varies
widely, and is often implemented inconsistently.

One way to tackle these challenges is to engage

with potential data users before setting or adjusting policies. Public consultations on the data
needs and preferences of users are becoming more
common, often administered via online participation systems, social media networks, or feedback-gathering workshops. However, these are not
yet conducted regularly or promoted actively. Some
good examples on how to foster closer collaboration
between the government and other stakeholders are
Cooperation OGD Austria, the Network of Experts
from the Etalab mission in France, or the recently
discontinued Open Data User Group in the UK.

GOVERNMENT ACTION AT THE NATIONAL AND SUBNATIONAL LEVEL

At the national level, both the number and quality
of official open data initiatives and catalogues grew
in 2015, albeit more slowly than in previous editions of the Barometer. Several of these initiatives

are still small-scale and most of them are not yet

properly resourced, usually lacking the minimum
dedicated staff and budgets required to be successful in the medium and long term

Countries with OGD initiative

ODB Edition

17

13
43

30

2nd edition

16

37

29

1st edition

11
0

51

34

3rd edition

15

30

45

60

Number of countries
Countries with
OGD initiative

Countries with
strong OGD initiative

Countries with
strong subnational initiatives

Figure 3: Evolution of Open Government data initiatives at national and subnational level.

The majority of countries in the

survey (55%) now have an open

data initiative in place and a national data catalogue providing access to datasets available for reuse.

including Ecuador, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Nepal,

Thailand, Botswana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and
Uganda.

The majority of countries in the survey (55%) now

have an open data initiative in place and a national
data catalogue providing access to datasets available for re-use. Moreover, there are also a number
of new commitments to drive very incipient or new
open data initiatives in countries around the world,

In a few exceptional cases, existing initiatives have

stalled or been discontinued. In some cases, such
as Ghana, there are plans to take stock and then
revamp the initiative completely, as early as this
year. But in others such as Costa Rica, Kazakhstan and Qatar the initiatives have simply not
demonstrated any progress for some time.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Readiness

Government Action

ODB Edition

4.37

2.65

3rd edition

5.50
4.09

2.49

2nd edition

5.40
4.47

2.31

1st edition

0.00

5.80

1.50

3.00

4.50

6.00

Scores (0-10)
OGD initiatives

Subnational initiatives

Online services

Figure 4: Evolution of the average scores for the Government Action indicators.

Open data has not yet become priority for governments at the subnational level. The local and regional initiatives that do exist are primarily concentrated in capital cities in Europe and North America.
This is unfortunate, as local data is an area with
huge potential. Web Foundation research has shown

CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE ROLE OF CITIZENS

SDG 16 challenges societies to be inclusive and to
build strong, accountable institutions. Open data
puts information and therefore power in the
hands of citizens and, if used effectively, it can increase the accountability of government institutions.
In order to make the most of open data for citizen
empowerment, certain foundations need to be in
place. At a minimum these include (but are not
limited to): strong privacy laws; freedom of information legislation; and the right to access data. If
these factors arent in place, open data

initiatives risk simply being window-dressing, or

open washing - when data is called open data
upon release but it does not meet the full open criteria to be truly open. What is more, these factors
contribute to a vibrant, democratic culture; in turn,
this increases the likelihood of media, civil society,
and ordinary citizens to seek out information and
data about what their government is doing, and get
involved in helping government shape policy and
solve problems. This increases the chances of open
data impact.

Correlation between civil society and impact

100

Impact (scaled 0-100)

14

that local government data can have tangible impacts on peoples everyday lives from financing
community schools in the Philippines to verifying
whether public funds have been properly spent
to build public sanitation facilities and can
contribute to achieving the inclusive, resilient, and
sustainable cities called for in SDG 11.

75

50

25

2.5

7.5

10

Engagement with civil society (0-10)

Figure 5: Correlation between the score of the civil society engagement indicator and final impact.

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In over two-thirds of the countries studied, a

regulatory or legal framework to protect the privacy
of peoples personal data exists, with European
countries leading the way. Such safeguards, together with transparent checks and balances on state
data retention and surveillance powers, are critical
to maintain trust and mitigate possible harm from
wider sharing and reuse of data. However, implementation of data protection laws is inconsistent,
and in the past year there have been several scandals over the misuse of personal data collected by
government agencies. In South Africa for example,
a private company contracted to distribute social
grants to the poor is alleged to have misused recipients data to sell them airtime and loans, while in
the UK, there was public outcry when it emerged
that the medical records of nearly a million NHS
patients may have been sold to insurance companies against their will. Government-held data about
us is increasingly being plugged into algorithms
that governments and companies use to make
decisions affecting us, on everything from prison
sentencing, to termination of medical benefits, to
predictive policing.

Yet to date, transparency, accountability, and

fairness in the use of such algorithms is largely
unregulated.

Only about half of the countries

studied have reasonably strong

laws to guarantee citizen access
to information.

The situation is concerning with regard to freedom

of information (FOI) frameworks only about half
of the countries studied have in place reasonably
strong laws to guarantee citizen access to information. In those countries that have FOI laws, practical implementation is patchy, hampered by slow
response times and poor quality of the information
provided. It is still too rare that citizens receive
acceptable responses to requests for government
information within the legally stipulated time, with
an effective and independent redress mechanism
in place.

Evolution of Data Protection and Right to Information indicators

15

-2.33%
2nd to 3rd edition

ODB Edition

-4.77%

0.78%
1st to 2nd edition

0.13%

Data Protection

Right to Information

Figure 6: Evolution of data protection and right to information indicators.

Generally speaking, a legal right to data as a

component of FOI laws or frameworks is still rare.
Such legislation would require the government
to disclose data proactively, with clear guidelines
on formats, appropriate privacy safeguards, and a
general right to reuse.

ly two-thirds of the countries studied, governments

are engaging with civil society on opening data
to some extent. However, these cases are usually
isolated one-offs on specific issues, rather than
comprehensive programmes of government-civil
society dialogue.

Promisingly, in all but six of the countries studied,

civil society and information technology professionals were active in using government data, even if
this data was not technically open. In approximate-

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Readiness

BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The UNs ambitious development agenda naturally
includes economic goals. Sustainable development
goal 8 sets out provisions for employment and economic growth, goal 9 emphasises innovation and
goal 10 aims to reduce inequality. All of these go
hand in hand, and governments can use open data
to promote innovation, support data-driven businesses and create jobs.
Our study considered how these economic benefits
of open data could be unlocked - through training
and promoting of innovation.

16

In terms of training, governments remain very focused on general data related issues, such as statistics, data science, geographic information systems
(GIS), visualisation and big data. Academic training on these more general data topics is increasing
at universities in particular. Access to high quality
specialist training for individuals or businesses who
want to increase their technical skills or develop data-driven businesses is on the rise, thanks to the efforts of groups like the Open Data Institute, its global
network and training programs, or Open Knowledge
with their School of Data network, but still relatively
limited. It is difficult to find countries where a full
range of advanced and specialised training on data
analytics and open data issues is available, and finding courses on more specific themes with a sectoral
approach - such as natural resource transparency,
health data management, or improved instruction
through open education data - is equally challenging.
Only one in five countries studied have an advanced
and sustainable programme of support for innovation
that is designed to take advantage of open data for

Only one in five countries studied

have an advanced and sustainable

programme of support for innovation that is designed to take
advantage of open data for the
medium to long term.

the medium to long term. Many of these programmes

use open data through a series of connected planned
events or funding schemes in partnership with government agencies or departments towards a final
common objective. Some of these are frequently focused not only on open data issues but also more
general data-related topics such as mobile apps, big
data or subject-specific challenges.
Support for innovation using open data specifically
is still especially limited in Africa and the Middle
East, and to a lesser extent in South Asia, Latin
America and the Caribbean. In these regions, official
interventions to support a culture of innovation are
usually limited to one-off challenges, hackathons or
co-creation sessions, mainly driven by civil society
and where the involvement of government is limited
and its support testimonial.
The Open Data for Development (OD4D) programme
has been increasing efforts to address these issues
through the creation and support of multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as the Iniciativa Latinoamericana por los Datos Abiertos (ILDA), the Caribbean
Open Institute (COI), the Open Data Labs in
Jakarta, and the Open Data in Europe and Central
Asia initiative (ODECA), bringing them together to
support innovation in the use of open data.

Figure 7: Readiness for business and entrepreneurship.

www.opendatabarometer.org

3
Implementation

Implementation

Effective open government data initiatives should

provide access to a wide range of data, but all too
often governments are still publishing only selected
data sets. The implementation component of the
Barometer looks at the extent to which government
data - open and not open - is published. We then assess how much of this data is open, accessible and
timely. The 15 kinds of data included in our survey

reflect a wide range of functions of government.

Complete, high-quality government data and metadata is still difficult to find. This is compounded by
a low level of detail in the data published.
We studied some of the most sought after datasets
to establish how widely available they are.

OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA AVAILABILITY

All governments are publishing at least some data.
Most of the datasets in our survey (76%) are available online in some form. However, of the 1,380
datasets we studied, barely 10% are fully open.
Those that can be considered fully open datasets
are concentrated in the top-ranking countries, with
46% of all open datasets belonging to the top ten
countries in the Barometer. Only around one-third
of the countries studied have at least one open data
set, while the remaining two-thirds of countries
studied have no open data whatsoever. Considering
the top ranking countries are all OECD members,
this illustrates just how far we have to go to realise
the full potential of open data for development. We
have hardly begun to make progress outside a very

In a number of cases, countries have attempted to

release open data, but have not followed the open
definition properly. The most common pitfalls are
the lack of open licenses, lack of bulk download options and the use of non-machine readable formats.
These mistakes are often due to a lack of expertise,
resources and support for open data initiatives in
the readiness phase, and hopefully initiatives like
the International Open Data Charter can create a
community of best practice and support to help
governments embarking on new open data initiatives to improve their performance.

Openness by dataset type

Across the countries we studied, government
budget data is most likely to be open, with open
data available in 17 of the countries studied, just
under one in five (18%).

1.

Companies Registers: only available in Australia and with significant limitations

2.

Government Spending: only available in Brazil

and the United Kingdom

3.

Legislation: only available in Brazil, France,

Korea and the United Kingdom

4.

Land Ownership: only available in Australia,

Canada, Estonia, the United Kingdom and
Uruguay

In the table below, weve outlined which data sets

are most commonly available in open formats and
which are most commonly available online in any
format . Data is counted as available if it can be
found online. This does not mean the data is of
good quality and easily usable or downloadable for
free. Please see next section for specifications on
data quality in more detail. Additionally, weve highlighted which Sustainable Development Goals would
benefit from having specific datasets made open.

But there are many critical areas where open datasets are unlikely to be found, for example:

Current status of Implementation

Total

33.70
35.54

3rd edition

25.60

ODB Edition

18

limited number of countries.

Innovation

43.53

Accountability

34.98
34.94

2nd edition

46.51

27.32
33.26
34.50

1st edition

27.29

0.00

15.00

30.00

Social policy

40.96

45.00

60.00

Average score (0-100)

Figure 8: Evolution of the average scores for each of the datasets groups in the survey.

www.opendatabarometer.org

18%

15%

open

97%

Budget

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

13%

open

% data
type
available
online

Comparatively one of the better

datasets in terms of availability and
openness. In 95% of countries where it
was available it was regularly updated.
In several instances it is even required
by law to be updated and available,
although not necessarily open.

open

99%

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

National statistics

% data
type
available
online

Although this is the type of data

governments are most likely to make
available, it is not often released in
an open format.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

65%

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

Public Transport

% data
type
available
online

In spite of being one of the most

in-demand datasets with great potential
for social and economic impact, any kind
of data (open or otherwise) is totally
absent in 24 of the 92 countries in the
study, 15 of which are African unsurprising given the informal nature of
the sector across most of the continent.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

19

13%

13%

open

88%

Health

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

The data is not straightforward to nd as it is

scarce and distributed through dierent agencies
and departments rather than stored and released
all in one place. And the health data that is
available is usually of limited quantity and quality,
out of date, and there are no plans in place to
make sure it is regularly maintained and updated.
Moreover, privacy concerns may also aect
availability of data in such a sensitive sector.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

12%

open

% data
type
available
online

open

71%

Environment

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

There is a signicant lack of environmental

data, with 27 of the countries studied not
publishing it in any form, open or
otherwise. Finding environmental data is
especially problematic in African countries
(17 of the 27 countries who are not
publishing any environmental data).

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

% data
type
available
online

72%

Maps

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

% data
type
available
online

The data available online is not updated

regularly enough to be useful in 45% of
countries studied.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

www.opendatabarometer.org

Implementation

12%

12%

open

97%

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

International trade

12%

open

% data
type
available
online

Frequently available online (97%) and usually for

free (98%). However the data is often in an
aggregated form that reduces its usefulness and is
rarely published in an open format.

open

80%

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

Crime

% data
type
available
online

Crime data is most often available in the

form of thematic reports. Each country
categorises crime data dierently, making
it very hard to compare across countries.
Sometimes the reports are quite detailed
but the data contained in most of them is
not in open or machine readable formats.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

88%

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

Elections

% data
type
available
online

The data available online is not updated

regularly enough to be useful in 45% of
countries studied.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

5, 16

20

11%

8%

open

87%

Education

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

Most education data is available in the form of

one-o reports that are not open or machine
readable. The type of data available varies by
country, and is rarely published on a regular
schedule using the same categories, making it
hard to compare across time as well.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

www.opendatabarometer.org

5%

open

% data
type
available
online

open

82%

Contracting

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

Only 28% of the data available online is in

machine-readable formats reducing
practical accountability as this makes
analysing the high volume of historical
data very dicult.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

% data
type
available
online

46%

Land ownership

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

Rarely available online, dicult to nd

when available and quite frequently
behind paywalls.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

% data
type
available
online

4%

2%

open

1%

open

open

98%

Legislation

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

4%

% data
type
available
online

Hardly available in any machine readable or open

format, which is problematic considering the huge
volumes of data managed.

Spending

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

% data
type
available
online

Weakest dataset in the study. Even in the limited

cases when it is available online, the data is usually
not published at the transactional level. Only four
countries - the USA, the UK, Japan and Brazil publish spending data at the transactional level
and from those only two, the UK and Brazil, release
this information as open data. This makes it nearly
impossible for government, citizens and civil society
to tackle corruption.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

72%

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

Companies

% data type
available
as fully
Open Data

% data
type
available
online

Least open dataset in the world with just

Australia publishing it as open data and only
for very top level data for free. Looking at all
datasets available, it is only accessible online
in a machine readable format and for free in
just a dozen of countries. The absence of
adequate open data on companies makes
tracking benecial ownership challenging
and hampers eorts to tackle corruption.

SDGs this data

could contribute to advancing
if open

OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA QUALITY

21
Most governments still struggle to ensure their data
sets - open or otherwise - are of good quality. In
many cases, so-called open datasets actually fail
to be truly open due to a range of different quality
issues. In the section above, we gave a brief description of the overall observations on quality for

each dataset in the research. Below, we break this

down even further and assess how many of them
have the characteristics of usable open data. Our
assessment evaluates the government data we
found available online based on some of the key
open data properties.

Machine
readable

Bulk

Free

Open license

Updated

Sustainable

Discoverable

Linked data

Maps

67%

36%

64%

23%

55%

65%

68%

3%

Land

36%

14%

52%

19%

64%

71%

64%

5%

Statistics

69%

42%

93%

25%

82%

77%

96%

5%

Budgets

47%

33%

99%

20%

96%

89%

87%

2%

Spending

100%

100%

100%

50%

100%

100%

100%

0%

Companies

29%

14%

61%

8%

64%

70%

67%

2%

Legislation

18%

8%

93%

16%

81%

86%

79%

3%

Transport

43%

28%

95%

28%

80%

73%

82%

2%

Trade

70%

35%

99%

20%

75%

81%

80%

1%

Health

65%

27%

95%

31%

47%

51%

65%

1%

Education

63%

34%

96%

23%

59%

64%

68%

0%

Crime

59%

26%

97%

24%

69%

68%

65%

1%

Environment

75%

34%

98%

32%

60%

69%

71%

2%

Elections

54%

32%

99%

21%

94%

78%

80%

1%

Contracts

28%

21%

95%

19%

81%

72%

61%

0%

Average

55%

32%

89%

24%

74%

74%

75%

2%

Dataset

best value for each of the data series (columns)

good performers for each of the data series (columns)

worst value for each of the Data series (columns)

bad performers for each of the data series (columns)

Table 4: Summary of data quality checklist results.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Implementation

Appropriately licensed: Government data must have

an appropriate open license for reuse in order to
enable people to take advantage of it. However,
less than 18% of the government data studied has
an open license, if any licensing information is
provided at all. Generally speaking, governments
do not have consistent policies on how to license
data, resulting in a patchwork of licences within the
same country or even within the same department
or institution. In some instances, such policies
or guidelines indeed exist, but they are not being
applied consistently through the different agencies
or departments or they are simply ignored.
Free: Although the majority (90%) of government
data we studied was available for free, it remains
common for fees to be charged to access certain
datasets or to unlock a deeper level of detail. For
example only 52% of land ownership data available
online is free, while only 61% of online data on
companies is available for free. Some governments
are still reluctant to give up valuable datasets up
as a revenue stream, not considering the potential
of the social and economic added value they could
generate. In fact, nearly 10% of all datasets in the
study still require payment of a fee for access.

22

Properly formatted: Only about half of the government data studied is available in a machine-readable format. And of that machine-readable data,
only half is available for download in bulk. This
makes data re-use complicated and in some cases
impossible for information intermediaries like researchers, academics, civil society and the media.
This is particularly problematic in areas where machine readable data is rarely available (e.g. legislation, companies and contracts) or where the historic
volume of data is very high but bulk downloads are
not available (e.g. maps, contracts, land, census,
companies or legislation).
The most popular machine readable formats (in
order of popularity) continue to be xls(x), csv/tsv,
xml, json and raw dbf/mdb database dumps. There
are also still a significant number of datasets that
are published in other non-reusable formats such as
pdf, plain html, ods or plain txt and plain jpeg/png
images.
More elaborated APIs that facilitate access to data
are still very rare among government data. A number of standard formats are also frequently used in
some specific cases, such as gml/kml/wms for Maps
or pc-axis/sdmx/spss for census and statistics in
general or, to a lesser extent, gtfs for transport data.
Up-to-date: 73% of government data studied were
updated to a regular timetable at the time of the
study, although some of these timetables are quite
long (e.g. every five years). However, there is a large
discrepancy between the most up-to-date data
(budgets - 95% and elections - 94% up-to-date)

www.opendatabarometer.org

and those which are the most outdated (health 47% and maps - 55% up-to-date). The absence of
up-to-date data on topics like health and mapping
could cost lives in the event of an epidemic or natural disaster when this information is particularly
critical.
The publication of data series tends to be irregular
and managed inconsistently and in most cases it is
very difficult to determine how and when any given
data will be available or updated in the future given
the total lack of information to this respect.
Easy to find: When available online, government
data tends to be easy to find at the individual dataset level (75% of all data studied), but complete
data on a topic is often difficult to obtain without
spending a significant amount of time searching, as
different related and complementary datasets tend
to be split among several official sources and/or
governmental agencies.
Sustainable: For one in four of the government data
we studied, there is no guarantee of its future availability on a regular basis. In a few countries there
is at least a general open by default provisions, but
not a timetable or process for regular updates. This
makes the future use of government data, open or
otherwise, very uncertain and subject to political
changes.
Linked: Linked data remains niche and scarce
with only 21 datasets from a total of 1,380 in the
survey (1.5%) being officially available as linked
data. Half of these cases are concentrated in two of
the leading countries in our ranking: USA and UK.
We can find also a number of other extra-official
examples usually driven by academic institutions,
occasionally with the collaboration of governments.
These are mostly reduced to pilot projects that very
rarely replace or supplement the original government data source after the pilot phase. This lack
of connectivity between different related datasets
limits the potential benefits of opening government
data. In practice, this makes it more difficult to
discover the existing relationships between different
datasets.

4
Impact

Impact

The difficulties of measuring the impact of open

data initiatives properly is a serious challenge. We
are increasingly finding very good isolated examples of open data being used to improve our daily
lives, but the measurement of concrete impact is
often not undertaken in great detail - if attempted
at all - given its complexity. This results in vague
or subjective impressions and unclear evidence of
impact, even though real benefits are very likely to
be found. More structured research and analysis,
detailed use cases and quantitative evidence are
necessary to go beyond anecdotes and demonstrate
the full value of these initiatives.

ments do not dedicate enough staff and resources

to implementation across all aspects of open data
- economic, social and political - open data policies
could fail to fulfill their expectations of real social
change, and amount to little more than open
washing.

This trend is a warning that if

governments do not dedicate

enough staff and resources to implementation across all aspects
of open data - economic, social
and political - open data policies
could fail to fulfill their expectations of real social change, and
amount to little more than open
washing.

As a result, evidence of the impact of open data

still remains limited. We assessed countries for
impact at the political, social and economic levels,
including:
Transparency & accountability, and improved
government efficiency and effectiveness.

2.

Environmental impacts, and contributions to

greater inclusion for marginalised groups in
society.

3.

General contribution to the country economy,

support to start-up entrepreneurs and existing
businesses.

We have seen the least evidence of impact on social

issues. Although environmental sustainability was a
bright spot - with considerable improvement (14%
increase) in impact, there was a decline of 4% on
the impact of open data on social inclusion.
Evidence of the economic impact of open data
continues to increase, particularly on entrepreneurship which saw a 15% increase. Entrepreneurship
had the highest average impact values across the
survey. But the impact on government efficiency
still declined by 9% over the last edition.

Political impact has declined, particularly on

transparency and accountability which saw a 22%
decrease. This trend is a warning that if govern-

Impact on Accountability and Economy

3

3rd edition

ODB Edition

24

1.

9
2nd edition

10

1st edition

10

10

Number of countries with impact 5

Accountability

Economy

Figure 9: Number of countries with significant impact on key areas.

In addition to the decline in political impact and

implementation, the lack of global progress since
the previous edition of the Barometer can be attributed to the characteristics of the new countries
we have included in our survey, all of which were

www.opendatabarometer.org

below the average on their impact scores. Some of

the change can also be attributed to improvements
made to the accuracy of impact measurements in
our study.

Impact Evolution
Eciency
Acconuntability
Environment
Inclusion
Economy
Enterpreunership

-6.00%

-3.00%

2nd to 3rd edition

0.00%

3.00%

6.00%

1st to 2nd edition

Figure 10: Evolution of impact indicators.

IMPACT EXAMPLES
As a proxy approach to impact measurement, the
Open Data Barometer team identifies case studies
in the media or academic literature from the last

twelve months. The following are some of the more

interesting examples of those case studies:

Health
DATA Uruguay and the Health Ministry in Uruguay launched A tu
servicio, an application allowing citizens to compare different health
providers, helping the Ministry to increase efficiency and effectiveness
and respond to citizen feedback as part of their mission to improve
health centres. This platform not only enabled better informed decisions to be made by citizens, but also revealed some quality issues in
the data provided by the health suppliers.

Crime and policing

The White House will be releasing new data on police officers under
the umbrella of its Police Data Initiative that intended to increase
government accountability on the issue of racial profiling, a very timely
issue in American society in light of high-profile police violence against
African Americans in the past year. The new datasets that are released
to the public can have a real impact as they include information on
police stops, use of force and officer-involved shootings.

www.opendatabarometer.org

25

Impact

Sustainable production and consumption

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the Pacific coast of Thoku
in Japan, electricity supply and demand data were released as open
data through a joint effort of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry (METI) and Electric Power Companies. These open data have
triggered various application developments on electricity demand and
supply, raising citizen awareness of their electricity consumption and
allowing them to help the government avoid power failures during periods when demand spiked and minimise environmental impact.

Jobs and economy

Dataconnexions in France an Etalab mission project - was able to
identify new open data entrepreneurship initiatives with potential to
tackle different social issues and contribute to the country economy.
Through the first five editions of the programme they have already
identified more than 200 startups or projects leveraging open data and
have also provided support for their growth and consolidation.

IMPACT AND THE SDGS

26

The availability of open data is vital, especially if

we are to meet the SDG targets. And its importance
goes beyond just monitoring progress and spending
on the goals. A key feature of open data is that is
published in formats that make it trivially easy to
share, combine and analyse vast quantities of information, across different parts of government and
even across national boundaries.
Many SDG challenges - such as ending malnutrition, tackling climate change, preventing epidemics and stopping illicit financial flows - demand
multi-dimensional and sometimes multi-country
solutions, which require sharing and analysing

data from many different sources. Whats more, by

opening up these data sources to anyone who is
interested, governments increase the chances that
someone may spot a problems hidden cause, uncover inaccuracies or falsifications in the information about the problem, or develop a better or more
efficient solution.
Below are two examples of how open data could
help to tackle the challenges highlighted by the
SDGs.

Stopping child malnutrition

Preventing stunting and wasting in children (one of the SDG 2 targets) is not just about nutrition. Diarrhea and gastrointestinal disease
is a major cause of child malnutrition and death, so better water and
sanitation in affected communities is a priority. Womens status, especially maternal health and literacy, is also a critical determinant, so
governments must improve the education and health of women, whilst
also taking action to stop child marriage, which is strongly correlated
with poor health outcomes for teenage mothers and their babies alike.
Social protection schemes targeting women can enhance child health
by raising the incomes and status of their mothers. Education and
health authorities also need to work together on interventions such as
deworming and school feeding.

www.opendatabarometer.org

In rural areas, promoting climate-resilient agriculture practices and

increasing women farmers access to land, credit and extension advice
may be necessary to improve the food security of mothers and children
alike. Anticipating and managing crises, such as droughts and conflicts, is also critical to avoid localised hunger. All of this shows why
fully open data - putting information on health, education, income, agriculture, environment and population at the fingertips of policymakers
and experts in formats that can easily be analysed by computers - is
vital to design well-targeted interventions to end child malnutrition.

Reducing illicit financial flows

Illicit financial flows cost developing countries $1.26 trillion per year,
according to the UN, and SDG 16 includes a commitment to significantly reduce such losses by 2030. In recent weeks, this problem
has been headline news thanks to the Panama Papers, a massive leak
of documents from Mossack Fonseca - a law firm that specialises in
setting up offshore companies in tax haven jurisdictions. Such companies are often used for money laundering and for legal or illegal tax
avoidance.
Notably, the discovery of the Panama Papers abuses was accidental
(it was only made possible by a leak from inside the law firm), partial
(Mossack Fonseca is only one of many firms facilitating offshore companies), and laborious (because none of the information leaked was in
bulk machine-readable formats, it took a global team of investigators
over a year to even begin to unravel it). As the Financial Times observed, it still leaves plenty of secrecy to go around.
If governments and financial services providers actually want to stop
such abuses, they will need access to comprehensive cross-border data
that makes it easy to routinely monitor and compare company registrations, tax payments, government contracts, import and export flows,
and politicians assets, among other data points. Under the current
system, the Washington Post found that even within the OECD it can
take police in one country six months to get information from another country on a single bank transfer. By contrast, perpetrators can
move money at will and at great speed. Without open data, it may be
almost impossible for anti-corruption agencies - particularly less well
resourced ones in the developing world - to keep up with the international complexity and lightning pace of illicit financial flows.
The OECD has released a new standard for automatic exchange of tax
information and backed open data as a critical weapon against corruption. Four countries are already publishing information on government
procurement through the Open Contracting Data Standard and 14
more are at different stages of doing so. The International Open Data
Charter has begun work on an anti-corruption package that will support
the creation and release of open, interoperable anti-corruption data
holdings, and efforts are also underway to establish a new public register that would end the use of beneficial ownership to shield shell
companies from scrutiny. Such efforts to open up critical financial
information must be dramatically accelerated to give governments and
citizen watchdogs a fighting chance against the scale and complexity
of the rot revealed by the Panama Papers.

www.opendatabarometer.org

27

5
Rankings

Rankings

It is important to note that a high ranking in

the Open Data Barometer is not an indication of
perfection, but rather an indication of how well a
country is doing against its peers in getting the
basics of open data readiness, implementation and
impact right. Therefore, the top-ranked country has
a scaled score of 100, and other countries score
values are relative to it.

(For full details please see the Methodology section)

Regional Distribution

In spite of stalling progress, particularly on impact,

long-standing leaders such as the UK and the USA
remain top of the rankings. But a new generation
of open data adopters is challenging their global
leadership.

10

Components score (0-10)

Total
Readiness
7.5

Implementation
Impact

2.5

0
Global

Sub-Saharan
Africa

Middle East
& North
Africa

South Asia Latin America

& Caribbean

East Asia
& Pacic

Europe &
Central Asia

North
America

Figure 11: Regional distribution of open data remains irregular.

30

Notable challengers can be found in most regions:

France and Canada in Europe and North America respectively, Korea, Japan, Singapore and the
Philippines in Asia and Mexico and Uruguay in
Latin America. The exception remains Africa, where
no country has truly demonstrated clear leader-

ship. Rwanda remains the most stable throughout

the three editions of the Barometer, with former
regional pioneers, like Kenya or Ghana, in a holding
pattern as they try to revamp their initiatives. Other
countries, such as Burkina Faso, have become
active lately but we have yet to see results.

TOP TEN
Countries at the top of the ranking are characterised by strong readiness. Implementation is also
strong - 46% of all open datasets we found are in
Position

these top 10 countries. Some significant impact are

also typically found in these countries.

Country

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

UK

100

100

100

100

USA

81.89

97

76

76

France

81.65

97

76

74

Canada

80.35

89

84

67

Denmark

76.62

77

77

78

New Zealand

76.35

87

62

87

Netherlands

75.13

90

69

70

Korea

71.19

95

64

58

Sweden

69.26

88

60

64

10

Australia

67.99

84

77

39

78.04

90.04

74.50

71.30

Average top 10

Table 5: Top ten countries in the Open Data Barometer 3rd edition ranking.

www.opendatabarometer.org

BOTTOM TEN
Countries at the bottom of the table are characterised by very weak general readiness, few or no
open datasets available and a lack of demonstrable
impact. As it can be seen in the table, sub-Saharan

Position

Africa dominates the bottom of the table, clearly

indicating that strong leadership and more efforts
are needed in the region.

Country

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

78

Cameroon

6.57

12

78

Botswana

6.51

18

85

Pakistan

6.22

19

86

Sierra Leone

5.44

19

86

Zambia

4.91

16

88

Mali

3.97

13

88

Myanmar

3.57

11

90

Zimbabwe

3.38

11

91

Yemen

1.43

92

Haiti

4.20

11.50

4.20

0.30

Average

Table 6: Bottom ten countries in the Open Data Barometer 3rd edition ranking.

31

FULL RANKINGS
The table below presents the global rankings of the
Open Data Barometer, including the overall Barometer score, as well as the three main subindexes.
Scaled country scores are rounded to the nearest
whole number before ranks are assigned, meaning a
number of countries receive tied rankings.

Position

Rank
Change

Country

As this edition of the Barometer covers six new

countries and two new readiness questions, a
change in rank position may result both from the
new countries entering the assessment, as well as
from substantial changes to that countrys performance.

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

UK

100

100

100

100

USA

81.89

97

76

76

France

81.65

97

76

74

Canada

80.35

89

84

67

Denmark

76.62

77

77

78

www.opendatabarometer.org

Rankings

32

Position

Rank
Change

Country

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

-2

New Zealand

76.35

87

62

87

-1

Netherlands

75.13

90

69

70

Korea

71.19

95

64

58

-6

Sweden

69.26

88

60

64

10

Australia

67.99

84

77

39

11

Finland

65.45

90

65

42

11

-1

Germany

64.79

77

71

45

13

Spain

64.35

78

57

63

13

Austria

64.18

81

49

70

13

Japan

63.50

77

53

65

16

Mexico

61.76

69

57

63

17

Brazil

61.16

60

80

36

17

-10

Norway

60.60

80

58

46

19

Uruguay

58.12

68

65

39

20

Switzerland

54.64

74

58

31

21

Italy

53.78

67

52

45

22

Iceland

52.73

64

62

29

22

Belgium

52.62

80

48

33

24

Singapore

51.45

72

51

32

24

-11

Estonia

50.63

75

52

24

26

-9

Czech Republic

49.15

59

43

50

27

Ireland

46.53

81

52

28

12

Colombia

45.39

64

47

26

29

-9

Israel

43.71

60

37

39

www.opendatabarometer.org

Position

Rank
Change

30

-15

31

Country

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

Chile

42.97

64

51

12

-2

Portugal

41.38

59

45

20

32

Poland

39.95

57

42

21

33

-2

Greece

38.48

60

38

18

33

New

Moldova (Republic of)

38.43

53

44

18

33

New

Macedonia

38.13

52

42

20

36

New

Slovak Republic

37.16

54

33

28

36

17

Philippines

36.94

55

32

28

38

India

33.98

48

39

14

39

Tunisia

33.37

46

34

21

40

-4

Indonesia

31.81

46

36

14

41

-15

Russian Federation

31.49

52

31

13

42

-4

Ecuador

30.29

39

42

42

Kenya

29.87

45

27

21

44

-11

Peru

28.93

43

41

44

-3

Costa Rica

28.52

43

38

46

Rwanda

27.55

35

36

11

47

-6

Turkey

27.06

37

36

47

UAE

27.00

47

29

47

-6

South Africa

26.77

41

20

24

50

-17

Hungary

25.54

35

34

51

-10

Malaysia

24.60

46

17

16

52

-16

Argentina

23.78

42

21

11

53

Mauritius

22.33

38

29

www.opendatabarometer.org

33

Rankings

34

Position

Rank
Change

53

-4

55

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

Jamaica

21.65

36

14

20

-9

China

21.16

45

15

56

-7

Kazakhstan

20.09

29

28

57

Vietnam

18.30

21

23

12

57

Bahrain

18.14

36

20

57

Saudi Arabia

17.72

39

17

60

New

Georgia

16.79

38

15

60

Qatar

16.53

42

12

62

-7

Morocco

16.17

36

13

62

-7

Ukraine

16.07

28

17

62

New

Paraguay

15.99

30

16

62

-5

Thailand

15.99

30

19

66

New

Saint Lucia

14.65

27

14

67

Nigeria

14.13

29

13

68

-7

Nepal

13.09

22

12

69

-1

Tanzania

10.77

21

13

70

Senegal

10.33

22

12

70

-9

Jordan

10.32

27

70

-24

Ghana

10.19

30

70

Burkina Faso

10.12

26

70

-6

Uganda

9.92

24

75

-11

Egypt

8.74

16

11

76

-8

Benin

8.47

14

13

76

-17

Mozambique

8.14

18

www.opendatabarometer.org

Country

Position

Rank
Change

78

-10

78

-1

78

Country

Score

Readiness

Implementation

Impact

Malawi

7.39

12

10

Namibia

7.35

23

-10

Bangladesh

7.05

17

78

-10

Venezuela

6.79

12

10

78

Ethiopia

6.63

20

78

Cameroon

6.57

12

78

Botswana

6.51

18

85

-18

Pakistan

6.23

19

86

-8

Sierra Leone

5.45

19

86

-8

Zambia

4.91

16

88

-4

Mali

3.98

13

88

-2

Myanmar

3.56

11

90

-14

Zimbabwe

3.38

11

91

-9

Yemen

1.43

92

-7

Haiti

Table 7: Complete ranking for the Open Data Barometer 3rd edition.

www.opendatabarometer.org

35

6
Conclusions
and Recommendations

Conclusions and recommendations

The open data movement is at a turning point. The

UN Sustainable Development Goals have created
momentum for a data revolution, and open data
policy commitments and initiatives have been
spreading fast. Yet, implementation and impact are
lagging behind, creating a risk that the open data
movement could fade into a ghost town of abandoned portals and forgotten apps.
Below are seven recommendations to increase the
readiness, implementation and ultimately impact of
open data for development:
Get behind the International Open Data
Charter.
The international community should give the
International Open Charter systematic backing and
resources to mount a large-scale drive to translate growing open data policy commitments into
successful implementation and impact. The Charter
will lock in political momentum around data needs
by establishing clear and solid guidance on policy,
and helping governments to develop long-term
plans that set out timelines, resources and responsibilities for implementation.
Expand and deepen open data practice.
38

It is important to encourage an increasing number

of governments to adopt open data policies. But a
real open data initiative goes well beyond just creating a portal or publishing a national data catalogue.
Open data is political. To see real impact, governments need to embrace open data as a long-term
cultural shift in governance with sufficient resources and staff, ensuring that infrastructure, laws and
policies are strong enough for long-term open data
implementation and results. Open data portals that
centralise open data on dedicated websites through
specific catalogs should lead to the establishment
of real open data infrastructures supporting open
by default policies, explicit publication objectives,
requirements and timetables and performance indicators across the whole of government.
Finish the job - make sure the government
data published is truly open.
More and more government data is becoming
publicly available, but not always in an open format
given frequent issues with licensing, formats, bulk
downloads or free availability. Unfortunately, due
to knowledge gaps, many governments with good intentions think they are making open data open butoverlook key requirements for true ease and power
of data reuse. For example, if all countries in our
survey clearly indicated an explicit open license for
data they have already placed online, the number of
fully open datasets would double overnight.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Harmonise open data, privacy and freedom

of information efforts.
While advocating more transparent, participatory
forms of governance, the open data movement
has paid insufficient attention to date to the wider
political and institutional enablers for such a shift.
However, widespread concerns over shrinking civic
space and large-scale state intrusions on privacy
mean this is no longer possible. Open data advocates should work more closely with transparency,
privacy and right to information activists to achieve
better mutual understanding and coordination of
efforts. The International Open Data Charter should
educate stakeholders that open data cannot be fully
effective in the absence of basic foundations such
as an effective freedom of information regime and
robust privacy safeguards.

Consult data users and prioritise the data

citizens and data users want.
Governments and civil society should work together
to identify the most pressing societal priorities and
the data needs linked to these. Instead of sporadic
hackathons or one-time release of a few data sets,
they should systematically invest in user capacity to
harness open data to solve these challenges, as part
of a clear long-term open data strategy.

Provide funding, training and support for

developing countries to close the data gap.
Donors should make it a priority to close the gap
between developed and developing countries on
open data availability and use, not only providing
initial support and assistance to get the ball rolling
but also helping developing countries tackle and
overcome long-standing barriers of low connectivity,
poor data management infrastructure, weak legal
foundations and scarce skills that limit open data
going to scale in the developing world.

7
Methodology

Methodology

The 3rd edition of the Open Data Barometer is

based upon three kinds of data:

1.

A peer reviewed expert survey carried out between May and September 2015 with a range
of questions about open data contexts, policy,
implementation and impacts and a detailed
dataset survey completed for 15 kinds of data
in each country, which touched on issues of
data availability, format, license, timeliness
and discoverability.

2.

A government self assessment simplified survey

carried out between May and July 2015 with
the same range of context, implementation and
impacts questions as an additional source of
information.

3.

Secondary data selected to complement our expert survey data. This is used in the readiness
section of the Barometer, and is taken from the
World Economic Forum, World Bank, United
Nations e-Government Survey and Freedom
House.

This new edition of the Barometer seeks to repeat

the analysis from previous editions, with some
small modifications and methodological revisions
that are focused on three main aspects:
40

1.

The government self assessment simplified

questionnaire for each of the countries in the
study as an additional source of input for the
research.

2.

Two new additional Readiness questions

(ODB.2015.C.POLI - ODB.2015.C.MANAG) and other minor
adjustments for all questions as first exploration steps towards the assessment of the
International Open Data Charter principles.

3.

A more detailed and incremental scoring guidance with comprehensive criteria and scoring
thresholds to guide the researcher and improve
consistency of the results.

www.opendatabarometer.org

Overall, however, we have sought to maintain

certain consistency with the questions used in
previous editions. Wider methodological revisions
will continue to be explored in future editions as we
keep advancing in our measurement methods.
You can read more about the methodology and
research process and method in the detailed methodology description (pdf version) and the research
handbook (pdf version). Feel also free to provide
your feedback through comments on the respective
online versions.
Historical and comparable consolidated data for all
three editions of the Barometer is available on the
website.

8
List of tables and gures

List of tables and figures

Figure 1: Evolution of the availability of online data

and open data (p. 7).
Figure 2: Strength of open data policies and data
management approaches (p. 12).
Figure 3: Evolution of Open Government data initiatives at national and subnational level (p. 13).
Figure 4: Evolution of the average scores for the Government Action indicators (p 14).
Figure 5: Correlation between the score of the civil
society engagement indicator and final impact (p. 14).
Figure 6: Evolution of data protection and right to
information indicators (p. 15).
Figure 7: Readiness for business and entrepreneurship (p. 16).
Figure 8: Evolution of the average scores for each of
the datasets groups in the survey (p. 18).
Figure 9: Number of countries with significant impact
on key areas (p. 24).
Figure 10: Evolution of impact indicators (p. 25).
42

Figure 11: Regional distribution of open data remains

irregular (p. 30).

www.opendatabarometer.org

Table 1: Human development and economic classifications of the top ten countries in this years Open
Data Barometer (p.8).
Table 2: New generation of open data adopters challenging the usual global and regional ranking leaders
(p. 9).
Table 3: Summary of data availability, openness and
quality. (p. 19)
Table 4: Summary of data quality checklist results (p.
21).
Table 5: Top ten countries in the Open Data Barometer 3rd edition ranking (p. 30).
Table 6: Bottom ten countries in the Open Data Barometer 3rd edition ranking (p. 31).
Table 7: Complete ranking for the Open Data Barometer 3rd edition (p. 31).

9
Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

The Open Data Barometer is only possible thanks to

the participation of a wide network of contributors.
Our thanks to the following (by alphabetic order):
Lead Authors: Carlos Iglesias and Kristen Robinson.
Contributing Authors: Jose M. Alonso, Anne Jellema
and Dillon Mann.
Research Coordination: Jose M. Alonso and Carlos
Iglesias.
Regional partners: Iniciativa Latinoamericana por
los Datos Abiertos (ILDA) and Open Data Labs.

Methodological updates: Jose M. Alonso, Hania

Farhan and Carlos Iglesias.
Website, data explorer and visualisations: Carlos
Iglesias and the teams from Simbiosys and
Ubiqware.
Design of the PDF report: Nacho Quesada.
Illustrations for the PDF report: Eladio Domnguez.
44

Main researchers: Karin Ahlin, Ricardo Daniel

Alans Tamez, Riyadh Al Balushi, Ignacio Alfaro Marn, Ahmad Atif Mumtaz, Hatem Ben Yacoub, John
Bosco, Javier Casas, Noam Castel, Ravi Chhabra,
Pierre Chrzanowski, Ana Paula Clemente Morais,
Victoria Esteves, Abay Ezra, Soha Farouk, Luis
Alonso Fulchi, Feng Gao, Miguel Garcia, Yamila
Garca, Mila Gasc Hernndez, Felipe Gonzlez,
Alvaro Andres Graves Fuenzalida, Jan Gondol, Elisabeth Hggquist, Colin Hales, Mohammad Rashidul
Hassan Naim, Julien Hivon, Michael Hrz, Daphnee
Iglesias, Thorhildur Jetzek, Hilary Johnson, Evika
Karamagioli, Hiroichi Kawashima, Naim Keruwala,
Haklae Kim, Niklas Kossow, Michal Kuban, Linet
Kwamboka, Julio Lpez Pena, Arthur Glenn Maail,
Leonard Mack, Christiana Maria Mauro, Michelle
McLeod, Dessalegn Mequanint, Zoran Mitrovic,
Chadi Nanaa, Maurizio Napolitano, Seember Nyager, Keng Patipat Susumpow, Adhitya Randy, Igbal
Safarov, Gyanu Sharma, Rayna Stamboliyska, Keisha Taylor, Frank Verschoor, Rose Camille Vincent,
Christopher Wilson, Ramda Yanurzha, Khairil Yusof,
Soenke Ziesche and Ton Zijlstra.
Peer-reviewers: Aleksandar Abu Samra, Karin Ahlin,
Ibrahim Ahmed Elbadawi, Riyadh Al Balushi,
Paula Alzualde, Pascal Bekono, Arthit, Hatem Ben
Yacoub, John Bosco, Matteo Brunati, Raul Alberto
Caceres, Frederico Cavazzini, Pierre Chrzanowski,
Ana Paula Clemente Morais, Alou Dolo, Lorena
Etcheverry, Mila Gasc Hernndez, Jan Gondol,
Felipe Gonzlez, Alvaro Andres Graves Fuenzalida,

www.opendatabarometer.org

Joseph De Guia, Elisabeth Hggquist, Pll Hilmarsson, Julien Hivon, Johann Hchtl, Thar Htet,
Teg-wende Idriss Tinto, Hilary Johnson, Kshitiz
Khanal, Niklas Kossow, Hyeon-suk Lyu, Seember
Nyager, Mary Loitsker, Julio Lopez Pena, Arthur
Glenn Maail, Leonard Mack, Michelle McLeod,
Oscar Francisco Mekler Granillo, Solomon Mekonnen Tekle, Dessalegn Mequanint, Claude Migisha
Kalisa, Linnea Cecilia Mills, Zoran Mitrovic, Alessia
Caterina Neuroni, Iris Bertila Palma Recinos, Juan
Pane, Theodoros Papadopoulos, Iria Puyosa, Adhitya Randy, Igbal Safarov, Rayna Stamboliyska, Iryna
Susha, Thimo Thoeye, Mahadia Tunga, Rose Camille Vincent, Tomoaki Watanabe, Ramda Yanurzha,
Sainan Yu and Soenke Ziesche.
Governments participating in the self-assessment:
Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Ethiopia,
Finland, France, Georgia, Ghana, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Macedonia,
Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands,
New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Saint
Lucia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, United
Kingdom, United States of America and Uruguay.
QA team: Jose M. Alonso, Michael Canares, Frederico Cavazzini, Hania Farhan, Jan Gondol, Felipe
Gonzlez, Carlos Iglesias, Andreas Pawelke and
Hatem Ben Yacoub.
Note: Some other participants, including researchers, reviewers and governments, have asked to
remain anonymous.
Data sources: We are thankful to the following organisations whose data we draw upon in the secondary data portion of the Barometer:

1.

World Economic Forum

2.

World Bank Group

3.

Freedom House

4.

United Nations

Funding: The 3rd edition of the Barometer was supported by the Open Data for Development (OD4D)
programme, a partnership funded by Canadas
International Development Research Centre (IDRC),
the World Bank, United Kingdoms Department
for International Development (DFID), and Global
Affairs Canada (GAC). This work was carried out
with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.

10
About the
Open Data Barometer

About the Open Data Barometer

Produced by the World Wide Web Foundation as a

collaborative work of the Open Data for Development (OD4D) network and with the support of the
Omidyar Network, the Open Data Barometer (ODB)
aims to uncover the true prevalence and impact of
open data initiatives around the world. It analyses
global trends, and provides comparative data on
countries and regions using an in-depth methodology that combines contextual data, technical
assessments and secondary indicators.
Covering 92 countries in the present edition, the
Barometer ranks nations on:

1.

Readiness for open data initiatives

2.

Implementation of open data programmes

3.

Impact that open data is having on business,

politics and civil society

This is the third edition of the Barometer. After two

successful pilots, this edition marks another step
towards becoming a global policy making tool with
a participatory and inclusive process and a strong
regional focus. For the first time, this years ODB
includes an assessment of countries against the
International Open Data Charter principles.
The Barometer is a truly global and collaborative
effort, with input from more than 150 researchers
and government representatives. It takes over six
months and more than 9,000 hours of research
work to compile. During this process, we address
more than 14,000 questions and respond to more
than 5,000 comments and suggestions.
This report is intended to be a summary of some
of the most striking findings. The full data and
methodology is available online, and intended to
support further secondary research into the progression of open data policies and practices across the
world.

ABOUT THE WORLD WIDE WEB FOUNDATION

46

The World Wide Web Foundation was established

in 2009 by Web inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Our
mission? To advance the open Web as a public good
and a basic right.

Thanks to the Web, for the first time in history we

can glimpse a society where everyone, everywhere
has equal access to knowledge, voice and the
ability to create. In this future, vital services such
as health and education are delivered efficiently,
access to knowledge unlocks economic value whilst
access to information enhances transparency and
strengthens democracy. To achieve this vision, the
Web Foundation operates at the confluence of technology, research and development, targeting three
key areas: Access, Rights and Participation.
We seek to harness the potential of open data as a
tool for tackling societys most pressing challenges,
ensuring people are able to access, understand,
and engage with the data directly affecting them.
Our work on open data connects across these
themes, working to support inclusive approaches to
open data impact across the globe and covers:

1.

Co-leading the International Open Data Data

Charter since inception to promote the adoption of global principles for the release of data
and co-chairing the accountability working
group.

www.opendatabarometer.org

2.

Co-chairing the Open Data Working Group of

the Open Government Partnership (200 members 80 governments and 120 civil society
organisations).

3.

Being a member of the Open Data for Development - OD4D - Network to scale effective and
viable open data solutions for economic and
social development.

4.

Harnessing the Data Revolution for inclusive

growth and sustainable development through
the formation of the Global Partnership for
Sustainable Development Data together with
more than 100 other organisations.

5.

Building the Open Contracting Data Standard

to make contracting information more useful
and accessible, enhancing and promoting disclosure and participation in public contracting.

6.

Using a combination of research, incubation,

training and engagement in our Open Data
Labs concept, where our goal is to accelerate
progress and ensure that open data rapidly becomes a vital tool to tackle practical problems
in developing and emerging economies.

7.

Running the Open Data Research Network

17 organizations plus 11 expert mentors from
25 countries. Key outputs include the Open
Data Barometer and the ongoing Open Data in
Developing Countries Research.

ABOUT THE OD4D NETWORK

The OD4D program is managed by Canadas International Development Research Centre (IDRC),
and it is a donor partnership with the World Bank,
United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

OD4D focuses on building up the supply of quality

open data, and also on improving the use of that
data by leaders in government, civil society, the media, and business so that it furthers public interest
and improves peoples lives.

OD4D supports a global network of leading organizations that are creating locally-driven and sustainable open data ecosystems in in Latin America,
the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia and East Europe.
This network builds knowledge and provides
support to governments and policy-makers in key
issues such as policies, standards, innovation, and
skills development.

47

www.opendatabarometer.org

The OD4D program is managed by Canadas International Development Research Centre (IDRC),
and it is a donor partnership with the World Bank,
United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC).
OD4D supports a global network of leading organizations that are creating locally-driven and sustainable open data ecosystems in in Latin America,
the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia and East Europe.
This network builds knowledge and provides
support to governments and policy-makers in key
issues such as policies, standards, innovation, and
skills development.

OD4D focuses on building up the supply of quality

open data, and also on improving the use of that
data by leaders in government, civil society, the media, and business so that it furthers public interest
and improves peoples lives.