1

Contents

2
Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements
Suggested citation: Global Data Barometer (2022). First Edition Report – Global Data Barometer. IL-
DA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6488349

This report and the whole Global Data Barometer project have been possible thanks to the participation
of a large network of collaborators. With thanks to the following (in alphabetical order):

Report authors: Tim Davies & Silvana Fumega with contributions from Jonathan Gray

Project direction: Silvana Fumega

Research and data coordination: Nicolas Grossman

Research and capacity building: David Zamora

Index design and calculation: Nicolas Grossman and David Zamora

Data process and analytical support: Ana Florido

Communication: Fiona Chawana with the key support of Catrina Cortes and Violeta Belver

Early project development: Katie Clancy, Veronica Cretu, Tim Davies, Amy Johnson, Oscar Montiel,
Fernando Perini, Stephen Walker

Survey tool development: David Raznick (Open Data Services Co-operative)

Website visual tools: Socio Publico

Management and administrative host: Ana Sofia Ruiz, Carolina Quintana and Cristina Masis

Financial and in-kind support: IDRC, Global Affairs Canada, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foun-
dation (via Open Data for Development), the Data for Development Global Research Hub (D4D.net),
and UNFPA, thematic and regional partners (see below)

Research Advisory Committee:

• Rachel Adams - Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa

• Ana Brandusescu - McGill University, Canada
• Michael Canares - Step Up Consulting, Philippines
• Craig Hammer - The World Bank
• Arturo Muente Kunigami - Interamerican Development Bank
• Leonida Mutuku - LDRI, Kenya
• Suzana Russell - University of the West Indies, Jamaica
• Fabrizio Scrollini - ILDA, Uruguay
• Stefaan Verhulst - The GovLab, United States of America
• Aimee Whitcroft - Independent Expert, New Zealand

Thematic partners: The Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency, Land Portal, The Open Contracting
Partnership, The Open Government Partnership, Open Ownership and Transparency International.

3
Acknowledgements

Regional partners:

• Access Info Europe

• Birzeit University
• ILDA
• Caribbean Open Institute
• Open Data China
• Open Data Kosovo
• InfoCulture
• Internet Society (HK Chapter)
• Institute for Development of Freedom of Information
• Local Development Research Institute
• Data for Development (D4D) Asia Hub
• The Pacific Community

Local researchers:

For Access Info Europe: Michal Škop, Niels Erik Kaaber Rasmussen, Open Knowledge Estonia, TIEKE
Information Society Development Centre, Caroline Murgue, Elsa Perreau, Denis Parfenov, Openpolis,
Liene Gatere, Rugile Trumpyte, Open State Foundation, Gustavo Magalhaes, Asedie, Elenor Weijmar,
Javier Ruiz, Stephan Anguelov, Gong, Erasmia Tsipou & Sophocles P. Geroules, Christoph Schwaiger,
Transparency International Romania, Lucia Cizmaziova, Rebecca Williams, Suk Kyoung Kim, Guy
Zomer, Elsa Foucraut (TI chapter), Lama Saouma (Canada), Elyse Howe (Australia), Keitha Booth
(New Zealand)

For the Caribbean Open Institute: Michael Yee Shui, Fitzgerald Yaw, Victor Gonzalez, Laurajan Ober-
muller, Michelle McLeod, Louise Mathurin-Serieux, Shurland George

For the Center for Continuing Education at Birzeit University: Hatem Ben Yacoub, Fatma Mosaad, Issa
Al Mahasni, Raed Al Sahrif, Ahmad Qadi

For The Open Development Initiative (East-West Management Institute): Nikesh Balami, Vino Lucero,
Ramathi Bandaranayake, Advocacy and Policy Institute, Chi-Ming Peng, Dr. Yusminar binti Yunus,
Dataful, Antya Widita, Thitima Urapeepathanapong, Munmum Biswas, Institute for Policy Studies and
Media Development (IPS), Nguyen Quang Dong, Tong Khanh Linh, Tran Dang Quang, Nguyen Lan
Phuong

For IDFI Georgia: Arpine Mazhinyan, Igbal Safarov, Mikhail Doroshevich, David Eristavi, Sholpan Aiten-
ova, Gulnura Toralieva, Elberel Tumenjargal, Livia Turcanu, Sandro Rochikashvili, Rustam Muhame-
dov, Nadiia Babynska, Hurriyat Khudoykulova

For ILDA: Virginia Brussa, Milenka Villegas Taguasi, Larissa Galdino de Magalhães Santos, Carlos
David Carrasco Muro, Juan Pablo Marín Díaz, Jorge Umaña Cubillo, Eduardo Bejar, Iris Bertila Palma
Recinos, Julio Roberto Herrera Toledo, Daniel Emilio Rodriguez Rivera, Aura Eréndira Martínez Oriol,
David Riveros García, Aída Martínez Mórtola, Ana Isabel Fiafilio Rodriguez, Eliana Álvarez, Pablo Sec-
chi (TI chapter)

For InfoCulture Russia: Olga Parkhimovich

4
Acknowledgements

For ISOC Chapter Hong Kong: Benjamin Zhou

For Local Development Research Institute (LDRI): Tsandzana Dércio, Kossi Amessinou, Oarabile
Mudongo, Abzeta Koulsoum Ouedraogo, Poncelet O. Ileleji, Donatien Abel Gbessi Gbala, Mobile Web
Ghana, Local Development Research Institute, Lamii Kpargoi, Logos Open Culture, Hatem Ben Ya-
coub, Tsandzana Dércio, Nashilongo Gervasius, Yusuf Suleiman, Richard Ndicunguye, Open Data pour
Elles (Open Data for Her Network), Abdulai Kallon, Mbongeni Hlabano, Emmanuel Vitus, Asma Cherifi

For Open Data China: Feng Gao

For Open Data Kosovo: Dafina Olluri

For The Pacific Community: Ida Carapelle

Additional data review: Mailén García, Larissa Magalhães, Aura Martinez Oriol and Esbeidy Torres
Hondal.

Disclaimer

The data used to produce this report has been produced with the support of the partner organizations.
However, data and analysis does not necessarily represent the views, positions or opinions of those in-
dividual organizations, and any errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the Global Data Barom-
eter project. In particular, the views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its
Board of Governors. The data in used in this report belongs to the period May 2019 - May 2021.

5
Introduction

Data is a source of power. It can be exploited for private gain, and used to limit freedom, or it can be de-
ployed for the public good: as a resource for tackling social challenges, enabling collaboration, driving
innovation and improving accountability.

Over the last decade, data has risen to the top of national and global policy agendas: as nations seek to
develop their economies, use data to address social challenges, and respond to citizen concerns about
the uses and abuses of data. Yet, progress towards effective data governance, and to realising the pub-
lic value of data, remains highly uneven across countries, regions and sectors. For example, while data
protection laws are now widespread across the globe, many lack key redress mechanisms to allow indi-
viduals and communities to effectively exercise their data rights, and few comprehensively address
emerging issues around location data, or algorithmic decision-making. In critical areas like climate ac-
tion, significant data gaps can frustrate local action to protect ecosystems and respond to climate vul-
nerability. And when we look beyond the simple availability of datasets, to examine whether the data
provided meets user needs, we find cases of data that’s collected and shared, but that lacks key fea-
tures or quality assurances that would allow it to properly power civic action, improved public services,
and economic development.

This first edition of the Global Data Barometer provides evidence and insight into the development of
national and global data ecosystems: offering critical comparisons, analysis and examples that can help
drive top-down and bottom-up action to realize the opportunities of the ‘data revolution’[1,2], while navi-
gating its risks. In this sense, the Barometer aims not only to produce assessments of countries based
on the state of their data, but also to assemble and support collective learning around what works, and
about how to effectively intervene with and around data. In this report we summarize a number of key
findings and highlight how the data gathered through the Barometer can be used in further exploratory
work.

Barometer highlights
Shaping data for the public good is possible. But there is a long way to go. Nearly every bench-
mark set by our survey indicators was met somewhere in the world - showing that it is possible to both
govern data well, and to make it available and used for the public good. However, no individual country
scored over 70 out of 100, and the mean country score against the Barometer benchmark was 34.38
out of 100. This shows that every country has work to do updating policy, building capacity, sharing da-
ta, and promoting data use in order to make sure that data works as resource for sustainable develop-
ment, and highlights the importance of continued focus on shaping data policy and practice to deliver
the public good.

Open data agendas are alive, but not spreading. Applying open data criteria strictly, there has been
little growth in the percentage of datasets that are fully machine-readable, openly licensed, freely avail-
able, and in bulk (10.63%) since the last global measure carried out by the Open Data Barometer in
2016. Although new national open data initiatives have launched since 2016, others have disappeared.
However, where initiatives have been sustained, they are often better resourced and more embedded
than they were in the past, and open data principles are also embedded in a number of sectoral initia-
tives.

Capacity gaps remain a drag on delivering value from data. While digital divides in terms of access
may be narrowing, bringing more people into a datafied society, gaps in terms of government, private
sector and civil society capability to create and use data for the public good remains significant. Limited

7
Introduction

provision of training and capacity building in government risks undermining the production and gover-
nance of high-quality data, and there is pressing need to move from ad-hoc and small-scale training to
building the data literacy of societies at scale.

Well-drafted frameworks deliver better data. We’ve looked at 7 different sectoral policies, and exam-
ined how far governance rules require data to be collected and shared in structured forms. Examining
the implementation gap between rules and data availability highlights that when rules are explicit about
data collection and sharing, data is more likely to be available, open, and to contain the data fields that
matter.

Partnerships are powering data use. Collaboration between traditional civil society and civic technolo-
gists, or between journalists and private sector application providers are driving new uses of data to
highlight corruption, promote public integrity, monitor environmental issues and shape policy debates.

By looking at data practices in specific sectors, this first edition of the Global Data Barometer con-
tributes to work exploring, among other topics:

Climate action. The global response to COVID-19 demonstrated that new data infrastructures can be
built rapidly, yet there are significant and pressing gaps in the availability of emissions, biodiversity, and
climate vulnerability datasets. Data that should be available to support local action on combatting, and
adapting to, climate change is often only available in aggregated and out-of-date forms. Our evidence
has the potential to support participatory action on improving climate data ecosystems by helping com-
munities identify and compare good practices, and gaps.

Political integrity. If countries that are already providing political integrity information online were to
shift from paper-based processes to collecting structured data, they could unlock new approaches to
accountability. Although a lack of interoperability among political integrity datasets remains a key prob-
lem in many countries, our data can be used to explore bright-spots and best-practice examples where
digital-first disclosure systems are driving change. We also provide new baseline evidence on the
prevalence of rules for disclosure of lobbying and highlight a lack of structured lobbying data available,
enabling progress towards greater disclosure to be tracked in future.

Public finance and contracting. The relatively high levels of structured and open data publication de-
tected by our survey for government budget and spending data, and for public procurement data, sug-
gest a positive influence of global campaigns and capacity-building initiatives in promoting data publica-
tion and use. However, a close look at the available data also reveals that while data is increasingly
available on the ‘input’ side of public investment (e.g. budget allocations, contracting tenders and
awards, etc.), there is significant progress still to be made in tracking the ‘output’ side by providing
joined-up data on the implementation of contracts, or the impacts of spending, particularly on issues of
equity and sustainable development.

Regional analysis, and recommendations against each of the Global Data Barometer’s four pillars, high-
light areas for action, tailored to different country contexts. These include calls to:

Strengthen leadership and strategy to scale up and embed the skills, institutions, and freedoms re-
quired for data to be governed and used for the public good.

Develop robust data sharing frameworks including at the sub-national level, so that potential data
abuses are limited, and positive re-use of data, whether from public, private or non-profit sectors, is en-
abled.

Deepen emphasis on equity and inclusion, recognizing that data governance, capability, availability
and use all need to explicitly consider the needs of marginalized populations.

Increase the transparency of government data use and make the public more aware of when gov-
ernments are collecting, sharing or using data. This can promote more accountable data practice and
support greater collaboration across sectors in using data effectively.

8
Introduction

In the regional analysis chapter, we identify potential strengths and weaknesses for each country, as
well as flag where countries may offer potential bright-spot examples with potential for peer-learn. This
chapter also offers valuable indications of how far open data policies and initiatives in each country
have improved or moved backward since the last comparable measures in 2016, 2017 or 2020.

About the Barometer

The Global Data Barometer (hereafter, the Barometer) is a project of the Data for Development Network
(D4D.net) and builds upon the Open Data Barometer (ODB) study, run by the Web Foundation and the
Open Data for Development Network (OD4D) between 2013 and 2020 (with the final global edition com-
pleted in 2016, and the final regional edition, based in Latin America and the Caribbean, completed by
ILDA in 2020). The new Barometer draws on primary data from a global expert survey carried out in
mid-2021 and looks at evidence for the period May 1st 2019 - May 1st 2021. This is combined with sec-
ondary data from trusted sources to generate a range of metrics. The Barometer provides:

• Rating not ranking - primary indicators and scores are based on a 0 - 100 scale, where
100 is designed to measure ‘best practice’, defined against internationally agreed norms or
frameworks. Few countries score 100 out of 100 on any indicator. While comparisons be-
tween countries can be used to look for relative strengths and weaknesses, the greater val-
ue in this model is in showing individual areas for improvement in each country.

• Indicators and evidence - primary indicators are made up of a number of structured sub-
questions and are backed with qualitative evidence that can be used to gain a deeper un-
derstanding of each country’s context.

• Responsive assessment - indicators have been designed to accommodate differing politi-

cal systems and state structures (e.g. federal and non-federal systems), while reserving the
highest scores for cases where governance rules, data capabilities, or available data pro-
vide coverage of the whole of a country’s population.

• A global network - research has been carried out through a network of regional hubs,
mainly by in-country researchers. Findings have then been cross-checked with a network of
global thematic expert partners. This model contributes to global capacity building, creating
a community of researchers and practitioners exploring data for the public good.

• Actionable insights - each Barometer indicator has been designed to measure features of
governance, capability, availability and data use that are within the power of governments to
address, and of national and international civil society to support and influence.

• Open data - all the scores and evidence gathered by the Barometer are published along-
side this report as open data, supporting further research and analysis. We welcome further
work to remix Barometer results.

The Global Data Barometer looks beyond the legal and technical conventions of open data to explore
broader landscapes of data availability, governance, use and impact, aiming to put issues and commu-
nities at the centre. Rather than only focusing on how data is made available by governments, it also
explores the social life and settings of data and how it has been put to work in relation to issues – in-
cluding through “bright spot” examples, as well as citizens, journalists and activist groups who make
and use data. The Barometer aims not only to produce assessments of countries based on the state of
their data, but also to assemble and support collective learning around what works and how to effective-
ly intervene with and around data.

9
Introduction

Ultimately, we hope that this first edition of the Global Data Barometer will contribute not only to improv-
ing the governance, availability and use of data, but will also help to develop civil society capacity to de-
mocratically shape the “data revolution”. Broadening participation around public data advocacy and poli-
cy-making around the world increases the chances of changing what counts and composing data infra-
structures that are capable of making a difference.

About this report

This report provides an overview of Barometer findings. The Barometer includes 39 primary indicators,
and over 500 sub-questions, covering 109 countries (delivering more than 60,000 data points in total).
In this report, we select just a few of these to explore, providing a non-exhaustive overview of some of
the topics that could be explored further using Barometer data.

• Section 1 provides a short overview of the key concepts used in the Barometer and a short
description of the methodology
• Section 2 looks at the four key pillars of the Barometer (governance, capability, availability
and use), and provides headlines from each.
• Section 3 provides a regional analysis, drawing on insights from Barometer regional hubs to
understand the unique context of each region and the relative strengths and weaknesses of
countries.
• Section 4 provides a short summary of learning from the first edition and highlights direc-
tions for future work

The full methodology, and details of how to access and work further with Barometer data, are contained
in Appendices.

About the Data for Development Network

(D4D.net)
D4D.net is a global research alliance that works to strengthen collaboration across a broad network of
stakeholders by developing and mobilising the knowledge needed to advance the use of data to ad-
dress critical development challenges across the Global South. D4D.net was launched in 2021 as an
initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and builds on the activities of the
OD4D network and global partners interested in strengthening collaboration on open data, responsible
AI, big data, privacy rights, intellectual property, cybersecurity, online surveillance, CRVS, and more.

10
Introduction

Data for the public good

What does it mean to assess data for the public good?

A number of thinkers have discussed the idea that digital data should be treated as a public good[3]. In
other words, use of a dataset by one person does not diminish the availability of that dataset to other
users, hence the greatest value for data can be created by providing free and open access to data. For
many datasets, value is also increased through scale and standardisation: network effects[4] mean that
although having, for example, data from one country is useful, it can be more than twice as valuable to
make connections between datasets from two or more countries. This is one of the reasons why multi-
national firms with vast data resources have become so powerful. And it is one of the reasons why de-
veloping open data as a public good often involves an effort to create new, interoperable, public data in-
frastructures that can join the dots between datasets from different countries and regions. The idea of
data as a public good was central to the Open Data Barometer (our predecessor study).

However, there are exceptions to the idea that all data should be ‘open by default’, such as when the
data is subject to legitimate privacy interests, or when there is significant potential for harm to result
from data use. The data spectrum[5] is a widely used tool that highlights that while some datasets might
be best thought of as a public good and provided openly, other datasets may be better managed as
shared club goods, commons, or private property, and other datasets (e.g. sensitive personal data)
should be managed as closed resources, carefully protected and only made available under strictly con-
trolled arrangements.

In the Global Data Barometer, when we talk about data for the public good, we are ultimately seeking to
ask two related questions:

• Is data of all forms (closed, shared and open) managed in ways that promote the public
good?

• Is relevant data being collected, shared and opened to support particular wider public goods
(health, education, sustainable development, justice etc.)?

Importantly, we recognize that the public good is a contested concept. There are many publics, many
different visions of how society should be organized, and there are many views on the goals we should
individually and collectively work towards. In the Barometer, the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), agreed through a broad international process, provide a common point of reference for identify-
ing a set of particular public goods that data might help deliver, and that we can provide some global as-
sessment against: from good health for all, to climate action, and to just and strong institutions.

Alongside the SDGs, we draw on other widely adopted international agreements and norms to guide the
metrics that we have used. We also make all our underlying data available to allow for deeper, and/or
alternative, analysis. The Barometer contains, among other data points, details on: the particular fea-
tures of data governance rules; the kinds of stakeholders targeted by capacity building interventions; the
particular properties of published datasets; and examples of data use and impacts. This reflects the
need to go beyond simply asking about the online availability of certain datasets, to ask: whether the
provision of data is built on solid foundations; whether data has the features required for it to be used in
solving particular public problems; and whether communities have widely distributed capabilities to work
with data.

The motivation for exploring these questions can be found in four assumptions embedded in the Barom-
eter about what it means to work towards data for the public good:

11
Introduction

• The collection and sharing of data should be governed by legitimate public rules that re-
spect fundamental rights;

• Countries and communities need broad-based and widely distributed capabilities for data
sharing, publication and use in order for data to be governed and used domestically for the
public good;

• Particular high-priority datasets need to be available, accessible, open and, in many cases,
interoperable for re-use to support widespread data use for particular public goods;

• There is a positive feedback loop between data use and data supply that can contribute to
thriving national and sectoral ecosystems of data for the public good.

Of particular note, in the Barometer we ask at a number of points whether the frameworks governing
data availability and use are clearly set out, and whether they have the force of law. In other words, is it
theoretically possible for citizens to hold powerful actors to account, and in states with a degree of pub-
lic participation in law making, are the rules themselves subject to some form of citizen control or over-
sight? Of course, states vary substantially in how far the rule of law operates, the extent to which laws
reflect public or private interests, and the extent to which all peoples in their jurisdiction are afforded
rights of citizenship. Individuals may also increasingly have access to novel data governance arrange-
ments which are less directly reliant on state jurisdictions[6,7]. In this first edition of the Barometer, we
don’t yet fully take all these elements into account.

You will notice also throughout this first edition that we focus primarily on the availability and use of
public data for the public good. In other words, although we include indicators that address the gover-
nance of private data (e.g. presence of data protection laws and institutions) and have asked re-
searchers to tell us, when government is not providing data, whether it is available from other sources,
including the private sector, we do not measure the effectiveness of governance mechanisms in pro-
tecting citizens in a given country from harms from private sector uses or abuses of data, nor do we
capture comparative cross-country evidence on the extent to which private sector data is being used to
deliver the public good in particular contexts. This omission does not mean these issues are not impor-
tant, rather, they were more difficult to address throughout current methodology of country-level re-
search.

Fundamentally, our approach to the public good recognizes that the construction of public good is an
ongoing, unfinished and contested process. A greater role for data in society will not inevitably lead to
better societies: data policies and practices need to be intentional if they are to deliver change, and it is
ultimately the focus and progress of this intentional work that the Barometer measures.

Beyond data for good?

There are a number of ‘data for good’ (or increasingly, with emphasis on the data analysis methods used,
‘artificial intelligence for good’) projects around the world. These look to make use of public or private
datasets towards some (often loosely defined) social good goal. Discussions of ‘data for good’ are generally
restricted to exploring whether particular social good uses of a dataset were successful against their stated
aims.

However, a dataset that is used ‘for good’ in one instance, may also be used ‘for bad’ in others, or may
have been collected, managed or more widely used in ways that act against the public good. For this rea-
son, a data for the public good lens seeks to take a broader look at concepts of data governance, capability,
availability and use.

12
Methodology

Building the Barometer

The Global Data Barometer (GDB) was born out of previous work on the Open Data Barometer
(ODB)[8], “a global measure of how governments are publishing and using open data for accountability,
innovation and social impact”. This was in turn prompted by the crowd-sourced Open Data Index[9],
which sought to provide “the most comprehensive snapshot available of the state of open government
data publication”. The Open Data Index started with a list of ten areas of data “which most governments
could reasonably be expected to collect”, and asked seven questions about the availability of data in
these areas. The Open Data Barometer added further questions about readiness, implementation and
impact in order to appraise the state of open data around the world. Four full editions of the Open Data
Barometer were produced by the World Wide Web Foundation between 2013 and 2016, with a smaller
30-country ‘Leaders edition’ published in 2018. A separate edition of the Open Data Barometer for Latin
America and the Caribbean[10] was produced in 2020/21 by ILDA.

In mid-2019, discussion began with the Open Data for Development (OD4D) network and Open Gov-
ernment Partnership (OGP) research team about ‘rebooting’ the ODB: in particular to provide updated
data on the availability of certain key datasets. Through an initial scoping process, informed by the con-
clusions of The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons book[11] and interviews with past users of
the ODB, we identified the need for a broader framework that reflects current data debates: looking not
only at open data, but also at data sharing and the governance of private data. In early 2020, we
brought together members of the OD4D network and invited experts to shape the design of a new study
and survey instrument. This led to a framing around ‘data for the public good’, and the choice to move
from indicators scored against on a guided 0 - 10 scale to using indicator scores based on detailed and
discrete sub-questions that generate a score from 0 - 100. Participants at the design workshop asked
that each data-point in the study be based upon existing normative frameworks, international agree-
ments, standards or evidence, and that the study design be better able to surface ‘bright spots’ and en-
courage peer-learning, as opposed to placing emphasis on country rankings. By clustering prospective
indicators, the workshop developed the four pillar structure of the GDB: governance, capability, avail-
ability, and use and impact.

Governance Capabilities Availability Use and Impact

Covering data manage-

Covering foundations
ment; data protection;
(e.g. connectivity; education), Addressing data existence,
data sharing and open
government data capability features (quality), openness, Preliminary analysis based
data, as well as looking
and institutions, and capability and coverage (extent) across on example use-cases.
at how data is ad-
within private sector & civil so- a number of thematic areas.
dressed within sectoral
ciety.
regulations.

14
Methodology

With funding support from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the new
Data for Development Network (D4D.net), a small Barometer team started work in mid-2020 to more
fully conceptualize the new study, exploring a wide range of data themes. Working with thematic and re-
gional partners, draft indicators and a researcher handbook were published in early 2021. In response
to project disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and early testing that revealed a significant
potential trade-off between question quantity and answer quality, the first edition of the Barometer was
reduced in scope to focus on a limited number of thematic indicators.

Indicators for the first edition were prioritized based on the presence of partnerships that could support
data review, analysis and re-use, and to fill critical data gaps in areas of global importance. We chose to
focus in particular on the intersection of data with long-standing issues of accountability, power and
money, and to include a focus on urgent global issues including the climate emergency and the
COVID-19 pandemic. The intent of the Barometer is to expand thematic coverage year-on-year with
managed change over time in the sample of thematic datasets, capabilities, governance rules and use-
cases explored: balancing longitudinal comparability with responsiveness to emerging data issues. A re-
search advisory committee reviewed the final design of the Barometer’s indicator framework, providing
critical feedback that was used to strengthen the study.

From May 2021 until late 2021, field work took place in 109 countries, managed through a network of
regional hubs. An expert researcher for each country completed an in-depth survey with responses go-
ing through regional and global reviews. Preliminary data was shared with thematic partners for addi-
tional validation with responses cross-checked, outliers reviewed, and final validation checks carried out
by the Barometer team. In parallel, secondary data sources were accessed, reviewed and normalized.
(Note that while the data used to produce this report has been produced with the support of the partner
organizations, data and analysis does not necessarily represent the views, positions or opinions of
those individual organizations, and any errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the Global Data
Barometer project.)

Once initial data was available, regional and thematic partners used dashboards from the Barometer
team, and their own data analysis, to identify key themes and messages. These have informed the
drafting of this global report. The regional chapter presents reports from each research hub.

Throughout this process we have critically reflected upon the Barometer methodology, identifying partic-
ular research challenges to be addressed in future iterations of the project. The release of this report,
and the accompanying presentation and open datasets available from the Barometer website, marks
the end of the first phase of building the Barometer. Yet, there is much more work to be done. The final
section of this report outlines some of the areas for future development, and some of the learning to
take forward into the next stages of this work.

Countries and governments

Barometer data has been collected at the country level. To reflect an inclusive and citizen-centric perspec-
tive on the ultimate usability and governance of data, while also accommodating federal systems, indicators
have been designed to give the highest scores when rules, interventions or data has nationwide coverage
with no significant omissions. However, indicators are also sensitive to identifying good practice at a sub-na-
tional level, even when this is not reflected nationwide.

In short, while it should be possible, for example, to identify and explore examples of good practice from a
country with high quality land ownership data available for a major city or sub-national state, the highest
scores should be reserved for countries that provide land ownership data meeting the needs of all citizens,
whether urban or rural, or regardless of the kind of tenure they are interested in.

The Barometer has also been designed to focus on issues that are within the power of governments to af-
fect. Governments have a range of tools at their disposal, from policy-making and legislation, to providing
incentives or building shared infrastructures for data accessibility and use.

15
Methodology

Survey methodology
Years covered by Country Surveys
Regional Hubs Researchers Thematic Partners Secondary indicators
survey Completed

2 109 12 113 6 14

Data Points Collected

Primary Indicators Primary Variables (including supporting Unique URLs reviewed Words of justification
data)

39 607 107,389 17799 581040

At the heart of Barometer data collection is our expert survey. Each regional hub recruited and trained
country researchers, who carried out initial data collection, following a detailed research handbook
(available online at https://handbook.globaldatabarometer.org/2021/). Survey responses were then re-
viewed by regional hubs and other national researchers with comments sent back to researchers to car-
ry out additional evidence collection and checking. A further round of review and researcher-led updates
took place with input from the global team and from thematic partners, comparing responses to specific
questions across countries. During a final validation phase, further corrections and updates were made
by the global team, drawing on evidence from country researchers and thematic partners. In several
countries data coming from the government survey (a shorter version of the expert survey) was also
taken into account during the review process.

Most expert survey indicators are based on a common pattern, consisting of three subsections:

• Existence - assessing whether there is evidence that a governance framework, capability,

type of data, or data use exists in the country, and the nature of that existence.
• Elements - generally split into two parts to assess:
• Quality related features of a law, dataset or capability. Wherever possible, the
selection of features was based on both widely agreed international norms, and
on clear use-cases.
• (Open) data related features of a law or dataset, using a common set of sub-
questions to assess issues such as references to/presence of structured data
and licenses.
• Extent - assessing whether the governance, capability or data evaluated is applicable, rele-
vant or useful across the whole country and for all citizens, or whether it has limitations. In
the case of data use indicators, this looks at evidence that use is leading to impacts.

Researchers provided a written justification and sources for each indicator, and many sub-questions in-
vited additional supporting information, such as:

• The URL to specific laws, policies, or dataset distributions

• The file format in which data is available
• The license under which a dataset is published
• The most recent update date of a dataset

The written justifications, and supporting data are all contained in the Barometer’s open dataset, linked
to question responses, as a resource for future research.

The majority of questions in the element subsection could be scored on a scale of ‘No’, ‘Partially’ or
‘Yes’. The ‘Partially’ option was introduced to respond to variation between countries that may mean, for
example, that a particular dataset feature does not exist in the way described by the question, but is
available in a comparable form, or a form with a notable limitation, or to capture cases where a sub-
question asks whether a list of components are present in a dataset, and only some were found. In se-
lected indicators, specific guidance on when to use the partial response was provided to researchers.
Most ‘partial’ answers triggered a supplementary question asking for detailed justifications. Partial sub-
question answers receive 50% of the score that a ‘Yes’ answer receives.

16
Methodology

These element sub-question scores sum up 100 points, meaning that, for example, a dataset with all
the quality and openness features, will start the assessment with a score of 100. This score is then re-
duced proportionally if existence or extent sub-questions indicate that there are factors that weaken the
availability, enforceability or scope of the relevant datasets, frameworks or interventions. For example,
there may be a strong governance framework for data protection, but that only applies in a particular
sector such as health, or that only applies in one of the states of a federal system.

To achieve this, questions in the existence and extent subsections work as multipliers (with the excep-
tion of the governance indicator ‘To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and guidance re-
quire that data collection and publication be accessible to people with disabilities?’, where only extent
and not existence is used as a multiplier). For example, if the existence and nature of a framework of a
dataset meets the highest bar set by the Barometer (e.g. has the force of law, or is released by the gov-
ernment), then the multiplier value is 1. If a dataset is available, but not as a result of government ac-
tions, the multiplier will be 0.9. This makes the maximum score available for datasets not provided from
government 90 points overall (100 * 0.9). The same thing occurs with Extent subsection: a capability,
framework or data availability with a wide coverage will keep all points earned at the elements subsec-
tion, while an isolated example will be affected by the multiplier reducing its score.

A full table of multipliers is provided in the appendix.

Secondary data

In addition to 39 primary indicators, pillar and module scores also draw upon 14 secondary indicators.
These are taken from carefully reviewed external sources and have been each transformed onto a 0 -
100 scale, with missing values imputed where appropriate. A full list of secondary indicators is included
in the methodology appendix.

Scoring and calculation

Individual primary and secondary indicator scores each belong to both a pillar and a module and are
used to calculate:

• An overall score representing the performance of a country across the four pillars.
• Pillar scores for the governance, capability, availability and use and impact pillars.
• Module scores for each of the thematic modules (Company Information, Land, Political In-
tegrity, Public Finance, Public Procurement, Climate Action, Health & Covid-19)

Each indicator is first assigned a weight based on the indicator type with primary indicators weighted
higher than secondary, and governance, capability and availability indicators weighted higher than use
and impact. Secondary indicator weights are also differentiated based on the type of secondary source,
with secondary index variables weighted higher than single metrics from a secondary source, and those
higher than dichotomous secondary variables. A full breakdown of the weighting is provided in the
methodology appendix. Weights are scaled to place each pillar or module score on a 0 - 100 scale, and
each indicator is then multiplied by its weight and the results summed.

In-line with the design of the Barometer as a rating, rather than ranking instrument, we do not carry out
any min-max scaling of results, meaning that a country would only score 100 out of 100 on a given pillar
if all the input indicators also score 100 out of 100. The gap between a country score and 100 on any
pillar or module score therefore represents the gap between current performance, and a normative ideal
that the Barometer indicators represent.

17
Methodology

However, the Barometer norms are not designed to be unattainable. If we take the maximum score giv-
en on each indicator and construct an imaginary country that combines the best performance found
across each of the countries in the Barometer, it would score 95.92, proving that virtually all the bench-
marks set by the Barometer are, in theory, attainable today.

Learning and limitations

In seeking to provide a broad view of data for the public good, across more than 100 different countries,
the Barometer has an ambitious goal. While this report and the dataset released alongside it, move us
closer to delivering on that goal, it is important to note some limitations of both the Barometer methodol-
ogy and the data gathered in this first edition in particular:

• We were not able to include as many data governance or capability indicators as we had ini-
tially planned. In particular, we have more limited coverage of artificial intelligence uses of
data and only initial insights into data sharing frameworks and capabilities. However, the
GDB is an innovative measurement tool that offers unique perspectives on the use of data
worldwide. As such, this tool will need to be further refined and evaluated to increase its ac-
curacy, and potentially include new indicators and themes.

• Few secondary sources we identified offered gender disaggregation, and our expert survey
method offers only limited opportunities to gather robust evidence on the extent to which da-
ta revolutions are gender-balanced or have significantly gendered impacts. While some indi-
cators include sub-questions on gender and inclusion, we have not always been able to in-
clude these in indicator scores. Additional efforts will be added to future editions to provide
many other data points around inclusion, in general, and gender equality, in particular.

• Certain survey questions were less successful at generating robust comparable data. There
have been multiple rounds of review, however, it remains possible there are both false-posi-
tives and false-negatives in the Barometer data when examining whether certain gover-
nance rules, datasets or uses exist, and assessing the elements or features they have.
Therefore, we are providing opportunities for users to contact the Barometer and express
their opinions on particular answers, if needed.

• We were only able to include a small number of use and impact indicators in this edition.
These indicators also generated some particular data collection challenges as the availabili-
ty of evidence on data use and impact varies significantly between countries, not always in
proportion to the actual levels of data use. Therefore, the use and impact pillar has limited
weight in final score calculations to reflect this - and cross-country comparison of use and
impact scores should be treated with caution. However, the qualitative data from these indi-
cators offers valuable insights into data use worldwide.

Throughout this report, specific methodological limitations are noted where relevant. Like many of the
datasets surveyed by the Barometer, our data should be approached critically and as one tool among
others for constructing knowledge and action.

Use the data

All the data and evidence collected by the Global Data Barometer is available as open data for further
analysis. You can:

• Read the research handbook to see how each primary indicator was defined and review
the guidance given to researchers.
• Access overall scores by pillar, module, indicator or country.
• Explore the supporting data to examine justifications, examples and sub-question re-

18
Methodology

sponses.

Find out how to access Barometer datasets at https://www.globaldatabarometer.org

Regional clusters

In this report, we use six regional clusters to present data. The regions used are based on both geo-
graphic proximity, and how countries were addressed by our regional research hubs. Each research
hub was invited to select the countries they would focus on based on regional priorities and practical
considerations. The full list of countries in each region can be found in Section 3, along with details of
the hubs working on that region. The regions we use in the report are:

• Africa
• Eastern Europe and Central Asia
• European Union, United Kingdom, North America, Israel, Australia and New Zealand (some-
times referenced as ‘EU, North America+’)
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
• South and East Asia

Regional groupings: Map showing assignment of countries to regional clusters/groups.

19
Pillars
• Governance

• Capabilities

• Availability

• Use and impact

Pillars

The Global Data Barometer is based around four pillars, each representing a different aspect of data for
the public good:

• Governance involves making sure that the collection and sharing of data is governed by le-
gitimate public rules that respect fundamental rights. This covers rules that restrict access
to, and use of, certain kinds of data and rules that promote availability and re-use of other
kinds of data.

• Capabilities relate to the resources (connectivity, skills, institutions, training, etc.) and the
opportunities to use them (political freedoms, supportive environment etc.), that support col-
lection, management, sharing, and use of data in ways that can contribute to sustainable
development.

• Availability surveys the presence, openness and key features of selected datasets in order
to understand how far each country is making key datasets accessible in structured online
forms that are fit-for-purpose for public good use-cases.

• Use & impact looks for evidence of particular cases of data use and explores which stake-
holder groups are making use of data in each country.

The following sections present key data from each of these pillars, drawing on both the quantitative
Barometer indicators, and qualitative evidence.

21
Pillars | Governance

Governance
Governments can shape the collection, availability and use of data in a number of key ways, including
by setting rules, adopting norms, following good practices, and establishing or engaging with oversight
institutions and networks.

Governing data for the public good combines good data management with the provision of robust poli-
cies and frameworks that both protect the data rights of individuals and communities, and that make
non-sensitive data widely available for re-use. Data governance for the public good should explicitly ad-
dress issues of inclusion, ensuring that the production and use of data narrows, rather than widens, so-
cial inequality.

In this first edition of the Barometer, we have looked specifically at how far data governance is based on
binding rules. In other words, are there laws, regulations, policies or guidance that are enforceable, and
that, assuming the functioning rule of law, provide the foundations for a consistent and stable approach
to how data-related issues will be managed.

Summary
• Countries increasingly have laws for protection of personal data. 98 out of the 109 countries
surveyed by the Barometer have some form of framework, although in 13 countries these
lack the force of law, and in 12 countries protections are limited to particular sectors, lacking
full coverage of both public and private sector data use. The majority of frameworks embed
clear principles of choice or consent, and rights to access and correct data. However, fewer
cover breach notification, and there is evidence of a need to modernize many frameworks
so that they better address particular risks around location data and the algorithmic use of
personal data.

• Data management and open data policies are increasingly well-established, although far
fewer countries have robust data frameworks to govern data-sharing, potentially creating
gaps when it comes to both the facilitation and regulation of the exchange of sensitive data
between government and other sectors, and limiting opportunities to secure the trustworthy
use of data for the public good. 30 countries now have legally binding open data policies, al-
though many countries are yet to adequately address the standardisation and interoperabili-
ty of published open data.

• Just over half of the sectoral laws and frameworks we identified addressed the collection
and publication of data within binding rules. Public finance, right to information (RTI) perfor-
mance and asset declaration rules were the most likely to specify that data collected should
be published as structured open data. Although many frameworks address data quality
through establishing oversight institutions, less than half of frameworks set out verification
processes, and just 36.69% explicitly support collection of structured data. There is a clear
link between laws specifying that data should be published and data being made available,
although the ‘implementation gap’ between requirements to publish and publication varies
by sector.

22
Pillars | Governance

Governance pillar regional scores: Our EU, North America+ regional grouping achieves the highest scores on the governance
pillar. Countries in Middle East and North Africa have the lowest average score.

A note on ‘frameworks’
In the Barometer we often abbreviate “relevant laws, regulations, policies, and guidance” as “framework.”
This is because the basis for governing, collecting or publishing data is often distributed across multiple
laws, regulations, policies, and guidance documents. For example, one law may empower an agency to col-
lect data, another regulation or memorandum may specify that data should be provided in a structured form,
and another law may mandate that when data is provided, it should be under open license. “Framework” is
used to represent the collection of relevant laws, regulations, policies, and guidance, it does not imply that a
government itself necessarily presents or understands these as a unified framework.

How well developed are data protection frameworks?

The steady growth in the global coverage of data protection laws has been widely studied[12,13], and
Barometer evidence reflects the trend with 98 (89.9%) of the countries surveyed having some form of
data protection framework. However, of these, a number are limited to particular sectors, such as finan-
cial services, or apply only to central government data collection, providing no protection for citizens
against data abuses by the private sector. In other cases, the public sector is exempted from data pro-
tection requirements. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, South and
East Asia and Africa there are still countries yet to establish any form of data protection framework, or
where frameworks need significant strengthening.

Robust data protection frameworks should be seen as a pre-requisite for work that promotes the re-use
of data that may be ultimately derived from, or linked to, data about individuals, although they are only
one part of a robust data governance regime, which must also consider how to regulate other forms of
data-related harm. Recent developments in global standards for data protection frameworks have
placed particular emphasis on improving breach notification, recognizing particular sensitivities of loca-
tion data, and addressing the use of data within artificial intelligence applications and algorithms[14,15].

23
Pillars | Governance

What features do data protection frameworks contain?: The majority of data protection frameworks cover choice and consent,
access and correction, responsibility for data holders and rights of redress. Fewer cover data breach notification, and a minority
explicitly address location related data, and use of data in algorithmic decision making.

Barometer data shows that, while certain aspects of data protection regulation are widespread, 45 of
the countries with frameworks (45.9 %) appear to lack robust provisions for data breach notifications,
and 29 (29.6%) have limited right of redress in cases of harm arising from abuses of data. Just 23
(23.5%) available frameworks robustly address location data, with marginally more (31 / 31.6%) ad-
dressing algorithmic decision-making.

Notably, in 21.4% of the countries with frameworks, researchers reported at least some degree of limita-
tions being placed on the operation of data protection frameworks in the context of the COVID-19 pan-
demic, ranging from regulators announcing they would take a lighter-touch approach to reporting and
enforcement for organizations involved in pandemic response, through to suspension of consent re-
quirements for health-related data sharing, or making allowances to enable mobile phone records for
monitoring population movements. While in some cases, this involved using provisions already in place
for emergency situations, campaigners have expressed concern that some data protection processes
may have been weakened during pandemic response, highlighting a need to both track how far exemp-
tions or changes stay in force after the pandemic and to explore whether regulators return to review any
practices that might have developed during a period of softer regulation.

It is also worth noting that there are increasing concerns that individual rights-based data protection
frameworks only cover some of the potential harms of data collection and use that need to be managed.
The qualitative data collected by the Barometer offers some insight into how national data protection
systems are functioning, but future work will need to address a wider range of modalities for ensuring
data is not used to threaten the rights of both individuals and communities.

How well developed are data management, sharing

and access frameworks?
Selected governance pillar indicator scores

Countries with data management frameworks Countries with data sharing frameworks Countries with open data policies

71.6% 62.4% 67.9%

Mean score: 30.28 out of 10 Mean score: 24.05 out of 10 Mean score: 37.69 out of 10

The value of data for the public good, regardless of whether it is open data or not, is increased when
data is more easily discoverable, when data comes with clear documentation, when data quality has
been assured, when appropriate technical standards are used, and when user feedback is sought to im-
prove data management. Governments may promote consistent and high quality approaches to data
management through a variety of routes, including national data strategies, data management guidance

24
Pillars | Governance

and data management standards. Clear frameworks for data management and sharing can also protect
against harms of data misuse by ensuring data is handled according to transparent processes, and that
there are lines of accountability around data use.

The Barometer asked researchers to look for the presence of data management frameworks and to ex-
plore their features. We found 36 (33%) countries with binding data management frameworks and an
additional 42 (38.5%) with less-than-binding frameworks (for example, guidance or strategies). Of
these, just 8 (10.3%) had evidence of robust documented mechanisms to solicit or integrate feedback
from external users to improve data quality, although 49 (62.8%) referenced minimum standards for
meta-data.

Overall, 29 countries scored greater than 50 out of 100 for the quality and coverage of their data man-
agement frameworks. As our data management indicator has been designed to be broadly comparable
with an earlier Open Data Barometer indicator, used since 2015, we can track how the quality of data
management frameworks has changed over time. As the chart below reveals, looking only at countries
included in both the ODB and GDB that have scored above 50% on this indicator in any given year,
there is evidence of steady progress with a rise from 21% of countries reaching this threshold in 2016 to
31% in 2021. The chart also compares scores for just the 28 countries included in the 2017 ODB Lead-
ers Edition (showing a slight fall in score) and for up to 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean
region (no recent growth) for which further data was collected in 2020. Adding these comparisons sug-
gests, in particular, that a modest global trend towards stronger data management is coming from coun-
tries beyond the Open Data Charter signatories covered by the ODB Leaders Edition.

Comparison of Open Data Barometer and Global Data Barometer data management scores. There has been modest global
progress towards stronger data management frameworks from 2015 - 2021, although this is less evident in the countries covered
by the Open Data Barometer ‘Leaders Edition’. Progress towards improved data management in Latin America appears to have
stalled. Note: differences in methodology between the ODB and GDB may explain some of the variation shown above.

When it comes to open data policies, we found 74 countries with some form of policy in place, 30 of
which had legally enforceable policies. 91.9% of policies provide a common definition of open data with
83.8% requiring machine readable data and 78.4% promoting open licensing without any restrictions
beyond attribution and share-alike. However, just 47.3% address common standards for data,
suggesting an opportunity for future work to focus more on standardisation and interoperability of
published open data.

25
Pillars | Governance

What do open data policy frameworks contain? Open Data policies are more likely to cover data formats than they are to ad-
dress licensing requirements or capacity building amongst officials.

Protection and access across the data spectrum

Realising the value of data for the public good involves finding the right approach for each dataset that
can maximize access and re-use, while respecting individual and collective data rights. The Open Data
Institute has developed the Data Spectrum[5] as a tool for thinking about whether data should be closed
(kept securely), shared (provided to trusted third-parties, often on the basis of formal agreements), or
open (available for anyone to access and re-use without restriction).

The data spectrum explored: Higher and mid capability countries are making progress in developing well-resourced and robust
open data and data sharing frameworks, while low capability countries have made less progress here. There is limited difference
on account of digital capability between the quality of country right to information frameworks, while countries with high capability
are more likely to have strong data protection frameworks. Visualization based on the Open Data Spectrum developed by the
Open Data Institute.

By dividing Barometer countries into three capacity clusters (see next chapter), we can explore the rela-
tive maturity of governance frameworks for each part of the data spectrum. As the chart above shows,
there is relatively little variation between countries on basis of their capabilities when it comes to the
presence of robust right to information frameworks, and both high and mid-capability countries have
reasonably strong open data frameworks. However, across all clusters, the governance of data sharing
is less well developed (at least when it comes to being placed on a legal footing), and low-capability
countries lag significantly in terms of data protection, data sharing and open data frameworks. With a
significant focus on data sharing-based data for good initiatives, including in low-capability countries,
this may be a particular cause for concern and highlights at area in need of significant development.

26
Pillars | Governance

What do data sharing frameworks cover? Data sharing frameworks are more than three times as likely to regulate data sharing
within government as they are to regulate private sector data sharing arrangements.

Looking deeper into the kinds of data sharing covered by the frameworks that do exist, we find the ma-
jority (92.6% of the 68 frameworks identified) govern data sharing within government, with 79.4% cover-
ing how government should share data with other sectors, and 51.5% addressing how other sectors
should share data with government. Just 16.2% explicitly address artificial intelligence uses of data, and
only 26.5% look at data sharing within the private sector. Increased governance of private sector data
sharing has been on the agenda of the European Union through the concept of ‘Data Spaces’ intro-
duced in the European Data Strategy[16], but this appears not to have fed through as yet into national
frameworks. In a number of cases, where researchers were unable to locate data sharing frameworks,
they looked at data sharing provisions within data protection legislation. In future editions of the Barom-
eter, we will look to strengthen the definition of data sharing frameworks so that these cases would not
be counted, as they generally do not demonstrate a focus on mechanisms that specifically govern data
sharing. If anything, we anticipate this has led to a marginal over-counting of data sharing frameworks in
this edition.

Overall, the qualitative evidence collected by the Barometer survey revealed many different approaches
around the world to the governance of data sharing, including approaches focused on setting rules, pro-
viding platforms, promoting interoperability, creating new government powers, and providing guidance
to government and industry. Much practice remains at the level of policy, rather than binding legal rules.

How far does governance take accessibility and in-

clusion into account?
Two of the key barriers to the inclusiveness of data policy observed early in the rise of the open data
movement were a tendency for data and portals to be provided in only one language, even in countries
where many languages are spoken, and for data platforms to be designed with little attention paid to ac-
cessibility features, such as compatibility with assistive technologies like screen readers, or through im-
plementing universal design principles when creating data-related websites and tools.

The Barometer included two indicators designed to identify the extent to which countries have gover-
nance frameworks to promote inclusive accessibility of data. One of these, looking at language, has
been excluded from scoring, as we were not able to secure reliable enough results from our survey
question. The other, on accessibility, reveals that while 66 countries have some form of law, regulations,
policy or guidance that requires data collection and publication be accessible to people with disabilities,
this is derived in most cases from general accessibility rules with just 17 countries having a dedicated
accessibility framework or specific provisions relating to data.

Regionally, we see significant variation in accessibility frameworks with the lowest scores in the Middle
East and North Africa region and the next-lowest mean score coming in Africa.

27
Pillars | Governance

Mean scores on accessibility indicator in the governance pillar by region

European Union,
Eastern Europe and North America, Is- Latin America and Middle East and
Africa South and East Asia
Central Asia rael, Australia and the Caribbean North Africa
New Zealand

19.11 22.33 58.97 30.4 5.06 30.78

In this first edition of the Barometer, we were not able to explore the extent to which individual gover-
nance frameworks for data address inclusion, although this is an area for future work, that will build on
groundwork laid through a number of wider inclusion focused questions in this edition, including a con-
textual question asked to identify particularly relevant patterns of exclusion and marginalization in each
country.

Are sectoral laws, policies or guidance ‘data aware’?

Almost half of the score assigned to the governance pillar of the Barometer is derived from sectoral gov-
ernance indicators. In these indicators, we explore the extent to which particular thematic laws and
frameworks are ‘data aware’. That is, do laws or policies pay attention to the fact that governmental
processes, such as setting national budgets, carrying out public consultations, or putting in place mech-
anisms to improve political integrity, all generate and rely upon data. Early efforts to open up govern-
ment data often relied on administrative decisions to publish datasets. Decisions that could be revoked
at any time. When collection and publication of data is placed on a firm footing, both civil society, and
businesses, are more likely to be able to rely upon it and build processes that make use of the data.
And when data collection and publication is addressed explicitly within law and regulations, it can gain
greater legitimacy, being subject to greater public scrutiny.

Each sectoral governance indicator is paired with a data availability indicator to support research into
the relationship between data collection and publication rules and the data being shared or open. Within
each indicator, we look at particular features that are important for the quality of data that might be pro-
duced, including general features across all kinds of data (such as providing structured data, timely up-
dates, and having quality-assurance or verification processes), and topic-specific features (such as in-
teroperable identifiers, or disaggregation by important variables).

Overall scores on sectoral governance indicators by region. The highest mean scores, indicating laws or frameworks exist
more widely, and have more of the relevant features, were found for ‘asset declarations’. The lowest scores were found for lobby-
ing registers.

The chart above shows the mean scores on each of these indicators, disaggregated by region. 186 out
of 507 (36.69%) operational governance frameworks identified by our survey support the collection of
structured data, and 246 (48.52%) require some form of verification process to assure the quality of da-
ta. Recognizing the importance of institutions in enacting governance rules, 358 instances of the sur-
veyed frameworks (70.61%) empower an agency or official to oversee elements of data collection and
publication.

28
Pillars | Governance

When it comes specifically to the publication of open data, we find no mention of publishing data in
some 195 (38.46%) of the operational laws, policies, regulations or guidance, with 48 (9.47%) outlining
some requirements to publish data in non-binding policy or guidance, 202 (39.84%) including this in
binding policy, regulation or laws, and 62 (12.23%) providing the strongest forms of requirement for
open data publication. Of these, 25 are found in the European Union, United Kingdom, North America,
Israel, Australia and New Zealand, and 35 among higher capacity countries with laws on public finance
accounting for 22 of the strongest open data requirements.

Sectoral rules requiring data publication by region: All regions, except MENA, have some binding requirements to publish
open data as part of sectoral governance frameworks

Sectoral rule requiring data publication by topic: Public finance frameworks are the most likely to have binding requirements
for the publication of both data and open data

Sectoral rules requiring data publication by capability cluster: The majority of frameworks with binding requirements to pub-
lish open data exist in higher capability countries

Governance & Implementation

We can use Barometer variables to explore the connection between the quality of data governance and
the quality of data availability. At a high level, the chart below shows a scatter plot of the governance pil-
lar scores against the availability pillar, indicating a broad correlation. However, we can see that this re-
lationship can, to a degree, also be explained by country capability.

29
Pillars | Governance

Correlation of governance and accountability pillars: There is a positive relationship between governance and availability
scores

We can also look at the level of paired data governance and data availability indicators to develop the
three-by-three matrix below, which explores the extent to which there are cases where, for each country
and dataset pair (109 x 7 = 763 cases in all), there are frameworks or rules that require data to be col-
lected and published, and whether that data is then found to be available or not.

As the matrix below shows, in 75.06% of cases where there is no framework providing a requirement
that data be collected or published, there is also no data available. When the publication of data is re-
quired by governance frameworks, in 58.7% of cases data is available in some form, and in 14.49% the
data meets the open definition. This still leaves an implementation gap in 26.81% of cases, where gov-
ernance frameworks require publication of data, but no data could be found by our survey. The imple-
mentation gap is larger when it comes to open data, where only 37.88% of binding requirements to pub-
lish open data appear to result in open data being available, although some data, albeit falling short of
the open definition, is available in a further 42.42% of these cases.

Comparison of data governance requirements to data availability: Using all governance and availability indicators pairs
shows stronger data requirements drive data greater data availability. Percentages are given by column.

The implementation gap also varies between data categories. For public finance data, there is a signifi-
cant quantity of open data available even when formal rules were not found that require this, whereas
for the interest and asset disclosures of politicians, strong requirements for open data in governing
frameworks are not reflected yet in the availability of structured and open data.

30
Pillars | Governance

How can countries improve data governance in fu-

ture?
For each country, the Global Data Barometer website contains a profile that shows the breakdown of in-
dividual scores against governance indicators. This can be used to identify particular areas for improve-
ment. Drawing on the quantitative and qualitative evidence captured for this governance pillar, we high-
light the following common areas for action.

Review and refresh foundational frameworks

There are 16 countries covered by the Barometer that scored below 5 on our data protection indicator.
Given the foundational importance of data protection frameworks to manage risks of data misuse while
supporting public good data use, this suggests a priority need to either create, implement or strengthen
data protection frameworks in these countries. However, all countries need to keep their data protection
and governance frameworks under regular review, ensuring there are processes to review the effective-
ness of mechanisms designed to present abuses of data, and responding to the changing landscape of
data risks and opportunities. In particular, care must be taken to ensure the strengthening of data pro-
tection rules does not undermine legitimate public interests in accountability data.

In many countries, open data and data management frameworks also need strengthening, addressing
data standardization and interoperability in particular.

If data is to be use towards an inclusive model of the public good, countries also need to focus on
frameworks for making sure data and data-related platforms are accessible to people with disabilities.

Establish and iterate on clear frameworks for data sharing

The next decade is likely to see increased voluntary and mandated data sharing arrangements between
businesses in industry sectors, between business and government, and in supporft of data collaborative
arrangements oriented towards addressing humanitarian and development challenges. Without clear
frameworks that facilitate and govern such arrangements, there are risks that positive uses of data will
be missed, and that abuses of data will proceed unchecked.

Countries need to identify appropriate models to govern data sharing involving government and data
sharing across the wider economy. This is likely to require a combination of broad national consultation
to develop legitimate approaches, as well as international engagement that can help align approaches
to data sharing involving international data flows.

Address data collection and publication in sectoral legislation and

policy

The Barometer has explored a number of specific sectors where countries could establish or strengthen
rules requiring the collection and publication of structured data, including:

• Lobbying registers;
• Data on the performance of right to information frameworks; and
• Beneficial ownership registers.

31
Pillars | Governance

However, these are just a few examples of the kinds of sectoral legal frameworks countries may look to
establish. The underlying point explored by the Barometer is that whenever legislation or policy is likely
to involve the creation of data, there should be explicit attention paid to the rules that govern how the
data should be provided, including addressing how data will be verified, privacy protected, and non-pri-
vate data made available under open licenses.

Future editions of the Barometer will cover other sectoral governance rules. Governments should look
to identify how good data management and open data practice can be embedded in any ongoing sec-
toral reforms, and civil society organizations should develop their capacity to scrutinize the impact of
each reform on the production and sharing of data.

32
Pillars | Capabilities

Capabilities
To realize the benefits of data for the public good, countries need a wide range of resources from
broadly accessible foundations of Internet access and data infrastructures to basic digital skills across a
population, institutions supporting the realization of data rights and good data management, and avail-
ability of advanced analytical tools and skills in government, private sector and civil society. In the con-
text of the Barometer, capability involves not just the presence of digital resources, and access to data-
literacy, but also involves the freedoms and opportunities for skills and resources to be put to use in ser-
vice of wider social goals.

The metrics in this pillar of the Barometer reflect both the background conditions in a country for data to
be used for the public good, and particular points of intervention that may be available to governments,
or possible for external partners to support, that can contribute to an environment in which data is gov-
erned, made available, and used, to address social challenges and realize social goals.

Summary
• Digital divides in terms of Internet connectivity are narrowing. However, without efforts to
narrow data literacy gaps, ensure effective institutions that can regulate data, and support
broad based engagement with data, there is an ongoing risk that a greater number of peo-
ple will have their data captured and used for private gain without having the ability to make
use of data in order to advance their own interests and the wider public good.

• Many of the datasets with the greater relevance to the daily life of communities are often the
responsibility of local governments. However, just 22% of countries appear to have evi-
dence of sustained and institutionalized capability to manage data effectively at the sub-na-
tional level, with few countries showing evidence of widespread local policies on open data
(16 / 14.68%) and data sharing (16 / 14.68%). However, 47 countries have bright-spots
among states or municipalities demonstrating reasonable sub-national data capabilities,
highlighting opportunities for peer-to-peer learning between states, cities and municipalities,
as well as highlighting the potential returns on investments in local capability.

• The level of government-provided training to develop civil servants’ data literacy and data
skills remains low. Just 23 countries had evidence of widespread and regular training for civ-
il servants on data matters as part of a planned and sustainable strategy, although the ma-
jority of countries have at least some training provision. There are significant opportunities to
expand the range of topics covered by data-related training and the reach of training provi-
sion across government agencies.

• There is substantial national and regional variation in capabilities. The capability pillar of the
Barometer has the greatest range between the highest and lowest scores, and the highest
observed maximum pillar score (91.2). In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the
opportunities created by higher human capital and political freedoms appear held back by
lower levels of digital skill among the population as a whole, while in the Middle East and
North Africa, business and government capacity to use data are strong, but civil society
freedoms remain weak.

33
Pillars | Capabilities

Methodological note
The capability component of the Barometer is built through a combination of ten secondary data sources,
and four primary indicators. The primary indicators seek to fill particular gaps in knowledge about the pres-
ence of government-backed capacity building initiatives for civil servants, around open data, and data re-
use, as well as data management capability at the sub-national level. Because our primary survey method-
ology relies upon public evidence of capacity building, training or support for data re-use, it is possible that it
has not identified undocumented cases of training provision or capacity building taking place inside govern-
ment institutions.

In putting together this capability component, we encountered a number of other significant data gaps that
have limited our ability to generate a robust comparative view of the data-use capabilities of civil society,
media, academia and government. The framework of the World Bank Statistical Performance Indicators[17]
describes some of the key data issues. We also identified limitations in existing measures of general digital
skills, including the limited country coverage and comparability of reporting against the data-intensive com-
ponents of SDG 4.4.1. In a number of cases, such as assessing the data capabilities of media or civil soci-
ety, we were not able to identify a primary indicator that could generate sufficiently robust data within the
constraints of our survey method. As a result of these limitations, the capabilities component in this first edi-
tion of the Barometer is significantly weighted towards assessing government capability, and work will be
needed in future editions of the Barometer to develop a more holistic set of indicators.

How does capability vary across the globe? Higher,

mid and lower capability countries
Taking the overall Barometer capability component score (a weighted average of capability indicators),
we divide countries into three equally sized groups, labeled here as ‘lower’, ‘mid’ and ‘higher’ capability
countries. We use these clusters throughout the report in order to identify potential actions for countries
based upon their relative starting points and levels of capability. The data collected for this component
can also be used to explore relationships between data governance, capability, availability and use, ex-
ploring questions around the kinds of intervention that best promote data for the public good.

34
Pillars | Capabilities

Country assignment to capability clusters. Clusters are generated at 33% and 66% percentile cuts in the weighted capability
component score, giving three equally sized groups.

35
Pillars | Capabilities

The highest capability countries demonstrate high levels of affordable Internet connectivity and human
capital (measured by the UN E-Government Survey’s Human Capital Index), as well as clear evidence
of government support for digital and data practice and businesses making use of digital tools in their
operations. While most countries in the higher capability cluster score highly on measures of political
freedom, the cluster also includes a number of outliers (China, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation and
United Arab Emirates) with lower levels of political freedom according to Freedom House rankings.
Even within the high capability cluster, there is significant variation in how far government is providing
training to develop civil servant training and skills, and the extent to which governments are providing
support for data re-use. Even high capability countries are mostly yet to develop robust interoperability
infrastructures for public data as evidenced by low scores on the political integrity interoperability indica-
tor.

In moderate capability countries, government is less likely to have adopted robust standards and prac-
tices in the production of official statistics, and countries score lower on the UN Government Online Ser-
vices Index. However, 25 countries in this cluster still have some form of Open Data Initiative, although
they are considerably less likely to have been assessed in our survey as having effective data manage-
ment capability at a city, regional or local government level. Governments in this cluster are also less
likely to be providing current support for data re-use than those in the higher capability cluster.

The lower capability cluster contains many countries where data institutions are currently lacking or
weak, human capital scores are lower, fewer businesses currently use digital tools, and fewer people
are employed in knowledge intensive industries. Internet access is also often more expensive and less
extensive in this cluster. These countries may face particular challenges in providing and using data for
the public good. However, during the study period, 11 countries in this cluster had an Open Data Initia-
tive, and a number had evidence of capacity building, particularly around statistical data.

Which factors shape capability in each region?

The density chart below shows the distribution of unweighted scores for each primary and secondary
Barometer capability indicator by region. A wider band to the left of each chart would show that scores
on that indicator for that region skew towards the lower end, while wider bands to the right shows that
scores skew higher. If the band of color for a particular indicator is relatively even across the chart, it in-
dicates a spread of values for countries in the region.

36
Pillars | Capabilities

Density chart showing the distribution of capability indicators by region: both primary and secondary indicators are shown,
providing a view into relative strengths and weaknesses of each region, and how each variable is distributed.

Qualitiative evidence collected by the Barometer survey suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has act-
ed as a powerful test of government, civil society and private sector data capabilities. In a number of
cases, researchers report evidence that sub-national governments in particular have demonstrated the
ability to respond rapidly to the data demands of the pandemic, rapidly taking on responsibility for creat-
ing and maintaining new data systems. However, in other cases, the pandemic has shown up weak-
nesses in the ability of state or civil society to use data for crisis response, or to provide scrutiny of
emergency decision making.

Sub-national capabilities do not feature prominently in the chart above with all regions seeing both low
levels of sub-national capability and broad distribution of scores with respect to the extent of robust sub-
national practices around open data, data management and civil service capacity building, and none of
our chosen secondary variables allowing us to explore whether the capabilities identified are concen-
trated in urban centers, or whether they are more evenly distributed across a country. However, qualita-
tive evidence highlights the importance of a balance between national and sub-national capability to
support inclusiveness and innovation. Researchers report, for example, on the situation in Spain, where
strong data management capacity in the 17 autonomous regions is not always matched by infrastruc-

37
Pillars | Capabilities

tures or processes to integrate data at the national level, leading to strong data resources for engage-
ment at the regional level, but making it arduous for re-users to obtain an overall national picture on key
issues. For populations living near country borders, involved in trade, or working on cross-border is-
sues, international data interoperability, and shared practice across countries also becomes important.

How are data capabilities developing?

The Barometer addresses capabilities through four dimensions: foundations (covering basic internet ac-
cess, digital skills and human capital); government capabilities (to govern, produce and share data); pri-
vate sector capability (to use data to generate economic value); and civil society and media capability
(including the political freedoms that support broad ranging use of data for the public good, and civil so-
ciety oversight of data governance).

Percent of population with Internet Access (Source: ITU) by capability cluster over time: showing convergence towards
high levels of Internet access.

Over the last decade, Internet access has rapidly expanded across the globe with connectivity metrics
rising much faster than those for digital skills or human capital. Even in mid and lower capability coun-
tries, the likelihood that any individual will have aspects of their life digitized and will at least have an ac-
cess point where they could engage with digital services, has increased sharply. Rising connectivity
provides opportunities and threats. Key to managing these is a balance of governmental capability, po-
litical freedoms to support checks-and-balances on government, and capability and engagement from
other parties, including academia, the private sector, civil society and media.

How are government data capabilities developing?

Mean scores by cluster on selected secondary capability indicators

Government Online Services Digital Government Strat-

- Data Institutions Standards in Statistics
Index egy

Higher 84 83.78 81.76 86.08

Mid 65.59 54.95 53.47 55.28
Lower 49.64 36.57 22.92 41.81

38
Pillars | Capabilities

National governments have a critical role in data governance and stewardship, including a role in shap-
ing data strategies, establishing and funding key governance institutions such as data protection author-
ities, providing digital services for data collection and access, and setting and adopting clear data stan-
dards. The secondary indicators in the Barometer show that lower capability countries face particular
challenges when it comes to the presence of institutions in charge of data governance, management
and data protection, and in having both key infrastructure (government cloud platforms), and strategies
(including technology and interoperability strategies).

The Barometer explores the extent to which there is evidence that governments are investing in capaci-
ty building through providing training programmes to civil servants. Although over 90 countries have evi-
dence of training being available, under 25% of countries appear to have widespread ongoing and sus-
tainable capacity building programmes for public servants on data literacy and data skills.

Government provision of data literacy and skills training: Although over 90 countries have evidence of training being avail-
able, under 25% of countries appear to have widespread ongoing and sustainable capacity building programmes for public ser-
vants on data literacy and data skills.

Notably, training availability is particularly limited at the sub-national level. Even where countries do
have training programmes, reported figures on the number of civil servants trained suggest only a very
small percentage of official are gaining access to targeted data-related skills training. For example, in
Bulgaria, researchers note that, according to evidence from the Institute of Public Administration, “in the
2019-2021 period, all the [data related] trainings gathered 68 groups and a total of 1102 trainees”. This
is less than two people for each of the 570+ executive or local government bodies in the country. A simi-
lar picture is observed in the UK, where the UK Data Science Campus reports having trained 681 ana-
lysts in data science tools as of April 2021. Researchers from the Gambia noted that, while government-
provided data-related training is rare, technical staff from national government Ministries often access
skills through degree programmes, generally studying abroad. Overall, across countries and regions,
there is a sense that the actual, or potential, demand for capacity building currently far outstrips supply.

Scaling up data-related capacity building initiative requires leadership and strategy. The Republic of Ko-
rea is one of a few countries with evidence of a systematic focus on training through Article 25 (Educa-
tion and Training about Public Data) of the Act on Promotion of the Provision and Use of Public Data,
which requires the Minister of the Interior and Safety to formulate education and training policies for offi-
cials related to public data. By contrast, the researcher for Sweden noted that national data strategies
contain no mention of data literacy and data skills training, and a mapping of introductory courses in 193
government authorities found no evidence of education related to digital literacy and skills.

For lower capability countries, donors have often been a key catalyst of capacity building. For example,
researchers from Kosovo report that extensive training inputs were delivered when the country’s open
data initiative was first launched, often drawing on NGO support to deliver the training. However, that
training has not been sustained or systematized over time.

How are sub-national capabilities developing?

Although 71.6% of countries covered by the Barometer have some form of national data management
policy or law, we only found evidence of sustained and institutionalized sub-national data management
capacity in just 22% of countries.

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Pillars | Capabilities

Sub-national capabilities: Less than 25% of countries can demonstrate sustained and institutionalized data management capa-
bility at the sub-national level

The sub-national capabilities identified by our survey centred on the presence of open data policies and
initiatives with less evidence that sub-national governments are, as a matter of course, providing train-
ing to civil servants, or establishing clear local data sharing or data management frameworks. This is a
notable gap, particularly given increasing interest in the potential role of private sector data as an input
into city and state-level decision making. As recent work by[18] highlights, local governments face signif-
icant barriers and power imbalances when negotiating access to private sector data, and without effort
to develop sub-national capacity and coordination for engaging in business-to-government data sharing,
there are risks that local government will not be able to secure the greatest public good from data shar-
ing arrangements.

Focus areas of sub-national capability: The sub-national capabilities identified by our survey centred on the presence of open
data policies and initiatives, with less evidence that sub-national governments have clear data sharing or data management
frameworks.

How are open data initiatives developing?

Alongside the 58 countries with some form of local open data initiative, almost 100 countries have, at
some point, launched a national-level open data initiative. However, our survey found that only 72 of
these remain active, suggesting that in recent years a number of open data initiatives have been can-
celled or become dormant.

Open data initiatives: Nearly 100 countries have launched open data initiatives, although only 72 remain active

The Open Data Barometer has tracked the presence of open data initiatives since 2013. Taking coun-
tries covered by both the Global Data Barometer and the ODB, we can make a rough comparison of the
presence of active open data initiatives (countries scoring more than 5 out of 10 on the comparable
Open Data Initiative indicator from the two studies) and the percentage of initiatives that appear to be
well-resourced (countries scoring more than 7 out of 10). As the chart below shows, the number of ac-

40
Pillars | Capabilities

tive initiatives has only seem modest growth since 2016, and a number of countries with leading initia-
tives in 2016, such as Mexico and the United Kingdom, have seen significant reductions in their indica-
tor score as open data activities have been de-prioritized or neglected.

Strength of open data initiatives: Over 50% of countries covered by both the ODB and GDB now have active open data initia-
tives, representing modest growth on 2016. At the same time, the number of well-resourced initiatives has grown substantially
since 2016.

Overall, the number of countries with evidence of well-resourced initiatives has grown, suggesting that
where open data initiatives have remained active, they have become increasingly institutionalized with
dedicated teams and technical infrastructure in place. A look at the sub-elements of the Global Data
Barometer’s open data initiative question reveals that a lack of allocated budget and limited senior lead-
ership backing are pressing weaknesses for many initiatives, potentially representing the challenges of
securing attention for open data activities when policy attention has moved to other related agendas
such as artificial intelligence and data governance.

Features of active open data initiatives: Active open data initiatives generally have dedicated teams and technical infrastructure
in the form of portals, but are often lacking allocated budget, and increasingly lack clear backing from senior government leaders

By comparing Global Data Barometer and Open Data Barometer indicators on government support for
data re-use, we can also see a positive trend with a steady growth in the number of countries scoring
above 5 on this indicator over time, albeit still a minority of countries reaching this threshold.

41
Pillars | Capabilities

Support for data re-use: There has been modest growth in the number of countries providing support for data re-use over time

Overall, less than 50% of governments provide regular support for data re-use with the greatest support
provided to civil society and scholars and the least support available for media.

Sectors provided with support (by capability cluster): Less than 50% of government provide regular support for data re-use,
with the greatest support provided to civil society and scholars, and the least support available for media

What wider capabilities do countries have or need?

A countries ultimate capability to use data for the public good is not determined only, or even in the ma-
jority, by the direct technical capacity or interventions of government. The presence of technical skills,
and the freedom to deploy those skills, in the wider population are key ingredients of data use for the
public good.

There is limited globally comparable data on the prevalence of the kinds of digital skills that are required
to govern and use data for the public good (and indeed, there are research gaps in identifying the full
range of skills that should be tracked). We’ve turned to a number of secondary indicators in this compo-
nent of the Barometer, though conscious that these do not offer us disaggregation by key dimensions of
gender or marginalized status. To secure public good outcomes from data requires not only that coun-
tries have skilled citizens with the freedom to scrutinize or use data effectively, but that those skills are
broadly distributed across age, gender, ethnicity, geography and social group.

Mean scores by cluster on selected secondary capability indicators

Business Use of Dig- Knowledge-inten- Political Freedoms Digital skills in popu-

- Human Capital
ital Tools sive employment and Civil Liberty lation

Higher 79.92 60.89 86.93 78.16 64.36

Mid 58.96 34.36 71.21 58.74 51.71

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Pillars | Capabilities

Business Use of Dig- Knowledge-inten- Political Freedoms Digital skills in popu-

- Human Capital
ital Tools sive employment and Civil Liberty lation
Lower 49.38 21.86 61.02 49.14 45.94

How can countries improve their data capabilities?

The Global Data Barometer website contains country profiles that show scores for each indicator and a
breakdown of how these scores were generated. These can indicate particular areas of improvement
for each country to focus on, and looking at the profiles of other countries, can highlight examples to
learn from. Drawing on the quantitative and qualitative evidence captured in the capabilities pillar, we’ve
identified three cross-cutting areas for action:

Sustaining and institutionalizing capacity building

Lower capability countries need to move from one-off or pilot capacity-building interventions to more
sustained delivery of training and support around data collection, governance, provision and use. This
involves programmes in the public and the private sector, as well as supporting the institutionalization of
independent capacity building support for media and civil society. Capacity building needs to address
both technical skills and critical social science and humanities skills for working with data. For low capa-
bility countries to improve data governance and management will require a focus on strengthening the
national institutions that oversee data protection, open data, and data management, particularly devel-
oping capability around the use of common data standards.

Donor strategies need to focus on mainstreaming data-related capacity building, rather than providing
short-term externally delivered programmes. This may bring slower but more sustained returns.

Particular attention should be paid to engaging marginalized groups as partners in the delivery of ca-
pacity building interventions to promote increased understanding of how data affects different popula-
tions.

Developing strategy and leadership

Mid-capability countries need to focus on the leadership and strategy that will deliver increased capabili-
ty. There should be high-level political leadership not only for developing the role of data in the econo-
my, but also for ensuring the country has skills, institutions, and freedoms required for data to be gov-
erned and used for the public good. Training and capacity building strategies should establish clear tar-
gets for increasing civil service data skills and for making wider training available to other sectors
through established institutions.

A number of mid- and higher-capability countries have reasonably high levels of technical capacity in
government and business, yet have a more constrained political environment, where it is harder for in-
dependent civil society to develop and support programmes on public good data governance and use.
In these countries, efforts are needed to increase the space for independent and critical action with data
and to develop models of data-enabled problem solving that allow government, academia, private sec-
tor and independent actors to work together in trusted ways.

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Pillars | Capabilities

Scaling and embedding capability

For higher capability countries the key challenge to meet is in scaling and embedding capacity building
activities, particularly at the sub-national level. Ambitious targets should be set for training delivery and
for the inclusion of technical and critical data skills in professional development frameworks. Renewed
national leadership is needed for open data activities and to ensure countries can secure balanced pub-
lic good outcomes from data sharing initiatives with the private sector.

In higher capability countries, innovations around data for the public good often originate at the sub-na-
tional level, with cities, states or municipalities that are ‘outliers’ when compared to the national picture.
Where this is the case, countries should support efforts to share learning from these local leaders and
should address national standardisation and interoperability frameworks to avoid the creation or deep-
ening of significant data-divides within the country.

44
Pillars | Availability

Availability
Not all data is created equal. Whether or not a country is able to realize the benefits of data for the pub-
lic good will depend on whether key datasets relevant to solving social, political and environmental chal-
lenges are made widely available. In this first edition of the Barometer, we assess the availability of 19
datasets, selected based on their potential to address key issues such as climate change, public health,
political integrity, and land rights.

Summary
• On a strict definition, the proportion of datasets published as open data (free of charge, in
bulk and machine-readable forms, and openly licensed) has remained relatively stagnant
over the last decade with 10.63% of the datasets surveyed meeting the open definition. This
is only marginally above the high of 10% recorded in the 2015 Open Data Barometer. How-
ever, adopting a more flexible approach to assessment, we find a total of 17% datasets that
either meet, or come close to, being provided as open data.

• The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of global data sharing and the
capacity of the global community to establish shared data infrastructures, both through offi-
cial measures, and through the collaborative efforts of independent researchers, citizen sci-
entists and data activists. Drawing on secondary metrics, we find that data is available on
COVID tests and positivity for 84.4% of countries and statistical data on health system ca-
pacity is avaialble for 86.2%. However, real-time healthcare system capacity metrics are
available in just 46.8% of countries, and key data points that might be used to assess issues
of equity in health system access and COVID vaccination roll-out are frequently missing
even when data is available.

• Significant gaps also exist in the availability of key datasets to support national responses to
the climate emergency. Although aggregate statistics are widely reported into international
systems, detailed and disaggregated data on emissions, biodiversity, and climate vulnerabil-
ity is rarely available as open data for use in-country.

• Where there have been concerted global initiatives, data availability and quality appear to
be relatively high. For example, there have been significant global efforts over the last
decade through fora including the Open Government Partnership to promote spend and
procurement transparency and to build data capacity in this area. Our survey finds that 106
countries have at least some budget and spending information online and 100 have at least
one example of public procurement data provided (though often from particular agencies,
states or municipalities, rather than integrated national datasets).

• In areas of emerging focus, such as beneficial ownership, political integrity, and land tenure,
the Barometer offers a baseline measure of data availability and openness, finding less than
50% of countries with data available against these indicators on average and less than 10%
with open datasets. Future editions of the Barometer will be able to monitor progress
against these baselines.

• Headline figures on data availability and openness hide significant regional variations. For
example, more than half of the open datasets identified by the Barometer came from the
European Union, UK, North America, Israel, Australia and New Zealand; whereas, in Africa,
less than 40% of datasets sought were available online in any form.

45
Pillars | Availability

• There is relatively little evidence that when key datasets are not available from government
other data providers offer adequate substitutes. In just 84 of the 829 cases when govern-
ments were not providing surveyed datasets could researchers locate data from an alterna-
tive source.

Availability pillar regional scores: The highest scores are seen in the EU, North America+ regional grouping, with the lowest
scores in Africa.

How open is the data covered by the Barometer?

According to the Open Definition[19], a dataset “is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and
share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness.”. In practice, this
translates into the data being available in a digital, machine-readable and non-proprietary form, either
free or at no more than the cost of reproduction, and under explicit terms that permit re-use (rather than
restrictive copyright terms for example). The central idea of the Open Definition is that when technical or
legal barriers (either explicit, or as a result of uncertainty) to re-use are removed, data can be put to
much wider use.

Barometer data provides us with two ways of calculating the total number of open datasets available
across our sample. A strict approach, counting only those datasets that are available from government,
and that researchers have assessed as having robust machine readability, bulk access, licensing, and
being available at no cost, reveals 197 datasets (10.63%) meet the open definition. This represents
modest progress on the figure of 7% of datasets fully open recorded by the Open Data Barometer in
2016, although matches the number found in 2014 and 2015 (differences in sample of both countries
and datasets across studies mean these comparisons give a rough indication only).

If we adopt a more flexible assessment model and include data which has minor weaknesses when as-
sessed against the open definition (for example, a license is not explicitly stated next to the dataset, but
can be identified with extra research, or the data can be converted to a machine-readable form, but is
not provided at source in the ideal structures or formats); in other words, we include datasets where
Barometer researchers answers ‘partially’ in response to the questions on machine readability, bulk da-
ta, license and cost), we find a total of 315 datasets (17%) that could be considered to be, in effect,
open data.

46
Pillars | Availability

This headline picture hides significant variation between regions and sectors. The chart below shows
the proportion of datasets our researchers found to be both online, and available as open data (using
flexible criteria, to include cases where conditions such as bulk access or licensing are partially met) by
region.

Data availability be region: Variation between the number of open datasets across regions is far greater than the variation be-
tween the availability of data in any form, highlighting a double data divide - firstly in access to any data, then in terms of access
for data re-use.

Overall, more than half of the 315 open datasets identified by the Barometer are found in the ‘European
Union, UK, North America, Israel, Australia and New Zealand’ region, whereas just 11 of the 374
datasets checked in the Africa region were judged to be open data.

In 2016, the Open Data Barometer concluded that the main factor holding back the spread of open data
was the lack of open licensing[20]. As the diagram below shows, in 2021, the biggest limiting factor ap-
pears to be the lack of bulk data provision.

The Global Data Barometer availability assessments also include a variable asking whether there are
‘accessible and open official tools available to help users explore a dataset’. Although provision of bulk
data is important to support innovative data re-use, in many cases, users also want to be able to directly
access facts or insights from a dataset without necessarily downloading a full or complex dataset. We
found that in 46.4% of cases where data is available online, and in the majority of cases where data
was published as open data, some form of online tool was available to explore it. The Barometer
dataset contains links to all the tools identified, providing a future opportunity to explore the kinds of in-
terfaces that might be created to increase the range of users who can benefit from provision of struc-
tured and open data.

47
Pillars | Availability

Barriers to open data availability: The Sankey diagram shows the aggregate assessment of all datasets against the open defin-
ition criteria (Online, Free, Machine Readable, Open License, Bulk data) as well as the presence of accessible tools to explore
available data. Partial responses are shown separately, but are counted towards meeting the open definition criteria (i.e. using a
flexible approach to the open data definition).

Are other organizations providing data when government does not?

For each dataset surveyed, if researchers could not locate a data source made available by govern-
ment, or because of action by government (e.g. a government mandate that a third party should publish
the dataset), we asked them to identify if relevant data was available from another source. In just 84 of
the 829 cases when governments were not providing data was an alternative source identified. These
alternative sources included academic platforms, civil society websites, and data platforms provided by
donors or multilateral organizations such as the World Bank or World Health Organization. In a small
number of cases, particularly in relation to company information, private sector data providers were
identified, but generally only offering paid-for, rather than open access to, data.

Overall, we see little evidence that alternative data sources are currently offering effective substitutes
when there are gaps in government-provided data, although for lower capacity countries, international
organizations and global civil-society or research-led platforms can provide useful data hosting and pub-
lication environments. For datasets provided through these alternative platforms, on average 45% of the
desirable fields or features we looked for were provided, in comparison to 58% of the features when da-
ta was provided by, or because of, government action.

Is the available data fit for purpose?

While the true test of whether data is fit for purpose is whether the data is being successfully put to use
to solve a range of social challenges, the Barometer offers a number of indicators that capture aspects
of data quality. We find that 73.78% of online datasets were assessed as reasonably ‘timely and updat-
ed’ and 61.34% of online datasets provided some degree of historical data that would allow users to
track change over time (for example, records of past land use, or information about the previous as well
as this year’s budget). That still leaves almost 40% of datasets where only current data is being pub-
lished, potentially creating challenges for a number of accountability or analytical use-cases.

The file format(s) a dataset is provided in can impact on its usability. Researchers provided free-text re-
ports of the main file formats used by machine-readable datasets, which we have recoded to discover a
narrow preference across published data for the non-proprietary CSV format and growing evidence of
the use of other structured formats like json and XML.

48
Pillars | Availability

Treemap of file extensions detected in free-text reports on file formats used by datasets.: CSV is the most commonly en-
countered file format, followed by Excel (xlsx) files, json, pdf and xml

Each primary availability indicator in the Barometer includes a number of sub-questions designed to
check for the availability of certain dataset fields or features that are important to public good use-cases
for the data, and which it is reasonable to expect that data publishers should provide. Although these
field and feature lists are tailored to each data category, and some may be trickier to deliver than others,
by looking at the mean weighted score on these sub-questions for each, we can identify the datasets
most likely to be fit for purpose.

Mean dataset quality score by category. Procurement data scores highest for the presence of key fields and features in pub-
lished data, while health and climate datasets are less likely to contain the full range of features checked by the Barometer sur-
vey.

Procurement data tops this table, although as noted below, many of the datasets assessed for this indi-
cator are sub-national or single agency examples, which may act as positive outliers, and which are not
always representative of the quality of data available across the country as a whole. Notably, health and
climate datasets are among the most likely to have significant quality gaps when measured on the
Barometer indicators.

49
Pillars | Availability

A number of the dataset fields and features we checked for can, if present, be used to specifically focus
on patterns of inclusion and exclusion. This includes data fields relating to gender, disability, or status
within a marginalized group or indigenous populations. Comparing the number of times these fields
were identified to the average number of times non-inclusion related fields were identified, we find that
inclusion related fields are almost 50% less likely to be provided than other kinds of field. In other
words, there are significant gaps to be addressed in the extent to which available data supports action
on inclusion and challenging patterns of discrimination or marginalization.

Which datasets are available?

In this first edition of the Barometer, we looked at the availability of 19 datasets, organized under a num-
ber of thematic modules. This section presents a number of selected observations for each module,
along with summary table entries for each dataset.

Methodological note
Summary tables present four values for each dataset covered by our primary survey.

• Available online represents the number of countries in which some data meeting the indicator
definition was found online. This may include data only available at a sub-national level, or data
with significant limitations (such as being presented in non machine-readable forms, or on web-
sites requiring registration or payment)
• Open data represents the number of countries with at least some data meeting the open defin-
ition. We adopt our flexible definition of open data, including countries where researchers re-
sponded ‘partially’ to one or more of the open data assessment questions.
• The quality score represents a weighted average of how many desirable fields or features for
the dataset were found to be available in online data. Note that the quality criteria are different
for each data category.
• The openness score represents a weighted average of the standard openness questions
asked for each dataset. These include questions about the presence of timely and historical
data, as well as the availability of accessible tools for exploring data. The criteria used are com-
mon across each data category.

Health and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of reliable, accessible, and trusted health da-
ta to enable coordinated action. While the governance of health data is addressed by indicators on the
presence of data protection frameworks, in the availability pillar of the Barometer, we have looked for
evidence that data is available to support both long-term health planning and to enable rapid-response
specifically in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

50
Pillars | Availability

Dataset Available online Open data Mean quality score Mean openness score

Vaccination
(COVID-19)
95 31 3.8 6.37

Healthcare system
capacity*
94 n/a n/a n/a

Testing data
(COVID-19)*
92 n/a n/a n/a

Vital statistics 85 29 5.24 6.43

Real-time health-
care system ca- 51 17 5.4 5.83
pacity

* Indicators based on secondary data that doesn’t enable us to calculate quality or openness scores.

Although backward-looking statistical data on health systems, and aggregated data on COVID-19 test-
ing, are widely available, real-time data on healthcare system capacity and data-points that could sup-
port action on health inequality are much less likely to be provided online or in open formats.

At the time of our data collection, the Our World in Data project had managed to bring together data on
COVID testing from over 100 countries, 92 of which are covered by the Barometer. Although they have
been able to make the data, harvested from national Ministry of Health websites, or regional sources
such as a the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, broadly comparable, documentation of
the different data sources[21] highlights the significant challenges involved in locating data and finding
documentation that can explain whether test figures relate to individuals or samples and which kinds of
tests (e.g. PCR or antigen) are covered. Bringing together data from so many countries in such a short
time is a remarkable achievement, but it also remains more complex than it should be with significant
scope to strengthen data publication practices at source, including through more machine-readable
publication and greater provision and adoption of standards for data publication[22].

The same activities, such as monitoring availability of regular and intensive care hospital beds, can, de-
pending on the data infrastructures in place in a country, be used to generate both aggregate statistical
data and to provide real-time information about health service capacity. In some countries, this real-time
data is vital to allow individuals to know where they can access care, and at critical times, it may also be
of significant-value to journalists or civil society organizations to scrutinize healthcare provision, perfor-
mance and equity. In a number of countries, however, real-time data is either not collected, or only
shared with government agencies or medical professionals. Drawing on data from the Open Data Inven-
tory (ODIN), we find that 86.2% of Barometer countries provide statistical data on healthcare system ca-
pacity, but only 46.8% have real-time, or near real-time, data available, and of these, just 33 countries
provide facility (e.g. hospital or clinic) level data, and only 35 have information on bed availability. In a
number of countries, real-time data has been made available for the first time in the context of
COVID-19, raising questions about whether states will cease this publication in future, or put the provi-
sion of healthcare capacity information on a more stable footing.

51
Pillars | Availability

The quality sub-questions for our survey indicator on vaccination rates paid particular attention to equity
of vaccine distribution, asking whether available data was disaggregated by age, gender, geography,
disability status and healthcare situation. Although 46.3% of available vaccination datasets (67.7% of
those published as open data) contain age disaggregation, just 33.7% (51.6% of open datasets) were
disaggregated by sex or gender, and only 13.7% (29% of open datasets) provided a breakdown by dis-
ability status.

As the health module of the Barometer is entirely based on availability indicators, we can use the mod-
ule scores to build a picture of comparative regional performance on health data availability. The table
below shows the top five questions in each Barometer region, along with their module scores.

European Union,
United Kingdom,
Eastern Europe and Latin America and Middle East and
Africa North America, Is- South and East Asia
Central Asia the Caribbean North Africa
rael, Australia and
New Zealand

Republic of Korea
Uganda (44.97), Ukraine (55.15), USA (85.4), Ger- UAE (41.58),
Peru (77.08), (75.62), Hong
Burkina Faso Armenia (49.14), many (83.02), Qatar (41.09),
Brazil (73.22), Kong (67.17), Tai-
(36.03), Kenya Moldova (44.77), Slovakia (82.4), Saudi Arabia
Chile (73.21), Ar- wan (65.41),
(34.03), South Mongolia (41.75), New Zealand (36.59), Oman
gentina (63.63), Bangladesh
Africa (32.22), Kyrgyz Republic (79.19), Italy (32.62), Bahrain
Uruguay (58.11) (55.69), India
Rwanda (30.08) (41.27) (78.56) (31.47)
(55.06)

Climate Action

As the UN’s 2030 Agenda makes clear, addressing the climate crisis is a globally agreed public good.
Climate change and the actions that governments and publics can take to mitigate and adapt to climate
change are matters of vital importance around the world. Data can be a powerful tool for prioritizing and
assessing climate action, as well as a means to expand the number of groups who can track and pro-
pose climate action, take meaningful action in their own communities and organizations, and hold gov-
ernments accountable for their actions or inaction.

The Open Data Charter’s Open Up Guide for Climate Action[23] identifies a range of climate-relevant
datasets that states could publish, from emission statistics to biodiversity indicators, power generation
statistics, and data on climate risk exposure. The guide notes that although:

“countries may already be required to report some of this information to a regional or international
body … it is important to consider how the information that is already available or reported could
be made more accessible and useful to third parties by its publication in open data format.”

The Barometer indicators provide an insight into how far data is being made available at the national
level, highlighting some bright spots and some significant gaps.

52
Pillars | Availability

Dataset Available online Open data Mean quality score Mean openness score

Emission 73 28 5.52 5.81

Biodiversity 68 16 5.47 4.75

Vulnerability 58 14 4.39 5.49

Although 73 countries provide emissions data, and 28 do so as open data, there is significant variation
in how this is provided, how timely the data is, and how detailed. In many cases, countries are reporting
emissions data under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but
not providing access to this data for national citizens. This suggests that when international reporting
standards are developed, consideration should also be given to standards or recommendations for also
making data available at the national level, maximizing the value realized from data collection exercises.

The data gaps are even larger when it comes to climate vulnerability data. In spite of the importance of
localized data on climate vulnerability to support adaptation, just 53.2% of countries surveyed provided
relevant data (14 as open datasets), and the datasets that we were able to locate were notably weak on
the provision of information about how vulnerabilities may differentially affect marginalized populations.

The headline figure of 62.4% of countries providing biodiversity information online also hides notable
variation in terms of the life-forms represented in available data. For example, 60.6% of countries pro-
vide data on endangered birds and 58.7% cover mammals, but just 37.6% provide data on fungi and
lichen. This comparative lack of attention to fungi is particularly notable given the vital role they have
been found to play in ecosystems around the world, as well as serving as a significant global carbon
sink.

Early work by Barometer partners with preliminary data from the climate action module has drawn atten-
tion to the importance of using the qualitative insights from the survey to understand diverse practices of
biodiversity monitoring, recognizing that there are many histories and practices of gathering information
about biodiversity and endangered species, from scientific taxonomies to colonial inventories and local
knowledge practices. In a point that can be adapted to many of the datasets covered by our survey, re-
searcher Dr Jonathan Gray argues that: “Making biodiversity data more widely available may not only
serve to enable its re-use to communicate the state of biodiversity to broader publics, but also to facili-
tate public involvement, learning and surfacing different kinds of local expertise and action to under-
stand and care for the life which data portrays.” (Source: Workshop on preliminary findings from the
Global Data Barometer Climate Action module at Mozilla Festival on 7th March titled “GDB as a collec-
tive learning device to explore climate action”.)

Political Integrity

The public good can best be served when there is an open, accountable, and equitable public sphere in
which money doesn’t distort fair decision-making or access to political office. Data can be a powerful
tool to identify whose interests shape how governance decisions are made and implemented. Within de-
mocratic political systems, this involves transparency of political party finance, information on the inter-
ests of political decision makers, information on lobbyists’ interventions, and information on public con-
sultation processes in rule-making, as well as a robust right to information system that helps members
of the public evaluate and hold to account those in power.

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Pillars | Availability

Our focus on political integrity data aligns with SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions: particu-
larly its targets around rule of law (16.3); transparent, accountable institutions (16.6); responsive, inclu-
sive, participatory, and representative decision-making (16.7); and public access to information (16.10).

Dataset Available online Open data Mean quality score Mean openness score

Public consultation
data
62 8 5.04 4.15

Political finance
data
57 10 6.42 5.33

RTI performance
data
43 8 7.14 5.62

Asset declarations 50 4 6.4 4.73

Lobbying data 19 4 4.7 5.19

Across this module, we find a very mixed picture of information and data availability.

When it comes to public consultation, we find that although in 56.9% of countries surveyed, there is at
least some information online that can be used to support engagement in, or scrutiny of, public consul-
tation processes around executive rule-making (sometimes called ‘secondary legislation’), very few
countries (17.4%) provide machine-readable or bulk data (11%) in ways that might facilitate use of inno-
vative tools to support citizen engagement or to monitor special interest influence through consultation
processes. A number of the strongest performing countries in this indicator have national electronic plat-
forms to facilitate rule-making, such as the USA’s Regulation.gov and Estonia’s Eelnõude Infosüsteem,
although others take a more distributed approach with the responsibility on each agency to host details
of consultations and consultation responses. Beyond the leading countries, there is a sharp drop-off in
the quality of data provided with many countries that counted among those providing some data online
either only covering a small set of possible consultations, lacking information about comments made, or
missing other key data features: focusing primarily on advertising the opportunity to participate.

While the vast majority of the countries we have surveyed have some form of right to information (RTI)
legal framework, the RTI availability indicator provides new insights into the number of countries that
are publishing performance information for monitoring implementation of their RTI rules. It shows that
39.4% of countries have some performance information online, with 88.4% of these providing reason-
ably broad coverage of regions and agencies. Where information is available online, 97.7% of countries
provide data on the number of requests made, although just 58.1% provide data on when and why infor-
mation was withheld and 58.1% provide data on the timeliness of responses to requests, suggesting
that much of the information provided will be of limited use to monitor compliance with statutory time-
lines. Data on appeals against RTI refusals is available in 58.1% of countries with information online,
and in some cases, only appeals data is available as statistics are only collected for appeal processes,
rather than for initial requests.

It is important to note that a high rating on the RTI availability indicator does not prove that a countries
RTI regime is performing effectively in practice. However, the presence of performance information
demonstrates a commitment to RTI implementation and provides a resource for scrutiny of how RTI

54
Pillars | Availability

rules are working. The supporting evidence and links gathered for this indicator (available through the
Barometer website) have the potential to support further work on developing cross-country comparative
metrics for RTI performance, as well as providing pointers to sources that could be used for more in-
depth qualitative research.

Both Political Finance datasets and data on Interest and Asset Disclosures are particularly valuable
when provided in bulk and machine-readable forms that allow analysis to find patterns or look for con-
nections that might indicate political influence by particular companies or individuals. Although 52.3% of
countries have some form of political finance data online, and 45.9% have asset declaration informa-
tion, less than 10% of countries provide open datasets in either case with disclosure systems often pa-
per-based or insufficiently digital to support provision of reliable machine-readable data. This, coupled
with the low availability of common identifiers for donors (Just 29.8% of countries with information on-
line), or the individuals making asset disclosures (40%), means that re-use of this data has to rely on in-
termediaries who can digitize resources and use various fuzzy matching techniques to support data ex-
ploration and investigations.

The lack of an interoperability infrastructure for political integrity data is illustrated by an indicator from
our capability pillar that finds that very few countries have established widespread use of common iden-
tifiers that could tie together datasets. Although there are legitimate privacy concerns about enabling
some forms of data linkage, there is significant scope for countries to develop more digital-first and
joined-up approaches to integrity-related disclosure processes.

Presence of common identifiers to support political integrity data interoperability: Very few countries have interoperability
infrastructures in place to support joined-up political integrity data: creating avoidable barriers to the use of political integrity data
to promote greater oversight and accountability.

The missed opportunities and lessons from poor interoperability of political finance and asset disclosure
data should be instructive for the design of future lobbying frameworks and data publication. The
Barometer reveals, for the first time, the low availability of robust data on how private interests are seek-
ing to influence public policy. With just 17.4 % of countries providing data online, and only 4 offering
open data, this first edition of the Barometer offers a baseline to track progress if lobbying transparency
gains, as we hope, greater profile in fora such as the Open Government Partnership in the coming
years.

Overall, although comparing the governance indicators paired with each political integrity availability in-
dicator reveals a clear positive correlation between the quality of rules requiring data publication and the
availability of data (see Governance chapter), it also reveals significant implementation gaps. For exam-
ple, while 103 countries have rules requiring interest and asset declarations, and 53 include require-
ments around structured data collection and publication, just 50 have any information available online
with just 4 providing open datasets. Data on the Barometer website can help countries to identify best
practice examples from among their peers to support action to close this gap in future.

55
Pillars | Availability

Company Information

Private firms can be engines of development, innovation and the delivery of vital services and consumer
goods. At the same time, company activities can cause environmental and social harms, corporate
structures can be abused for money laundering, corruption and to hide wrongdoing, and opaque corpo-
rate structures can harm international trade. Information on company registration, ownership and activi-
ties can provide critical evidence for public understanding and regulation of the activities of companies
and can support the functioning of a productive private sector that supports sustainable development
outcomes.

Over recent years, international standards have developed that require minimum levels of data collec-
tion on the registration and beneficial ownership of companies, trusts and other legal arrangements,
with civil society advocating for this information to be made publicly accessible, and regional and sec-
toral norms of public disclosure developing as part of moves towards greater transparency[24]. The
open data movement has placed particular emphasis on company identifiers as a point of linkage be-
tween different public datasets, including public finance, public contracting, and political integrity
datasets[25].

Dataset Available online Open data Mean quality score Mean openness score

Beneficial owner-
ship
33 10 6.83 4.96

Company register 78 24 7.1 5.55

At present, early progress on establishing open beneficial ownership registers risks being held back by
a lack of established open data practice amongst company registers.

Although 77 countries have at least basic online access to company registers, and 82.1% of these pro-
vide access to some of this information free of charge, just 46 countries provide machine readable com-
pany data, and only 24 countries provide data accessible in bulk under open licenses to meet the open
data definition. In many other cases, the structured data is only available through commercial data shar-
ing agreements.

Public Finance and Public Contracting

Data on government spending and procurement can be a powerful resource for improving efficiency
and effectiveness of government, stimulating private sector innovation, facilitating increased control of
corruption, and supporting greater public participation in decisions about public spending.

Data on budgets, spending and public procurement are among the highest scoring on availability indica-
tors in the Barometer with examples of structured and machine-readable data available on every conti-
nent. The relatively high availability of well-structured open datasets appears to reflect the impact of
long-standing global campaigns and the provision of technical assistance to countries to implement
open data sharing by organizations, including our thematic partners the Open Contracting Partnership
(OCP) and Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT). Public procurement and public finance sys-
tems have also been more widely digitized, making the release of data reliant on political will in many
cases, rather than technical capacity. Notably, not all the countries with open public procurement data
have open public finance data, and vice-versa.

56
Pillars | Availability

Dataset Available online Open data Mean quality score Mean openness score

Budget and spend

data
106 33 5.79 6.47

Public procure-
ment data
100 37 7.76 6.57

The Barometer’s indicators provide a breakdown of the features of available datasets, complementing
studies, such as the Open Budget Survey[26], which have long tracked the extent to which key budget
documents are made available, as well as the provision of opportunities for public participation in bud-
get processes. Using this detail, we can see significant areas for improvement around the provision of
budget disaggregation by cross-cutting programs or issues, such as the SDGs, climate action or gender
budgeting (currently available for just 21.2% of open datasets), and inclusion of identifiers to link budget
and spend to major projects (present in 45.5% cases of open data).

There are similar gaps in available procurement data, where although researchers located many cases
where at least some tender and award information is published (81.7% and 79.8% of countries respec-
tively), data on the planning phase (56%) and implementation or delivery of contracted goods or works
(30.3%) data were much less likely to available. In general, many of the key features for understanding
public contracts, such as a description of the goods, works or services being procured, the name of the
company awarded the contract, and contract values, were identified as present in the majority of
datasets checked. However, this does not guarantee that these data fields are always present. In 33.9%
of cases, researchers reported either that there was evidence that a portion of mandated data was
missing or there was evidence of widespread omissions in the data (procurement was among the
datasets with the greatest number of countries with missing data reported). Many of the procurement
data sources identified also only cover a limited number of agencies, or in some cases represent exam-
ples from leading cities that are yet to be replicated across the whole country. Qualitative responses al-
so reported on a range of specific challenges around procurement data quality, such as missing award
notices or notices with key variables unfilled. This highlights that, when looking at the availability of data
for the public good, it is not only the fields listed in column headers that matter - but also the extent to
which those fields are populated with meaningful data. A global instrument like the Barometer can sur-
face indicators of likely data quality, but the full quality and value of any dataset can only be understood
through data use.

Land

Land tenure data identifies who holds rights over land. This data can be used to understand the land
ownership landscape in a country, to identify land concentration, and to understand access to land and
land tenure security, as well as for anti-corruption purposes[27]. The Barometer looks at the availability
and openness of land data and at how far available data covers different kinds of tenure, including ur-
ban and rural tenure, state owned land, common lands, company owned land and land held by private
individuals.

Land use data describes the purposes to which land is put and has significant value for economic plan-
ning, environmental protection and work on climate change mitigation and resilience. The Barometer
looks for structured datasets that detail the kinds of activities occurring in particular locations with asso-
ciated geo-spatial references. We look for land use data that includes metadata describing how land
has been classified, as well as information specifically on protected areas and forested areas.

57
Pillars | Availability

Dataset Available online Open data Mean quality score Mean openness score

Land tenure 53 11 5 4.08

Existing land use 77 31 6.95 5.57

While a number of countries are publishing structured open data on land use, in many cases, online
land-use maps are presented as PDFs or images without the underlying data. There is potential for sig-
nificantly more land use data to be made available by building the capacity of key data owners to pub-
lish in machine-readable formats.

For land tenure data, there is a mixed picture across the globe. In some cases, data is not yet digitized.
In others, data exists, but is only available following formal applications, or payment of fees. While some
countries have developed robust models to balance the open provision of granular tenure data with pro-
tection of individual land owners’ personal details, there is a pressing need for more consistent ap-
proaches to manage accessibility and protection of data. The Barometer provides a new benchmark for
tracking future progress in making particular kinds of tenure information available online, including state
owned lands (currently 41.3% of countries have some information available), corporate-owned land
(36.7%), individual tenure (41.3%), and the land tenure of indigenous or marginalized people (15.6%).

How can countries improve data availability?

For each country, the Global Data Barometer website contains a profile that shows the breakdown of in-
dividual scores against availability indicators. This can be used to identify particular areas for improve-
ment based on the data categories covered in this edition of the Barometer. Future editions of the
Barometer will address a number of other sectors, as well as measure progress against baselines es-
tablished in this edition.

Drawing on the quantitative and qualitative evidence captured for the availability pillar, we highlight the
following common areas for action.

Develop data infrastructure

Low capability countries are often reliant on outdated, or externally provided, infrastructures for data
publishing. This can constrain their ability to manage data and to publish it in accessible formats. Gov-
ernments need support to develop integrated national data systems[28] and to make sure these are able
to support open data flows.

For mid and higher capability countries, there should be a focus on the interoperability of data through
adoption of common standards and identifiers that can allow links to be made between datasets, while
paying attention to the potential risks of certain data linkage.

Refresh data publishing practices

Mid capability countries need to focus on filling data gaps and improving data quality. This requires a
move from approaching open data as a tick-box exercise based around data portals to a focus on ‘data
as a service’, recognizing that published datasets need to be designed around user need and need to

58
Pillars | Availability

be actively maintained. In some cases, this will involve wider processes of service redesign, looking at
how data from land use systems and land registers, company registers, environmental reporting sys-
tems or other elements of national data infrastructure can be provided in sustainable open forms.

Federal countries, or countries where cities or states are leading on the open data agenda, may need to
focus in particular on interoperability to move towards a situation in which data is reliably available
across the whole country, rather than being restricted to particular urban areas.

Support provision of both data and interfaces

Even for higher capability countries, gaps in the provision of bulk data, restrictive licensing arrange-
ments, and charging models for data, are holding back progress towards data being widely available for
re-use. At the same time, a lack of accessible interfaces for exploring data means that a large pool of
potential data users are not able to find the particular data points or facts that could be relevant to them.

Countries should focus on understanding the wider national and local use-cases for each major dataset
they are providing and should look to provide different means of access for different audiences either di-
rectly or by actively supporting sustainable intermediaries.

59
Pillars | Use and impact

Use and impact

The extent to which data is used to deliver socially valued impacts is notoriously difficult to measure.
Over the years many estimates have been offered of the economic or social value that data can bring,
presenting large figures on the potential value. However, disentangling public good benefits of data from
GDP growth or other aggregate metrics is challenging: not least because aggregate economic statistics
may describe revenue from both uses and abuses of data. Qualitative approaches also have their diffi-
culties, although understanding stories of how data has been used can be valuable to inspire replication
and adaptation of ideas to new contexts. However, when case studies are used as a measure of im-
pact, this often captures how well countries write up their open data uses, rather than how widespread
data use actually is.

In the first edition of the Barometer, we have explored an approach centred on representative use-cas-
es in order to gain a rough comparative understanding of data use and impact. We set out four specific
examples of data use that researchers were invited to look for. These uses, each linked to a particular
thematic module in the Barometer, were designed to capture a range of forms of data use: from data
enabling civil society scrutiny of government to private sector re-use of data to provide services that
bring public benefits, and from data-enabled research and advocacy to promote greater equity to gov-
ernment use of data to deliver more effective services. Along with these primary metrics, we include one
secondary indicator on international organization use of country data.

Although limited in scope and covering just a very small number of the possible uses to which data can
be put, the data gathered for this pillar offers insights into the drivers of data use and the challenges
faced by current and potential data users.

Summary
• Across the examples surveyed in the Barometer, there are relatively low levels of data use,
with 20 countries reporting no notable data use against the example use-cases provided,
and only 22 countries having uses to report across all four. However, more encouraging, in
56.3% of the 247 instances where data use was identified, at least some evidence of impact
(e.g. the data use leading to policy change or social or political value) was identified.

• The majority of data uses identified were seen as isolated cases of use (for example, a sin-
gle civil society organization using a dataset for a particular advocacy campaign), rather
than representing established and widespread uses of data (for example, data being used
by multiple Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and media outlets in a number of instances).
While higher and lower capability countries have roughly equal numbers of isolated data
use-cases, widespread use appears to be correlated with higher capability. In particular,
countries with higher sub-national data capability are more likely to see extensive data use.

• Many data users work around the low availability of structured datasets by bringing together
data from multiple sources, converting and cleaning it. In some cases, civil society, academ-
ic and occasionally private sector users become intermediaries providing structured data for
others to use. However, this is often not sustainable and can create barriers to scaling up
data use.

• Media (36.4% of cases checked) and civil society organizations (37.6%) were most likely to
be identified as data users in our survey with government (30.3%) and academia (25.7%)
following. We found just 62 cases of private sector use, primarily in countries with strong
technology sectors.

60
Pillars | Use and impact

• We found limited evidence of data uses drawing upon Artificial Intelligence with less than 20
cases cited across the survey. In a number of cases, AI was used to clean, rather than
analyse, available data.

Where is data being put to use?

Use and impact pillar regional scores: low scores on the use and impact pillar reflect that relatively few of the specific cases of
data use sought by the Barometer survey were identified in each region.

European Union, United Kingdom, Latin America

Eastern Europe Middle East and South and East
Africa North America, Israel, Australia and and the
and Central Asia North Africa Asia
New Zealand Caribbean

Ghana
(35.56),
Malaysia
Cameroon Ukraine
Brazil (41.5), (35.34), Re-
(31.49), (82.08), Russia Jordan (12.29),
New Zealand (53.71), USA Mexico (40.33), public of Korea
Rwanda (50.81), Alba- Oman (12.0),
(49.42), Netherlands (45.75), Unit- Colombia (32.57), Hong
(24.1), nia (45.46), UAE (12.0),
ed Kingdom (45.12), Bulgaria (37.82), Chile Kong (30.08),
Uganda Moldova Qatar (12.0),
(45.0) (35.36), Ar- Indonesia
(19.32), (36.77), Geor- Egypt (12.0)
gentina (30.29) (29.77), China
Mozam- gia (28.21)
(24.28)
bique
(17.82)

The use pillar is primarily based on four survey indicators, asking to what extent there is evidence of da-
ta being used to:

• Improve procurement practice: including through analytic dashboards- carry out red flag
analysis, improve the diversity of procurement, or assess and improve the environmental
impacts of procurement.
• Identify, expose, or highlight failures of government: with an emphasis on the use of po-
litical integrity data by a wide range of stakeholders, including civil society, journalists, acad-
emia and the private sector.
• Influence policy in the interests of equitable and inclusive land tenure and use: partic-
ularly through use by journalists, academics or civil society organizations.
• Support corporate due diligence: including through the provision of services for private
sector organizations to check the credential of potential business partners, for governments
to carry out checks before entering into contracts, or for media to report on company owner-

61
Pillars | Use and impact

ship.

For each indicator, researchers were asked to identify cases of use and to ascertain whether these
were isolated examples or representative of widespread use. As the chart below shows, procurement
data saw the greatest use with due diligence uses of company data identified in the smallest number of
countries.

Cases of data use by topic: Procurement analytics use-cases were the most frequently identified, followed by use of data for po-
litical accountability and integrity purposes, and then data use related to land governance. Although fewer countries could demon-
strate domestic private sector companies using company data to support due diligence activities, where the data and market to
support this was available, it was more likely to result in widespread use of the data.

Examining cases of data use by capability clusters (see Capability chapter), we find surprisingly high
levels of data use in lower capability countries, although most uses identified were isolated cases. A
look at the qualitative justifications for these scores reveals that, while civil society or journalists in coun-
tries with limited data availability may be able to run pilot projects or one-off analysis, or while donors
may support demonstrator initiatives in these contexts, sustaining and scaling data use requires both
more sustainable supply of data from government and greater capability in the population as a whole to
work with the data made available. Notably, over 50% of the cases of private sector data use identified
came from high-capability countries.

Cases of data use by capability cluster: Higher, mid and lower capability countries all have similar numbers of isolated data
use-cases, whereas widespread use of data is correlated with capability.

Researchers were also asked to identify whether there was evidence that the particular uses of data
covered by the survey were having meaningful positive impacts and to assess the strength of the evi-
dence. Notably, while there is little difference between indicators when we consider the presence of any
evidence (some evidence exists in 56.3% of cases), when we look for strong evidence of impact, and
high levels of confidence that data is driving impact, the scores for procurement analytics uses of data
were double those for political integrity use. In short, it appears that while data is a powerful tool in iden-
tifying, exposing or revealing failures of government, the barriers to translating that information into im-
pact are substantial, and persistent problems of impunity, and weak accountability mechanisms must
not be underestimated when thinking about how data can drive change.

62
Pillars | Use and impact

Evidence of impact: Strong evidence of impact was identified in twice as many countries for procurement analytic data use, as
for impact of political integrity data use.

How is data use developing?

While this first edition of the Barometer cannot provide longitudinal data on use, the rich qualitative justi-
fications, and collection of links and short summaries provided by researchers, can provide critical in-
sights into how data use practices are developing around the world.

Dashboards & detection

When it comes to procurement data use, we see significant focus on creating dashboards and red-flag
analysis tools that can use data to indicate potential corruption risks. The Barometer survey identified
over 50 examples of publicly accessible procurement dashboards produced by a range of stakeholders,
from official public procurement agencies to civil society organizations, international research pro-
grammes and investigative journalists. Below you can find selected screenshots of portals, showing
some of the comment elements and unique approaches taken in each. Particularly notably are the num-
ber of platforms that were either adapted for, or launched with a particular focus on COVID-19 emer-
gency procurement, demonstrating the ability of open data platforms to respond rapidly to current
events.

Uses of procurement data: Procurement data is widely used to provide dashboards, and for red-flag analysis, but there is less
evidence of data being used to support inclusion or environmental procurement

Less evident were uses of procurement data in support of sustainable procurement or to promote more
inclusive pattern of procurement (such as analysis of gender impacts of procurement decisions). Al-
though a number of countries have developed ‘green public procurement’ policies, there was limited evi-
dence of data being used to monitor these, with only the Republic of Korea and Latvia providing some
evidence in our survey of reporting statistics on compliance with such policies. This highlights an area
for future work around better integrating strong platforms of procurement data transparency with critical
challenges of sustainable procurement.

63
Pillars | Use and impact

Procurement dashboards compared

In Italy, the Authorita National AntiCor-

ruzione (ANAC) hosts an analytic dash-
In Nepal, a platform initially prototyped by
board onto the National Database of Public
civil society, has been adopted by the offi-
The Kosovo Open and Transparent Pro- Contracts
cial Public Procurement Monitoring Office,
curement Portal - (PPHT) is mananged by a and is kept updated with data from e-pro-
civil society organisation, with funding from curement systems.
USAID and cooperation from the govern-
ment procurement agency. Recent develop-
ments to the portal have added the ability to
search for contracts by the name of the
owner of the company receiving a contract.

In Ecuador, a dashboard build by non-profit

In Moldova, a range of dashboards exist dri- Fundapi, took data in Open Contracting Da-
ven by data in the Open Contracting Data ta Standard format from the National Public
Standard, including one based on the Qlik Procurement Service to visualize the use of
business intelligence dashboard software - emergency procedures in COVID-19 re-
replicating a model first developed by the sponse
ProZorro Business Intelligence platform in
Ukraine
In the USA, investigative journalism news-
room ProPublica used procurement data to
build a dashboard focussed on federal
COVID-19 related contracts.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, a dashboard funded

In Nigeria, the Premium Times Centre for by the European Bank for Reconstruction
Investigative Journalism have taken data and Development draws on data from the
In Malaysia, the ‘Cartelogy’ platform was
from the Nigeria Bureau of Public Procure- national procurement portal. Researchers
developed to connect procurement data,
ment to provide a dashboard of commodity report that this dashboard is occasionally
company profiles and political exposed per-
prices, responding in particular to the cor- used to support media reports, but is more
sons data to create a “red flag” tool de-
ruption and cost inflation issues. commonly of use to businesses seeking
signed to help government officials to
procurement opportunities.
proactively detect potentially suspicious
procurement activity.

64
Pillars | Use and impact

Promising partnerships

Stakeholders using data: Civil society organizations were identified as data users in 37.6% of the cases where this was checked
for, whereas private sector users were identified in just 19% of cases.

In the past, some of the key barriers to civil society and media data use have been related to skill gaps.
While there remain significant data literacy gaps in traditional media and civil society organizations, we
observe a number of promising trends, including the ongoing professionalization of data journalism, evi-
dence of deeper partnerships between traditional civil society organizations and civic technology organi-
zations, and use by media of commercial provided platforms to support both research and data-visuali-
sation in complex media stories.

In the United States, political integrity data finds extensive use both by specialist data-journalism and in-
vestigatory journalism platforms, and within mainstream newsrooms, as well as being used by acade-
mics addressing wider trends in political lobbying or party finance. Extensive journalistic uses of political
integrity data were also identified in countries including Ghana, Chile, Argentina and Nepal, albeit with
journalists turning to right to information laws, rather than open data sources in a number of cases.

The ability of media reporting to lead to substantive impacts on political integrity is shaped by wider po-
litical environments. However, where official institutions are strong, the media can play an important role
in drawing attention to issues that then spark enforcement activity. Writing prior to the illegal invasion of
Ukraine in 2022, our researcher reported that media reports based on the register of asset declarations
have been observed to trigger action by official anti-corruption bodies, who might check on the data
used and sometimes initiate criminal cases.

In reports on the use of corporate due diligence data, we observed a number of cases where media out-
lets were drawing upon commercially provided platforms in order to carry out research into company
ownership, using visualisations generated by those platforms in their media reports. A number of plat-
forms appear to have recognized the value of this by offering national civil society organizations and
journalists free access to their platforms, while still operating a paid-for business model for commercial
users.

A number of the cases of use identified in the Barometer story appear to involve collaborations between
traditional, cause-focused civil society organizations and more technically-oriented civic technology or-
ganizations. This represents a maturing of the landscape, away from civic technology organizations run-
ning their own independent campaigns, and suggests a more sustainable model of practice in which or-
ganizations with a long-term commitment to a particular cause bring their domain knowledge together
with the skills and knowledge of data specialists. For example, in France, a consortium of NGOs have
worked with cooperative business Datactivist to develop a platform that uses machine-learning to
analyse whether companies are publishing legally required plans on due diligence activities.

There is also evidence of public data sources being used by actors outside of countries, particularly in
cases where domestic political freedoms are restricted. Although many countries report no use of politi-
cal integrity data to hold governments to account, either because of a lack of data or a lack of indepen-

65
Pillars | Use and impact

dent civic space, in a number of cases, researchers report that international non-governmental organi-
zations, expatriate citizens or investigative journalists abroad, are making use of data to highlight gov-
ernment failures or issues of concern.

66
Pillars | Use and impact

Examples of media data use

In Namibia, the Investigative Journalism

Unit had success in 2021 with two major
stories about political integrity, drawing on
data to track financial flows across coun-
tries including Iceland, Angola and Dubai.
Screenshot source: investigations.namib-
ian.com.na

Data from the Moldovan Company register

was used to investigate ownership of the
ship that transported the hazardous chemi-
cals involved in a catastrophic 2020 blast in
Beirut, Lebanon. Screenshot source: balka-
ninsight.com

In Latvia, investigative reporters have made

use of a commercially provided tool for ex- In Chile, investigative journalists regularly
ploring company networks structures for re- draw on company data and political integrity
search and presentation of a news story registers to report on the interests of politi-
about the signatories to a letter that op- cally exposed persons. Screenshot source:
posed equality for same-sex partners. ciperchile.cl
(Screenshot source: tvnet.lv)

In China, reporters have made use of the

company data provided through the
Tianyancha App to report on legal cases in- In Uganda, a data scientist has used public
volving companies, and to add details on data to fact-check claims about deforesta-
company ownership to other news stories. tion. Screenshot source: pesacheck.org
(Screenshot source: new.qq.com)

67
Pillars | Use and impact

Working around data gaps

Using Barometer data to compare the availability of land data and evidence of land data use reveals a
surprisingly weak correlation. Given we have more countries where data use is evident than countries
that are providing fully open data, this suggests actors are making use of data in spite of low availability,
rather than because of the available data.

Looking into detailed survey responses reveals many cases where media and civil society actors pieced
together documentary evidence from land registers or official records and combined this with other
sources to produce data-enabled analysis. For example, in Paraguay, the environmental NGO, IDEA,
used right to information requests to obtain land ownership data and combined this with satellite images
and information on licenses to detect illegal deforestation, and to then file an official complaint. As the
country researcher noted, this case demonstrates “more the achievement of the CSO that led the case,
rather than the availability of the data for public use”, particularly in terms of turning an observation of il-
legal deforestation into a formal complaint.

Our survey data also suggests that civil society currently play the biggest role in the use of land data to
drive policy change (40 countries), followed by academia and media (in 35 countries), and lastly, by the
private sector (in 19 countries). In many cases, where private sector use of land data was reported, the
focus was more often on developing services for house buyers and sellers, rather than explicitly sup-
porting greater equity and inclusion in land markets. In both France and Taiwan, researchers reported
the main users of land data were private firms operating in this way, with Taiwan providing one of just 5
examples identified of AI being used to work with land data.

Questions of land ownership concentration, and of agricultural policy, feature highly among those ad-
dressed through data use. For example, in Brazil, the ‘Map of Inequality’ uses records on more than 5.3
million rural properties from the Atlas of Brazilian Agriculture to input into ongoing, and intensely politi-
cal, discussions on agrarian reform. This project, using analysis of geographic data, offers the potential
to provide alternative perspectives on land inequality from those available using only official statistical
data. In another example, covering both agricultural policy and issues of land grabs, Mexican NGO, the
Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS), draws upon data from the National Agrarian Registry to
develop advocacy-oriented visualisations showing ecosystems, economic activities and land tenure.
This feeds into both advisory support for producers through field work and into public policy advocacy
informed by a combination of grassroots experience and data analysis.

The challenges of piecing together a picture of land ownership, even in highly digitized economies, is
evident in use-cases from both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In both countries, where bulk
access to land tenure information isn’t available to the media or civil society, journalists and activists
have pieced together records to present data on the largest landowners, challenging conventional think-
ing about the distribution of land ownership, including providing evidence on the extent of state-owned
land. In one analysis, drawing on data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN,
journalists report that just 6% of Dutch land is owned by women.

In Rwanda, one of the few countries in our survey to collect and publish data on the gender of land own-
ers, the Land Administration Information System, and the Rwanda Land Dashboard it drives, has seen
use in policy analysis amongst academics, civil society, media and government. Our survey researchers
noted that its creation since 2005 has been a significant achievement, but that challenges remain in re-
fining the top-level statistical findings the dashboard presents into actionable information for policy-mak-
ers. This issue, that users are often reliant upon statistics released government agencies but lack the
ability to access the underlying data to develop more detailed metrics of analysis, is a common theme in
a number of countries and arguably limits the space for actors outside government to develop robust in-
puts into policy debates. In particular, researchers noted that when civil society has to rely on limited
and ad-hoc data sources, this can lead to a fragmentation of policy debate and advocacy when, as our
survey responses on land tenure data use from Sierra Leone reported “advocacy often goes in all direc-
tions with different objectives simply because organizations each use non-standardized data”.

68
Pillars | Use and impact

How can countries improve data use in future?

For each country, the Global Data Barometer website contains a profile that shows the breakdown of in-
dividual scores against use and impact indicators. This can be used to identify possible areas for im-
provement, although it should be noted that future editions of the Barometer are likely to include a wider
range of use-cases and impact assessment than are included this edition and may see some further de-
velopment of the use and impact measurement methodology.

As a result, our recommendations here focus less on the specific use-cases covered by the Barometer
survey and more on particular approaches to support diverse re-use of data oriented towards the public
good. This builds on a recognition that demand for data, and data use, is a key driver in improving data
quality, and that transforming national data infrastructures requires the active involvement of a wide
range of data users.

Governments should make greater, and more transparent, use of

their own data

With improved data management and sharing frameworks, by building internal capacity for data use,
and by developing partnerships with a range of sectors, governments can increase the public value
generated from the data they already collect and hold.

We found it was often challenging to identify how government is making use of data. However, to pro-
mote uses of data that build towards the public good, and to protect against those that may harm minor-
ity or marginalized populations, or that otherwise have negative impacts, it is important that govern-
ments are accountable to citizens for how data is being used. When publishing datasets, commissioning
new analysis or tools based on data, or making use of algorithmic systems, governments should identify
ways to make the public aware of how data is being used.

Support cross-sector partnerships for data use

Some of the most interesting and sustainable examples of data we identified involved partnership work-
ing between multiple sectors, including traditional civil society working with civic technology non-profits
and companies or data platforms initially developed by non-governmental organizations being adopted
and hosted on an ongoing basis by government agencies. Governments, funders and other stakehold-
ers should all consider how to support, and remove the barriers to, these forms of collaboration.

Deepen emphasis on equity and inclusion

We found relatively limited evidence of data being used to address issues of equity and inclusion. Data
use for the public good should address the needs of everyone. This may involve paying particular atten-
tion to promoting data use aligned with the sustainable development goals or setting frameworks that
ensure data use is taking account of the particular needs of marginalized populations.

69
Regional Analysis

In this section we explore Barometer findings across 6 global regions, selected to reflect the structure of
our research hubs network: Africa; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; the European Union, United King-
dom, North America, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand; Latin America and the Caribbean; Middle East
and North Africa; and South and East Asia. Below you will find summary data for each region, along
with selected insights from the regional research hub or hubs responsible for coordinating research in
that region.

Reading regional tables

• Strengths and weaknesses are selected based on the primary indicator for which a coun-
try has the greatest deviation from the regional mean score. In other words, of all available
indicators, the strength column shows the indicators where the country is most likely to have
a good practice example to share with others in the region. The weakness column indicates
areas where a country may face particular challenges, and/or where there is the greatest
opportunity for rapid progress by learning from regional peers. These are determined by in-
dicator scores only and do not reflect an editorial decision.

• Regional (RL) and Global Leaders (GL). We use ‘RL’ against an indicator to show when a
country has among the highest scores in the region on a particular indicator, and ‘GL’ when
it has among the highest scores globally. This can be useful to locate countries that may
demonstrate best practice.

• Component scores. The table includes the weighted score for each country on the Gover-
nance, Capability, Availability and Use and Impact components of the Barometer. Each of
these components are assigned a score out of 10.

• Open Data Policy and Initiative. The tables include specific indicators scores for the pres-
ence of Open Data Policy and Open Data Initiatives (see Governance and Capability chap-
ters). These indicators are broadly comparable with indicators from past editions of the
Open Data Barometer offering insights into whether national open data policies and prac-
tices have improved or been neglected in recent years. Less than a 1 in 10 change in the in-
dicator score is shown as ▣. An increase of more than 1 in 10 points on past ODB scores is

🔻
shown with ▲, suggesting a likely improvement in policy or initiative quality. A fall of more
than 1 in 10 is shown with . ODB measurements may be from 2020 (Latin America), 2017
(ODB Leaders), or 2016 (Other countries). Where there is no past ODB data to compare
with, ▢ is shown.

These tables should be read with the limitations of this first Barometer edition in mind. It is possible that
in some cases the strengths and weaknesses displayed will represent measurement errors, or outliers
present due to some particular aspect of country context that can only be fully understood by reading
the supporting qualitative evidence. Similarly, although certain GDB and ODB indicators were designed
for comparability, there are differences in the measurement method that may affect particular countries.
The tables below are intended as the start, rather than the end of discussion and exploration. Given lim-
itations of space, we only display one strength or weakness for each country.

71
Regional Analysis

Africa
The Barometer covers 22 countries in Africa. The region scores below the global average on all pillars,
with significant need for investment in data governance institutions, robust and comprehensive data in-
frastructures, and in fostering broad capabilities to manage and use data for the public good. However,
significant opportunities exist for peer-learning to take progress on topics such as public finance data
management and sharing, and to transfer learnings to other sectors such as data for climate action. The
region also has a number of solid, and improving, open data policy frameworks to build on, although
sustaining resources and support for open data initiatives remains a key challenge for the future.

Overall Score Governance Capabilities Availability Impact and Use

19.61 25.6 27.19 11.43 15.08

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Re- Overall Use &
Country Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) gional) Score Impact
Policy tiative

Angola (G) Public finance data (A) Public procurement data 0.0
10.6 16.7 15.9 2.7 15.2 0.0 ▢
▢
Benin (G) Data protection (G) Data management 0.0
14.4 14.2 23.1 10.1 8.8 40.0 ▲
▣
Burkina Fa- (G) Public consultation data (A) Public procurement data 54.0 72.0
RL GL 22.5 36.2 32.6 8.2 10.8
so ▲ ▣
Botswana (G) Data management (G) Asset declarations 0.0
20.2 29.5 28.0 9.6 13.0 32.0 ▲
▣
Côte d’Ivoire (C) Government support for (G) Asset declarations 0.0
19.8 25.2 41.3 4.6 10.8 51.0 ▲
re-use RL GL ▣
Cameroon RL (G) Data management 0.0
(A) Existing land use 24.1 23.9 25.6 22.8 31.5 36.0 ▲
▣
Ghana (G) Beneficial ownership RL (A) Public procurement data 0.0
GL
27.7 32.3 43.2 14.7 35.6 70.0 ▲
▣
Gambia (G) Public consultation data (A) Public procurement data 0.0
RL GL 20.5 29.0 20.7 14.6 17.2 0.0 ▢
▢
Kenya (G) Public consultation data
RL GL
(C) Open data initiative
25.7 44.0 21.9 16.5 8.4
🔻
0.0
0.0 🔻
Liberia (G) RTI performance RL (G) Data protection
17.2 24.6 14.7 13.6 14.9
0.0 20.0
▢ ▢
Morocco (A) Company register (G) Public finance data
12.4 10.8 23.0 7.9 7.2
0.0
▣
0.0 🔻
Mozambique (G) Data sharing frame- (G) Data protection 0.0
works 10.3 14.0 13.5 5.0 17.8 0.0 ▣
▣
Malawi (G) Data sharing fra (G) Data management 28.0 16.8
works 14.6 27.3 17.3 4.3 11.6
▲ ▣
Namibia (A) Vaccination (COVID-19)
RL
(G) Public finance data
18.9 21.1 23.2 15.2 15.4
0.0
▣
0.0 🔻
🔻
Nigeria (C) Sub-national RL (G) Public finance data 6.3
24.3 25.5 40.0 15.1 17.5 80.0 ▲

72
Regional Analysis

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Re- Overall Use &
Country Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) gional) Score Impact
Policy tiative

Rwanda (G) Open data policy (G) Data protection 63.0

24.8 32.6 39.1 11.1 24.1 72.0 ▲
▲
Senegal (A) Public procurement data (A) Budget and spend data 0.0
12.1 14.8 18.9 6.4 9.6 0.0 ▣
▣

🔻 🔻
Sierra (G) Political finance (G) Data protection 0.0 28.0
12.1 13.1 22.8 5.3 11.6
Leone

🔻
Togo (G) Asset declarations (G) Public finance data 0.0 14.0
14.6 15.5 20.8 10.6 11.6
▣
Tunisia RL (G) Public finance data 80.0 40.0
(G) Open data policy 23.1 35.0 37.5 7.5 10.8
▲ ▣
Uganda (G) Data management (G) Beneficial ownership 0.0
31.4 39.6 37.8 23.0 19.3 50.0 ▲
▣
South Africa (A) Budget and spend data (C) Civil service
🔻
0.0 28.0
RL GL 30.4 38.5 37.3 22.6 9.2
▣

🔻
G = Governance pillar; C = Capabilities pillar; A = Availability pillar; U = Use and Impact pillar; RL = Regional Leader (among the highest scoring regionally) on this indicator;
GL = Global Leader (among the highest scoring globally) on this indicator. ▲ = GDB score higher than ODB score on related indicator; = GDB score lower than ODB
score on related indicator; ▣ = less than 1pt change in score; ▢ = No data for comparison.

73
Regional Analysis

Hub perspectives: Local Development Research Institute (Sub-Saha-

ran Africa)

poor institutions, and sluggish political systems

continue to stymie reform initiatives. Empowered
women and youth continue to pursue larger in-
volvement in politics within and via the African
Union. International organizations have been able
to assist by expanding regional cooperation, sup-
porting democratic and security sector governance
across Sub-Saharan countries, promoting con-
structive cross-party discourse and strengthening
political party capability. Even though Sub-Saha-
ran African countries began to open up to democ-
racy three decades ago, the area is still character-
ized by a high variety of political systems. Fragile
democracies frequently face multiple problems
and flaws, and they share borders with some of
the world’s least democratic countries. Multi-party
elections, almost non-existent in 1990, are now
the norm, yet they still seldom result in power
By Keziah Munyao transfers. Recent tendencies of democratic reces-
sion have not gone unnoticed in the region but
have affected distinct nations differently. Some
Regional profile unanticipated democratic shifts have occurred in
parallel to broader democratic decline. Further-
Sub-Saharan Africa is a diversified continent with more, while the coronavirus pandemic struck the
a population of over one billion. It has human and region less severely than other regions of the
natural resources with potential to generate equi- world, its influence on democratic and human
table growth and alleviate poverty. While the conti- rights was considerable.
nent continues to achieve significant advances,
sadly the region still has the highest death rate for
Findings from the field
under-5s in the world; nearly a quarter of the pop-
ulation is malnourished; 42% of people lack a ba-
sic water supply; 72% lack basic sanitation; and The first edition of the Barometer was a learning
58% of 15 to 17 -year- olds do not attend experience for the Sub-Saharan Africa regional
hub with some of the significant themes observed
school[29]. The area fails to achieve gender equali-
during the field study including that:
ty and ranks last among regions on the 2019
SDGs Gender Index[30],owing to high maternal • There is little publicly available evi-
mortality rates and uneven access to water and dence of governments investing in the
power. Sub-Saharan Africa also faces the fastest data literacy skills in the civil service
rates of population growth and a rapidly rising ur- outside of statistical units or national
ban population: expected to reach 1.3 billion by statistics offices;
2050. In spite of significant advances in global • There is significant fragmentation of
health, particularly the fight against HIV/AIDS, content across agencies, ministry and
many broader trends have potential to strain al- departments websites, making it diffi-
ready overburdened food, health, education, and cult for the public and other stakehold-
public infrastructure systems, as well as to over- ers to find relevant data;
whelm job markets that are unable to meet em- • Government platforms in some coun-
ployment demand from growing youth populations. tries lack easy ways of disseminating
information to a larger audience.
The continent is also a region of dramatic political
and socioeconomic disparities. In a few nations,
autocratic governments, civil unrest, corruption,

74
Regional Analysis

In addition to these issues around data creation greater impact on people in the future. The Barom-
and dissemination, we found that low data literacy eter can help countries to better understand the
for interpretation of public data was a common is- dynamics and complexities of generating, publish-
sue in the region. For example, datasets on popu- ing, and analyzing data, and to bring together ex-
lation civil registration and vital statistics systems pert opinions and government officials’ perspec-
(CRVS) were difficult for individuals to compre- tives to understand practical steps forward. By fo-
hend. This points to challenges on both the ‘supply cussing on constructive peer-learning in the re-
side’ and ‘demand side’ of data for the public gion, and across the globe, we hope the compre-
good. It also raises questions about how far data hensive and balanced tools provided by the
is being managed in ways that support analysis Barometer can help defuse the political considera-
and re-use, both inside and outside government, tions that so often delay or prevent data openness
rather than just allowing statistical reports to be in Africa.
published. Much of the data we found through the
field study was not tailored to ongoing analysis, When we consider next steps, and priorities,
nor did it appear to be linked to processes inside African countries must secure and provide greater
government that would keep it updated. resources to deliver ongoing assistance, capacity
building, and strengthening to national statistical
The field work also identified gaps with respect to offices, which are a driving force behind national
data protection or privacy standards in a number open data projects. Supporting re-use calls for da-
of countries, even where efforts are underway to ta that is accessible, comprehensible, and use-
promote wider data usage and openness. The ab- able. To deliver this we must overcome various
sence of strong legal frameworks alongside new obstacles, such as technological, political, finan-
technological advancements seems to be a devel- cial, and socio-cultural barriers. Recognizing this,
oping concern, particularly in countries where no greater focus should be placed on capacity devel-
frameworks exist to oversee the use of emerging opment, peer learning, and training among the
technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). community of academics, journalists, and other
practitioners who can drive demand for, and use
Finally, there appears to be a struggle with local of, data.
governments when it comes to making data avail-
able and open to the public as the survey shows Finally, as the Barometer hopefully expands to
there has been minimal movement on the open cover further thematic areas in future, and given
data and open government front at regional or city the current status of the global food system, which
levels beyond a few exceptional examples. is under strain from climate uncertainties and a
growing population, governments in Sub-Saharan
Africa should consider placing a particular focus
Future directions
on sharing data about the agriculture sector for
public consumption, supporting both government-
The Barometer study has been a critical activity for led data sharing efforts, and working to make sure
the region with the potential to help countries be- agricultural data from all stakeholders is available
come more confident, to take decisions on data as a resource for the public good.
strategies, and be more proactive in developing
data-driven policies and initiatives that can have a

75
Regional Analysis

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The Barometer covers 15 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The region scores marginally
below the global average on the capabilities pillar with significant variability in how far countries have
the skills, institutions and freedoms to use data for the public good. The region scores marginally above
the global average on use and impact, reflecting civil society-led uses of data in particular. Strengthen-
ing data governance, and adopting more multi-stakeholder approaches to promoting management,
availability and use of data for the public good, are key areas for development in the region in the years
ahead.

Overall Score Governance Capabilities Availability Impact and Use

32.79 35.9 37.05 28.62 27.65

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Re- Overall Use &
Country Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) gional) Score Impact
Policy tiative

Albania (A) Existing land use RL GL (A) Emission

38.3 41.4 47.7 30.1 45.5
40.0
54.0 ▲
▣
Armenia (G) Public finance data RL (C) Open data initiative 0.0
GL
44.6 54.7 27.7 48.5 28.0 0.0 ▢
▢
Azerbaijan (A) Emission (G) Asset declarations 10.0
21.8 26.7 29.5 15.1 9.6 0.0 ▢
▢
Belarus (G) Public consultation data
RL GL
(G) Data protection
19.5 12.7 28.4 19.7 13.7
0.0
▣
0.0 🔻
Georgia RL (G) Public consultation data 0.0 36.0
(A) Emission 40.3 34.5 40.1 45.5 28.2
▣ ▣
Kazakhstan (A) RTI performance data RL (G) Asset declarations
41.7 42.8 55.5 34.3 27.6
50.0
80.0 ▲
▲
Kyrgyz Re- (G) Beneficial ownership (G) Public consultation data 0.0
23.5 24.5 28.3 19.9 25.0 35.0 ▲
public ▣

🔻 🔻
Moldova (G) Asset declarations (C) Civil service 36.0 36.0
41.4 45.4 40.4 39.6 36.8

Mongolia (A) Vulnerability RL (A) Company register

32.8 34.8 32.7 33.4 13.5
54.0 60.0
▢ ▢
(C) Civil service RL
🔻 🔻
Russia (A) Vital statistics 54.0 36.0
41.7 41.5 52.3 34.8 50.8

Tajikistan (G) Open data policy (G) Public consultation data 37.8
12.2 15.5 18.5 6.5 10.8 7.0 ▣
▲
Turkmenistan (C) Civil service (G) Public consultation data 0.0
6.4 8.2 15.5 0.0 5.6 0.0 ▢
▢
Ukraine (U) Corporate due diligence (A) Public consultation data 80.0 80.0
RL GL 55.5 61.1 56.5 48.3 82.1
▣ ▣
Uzbekistan (C) Open data initiative RL (G) Asset declarations
31.7 43.7 41.6 19.4 12.1
68.8 80.0
▢ ▢
(G) RTI performance RL
🔻
Kosovo (A) Existing land use 54.0 40.0
40.5 50.8 41.0 34.2 25.5
▲

🔻
G = Governance pillar; C = Capabilities pillar; A = Availability pillar; U = Use and Impact pillar; RL = Regional Leader (among the highest scoring regionally) on this indicator;
GL = Global Leader (among the highest scoring globally) on this indicator. ▲ = GDB score higher than ODB score on related indicator; = GDB score lower than ODB
score on related indicator; ▣ = less than 1pt change in score; ▢ = No data for comparison.

76
Regional Analysis

Hub Perspectives: IDFI (Central Asia and Eastern Partnership)

had to do with official recognition of marginalized/

vulnerable groups by the state. While some coun-
tries refer to such groups in their legislation/policy
documents and are actively engaged in tackling
the challenges faced by them, others do not seem
to have taken any formal steps in this direction.

Findings from the field

The Barometer’s use and impact category ap-

peared to be the most challenging for the region,
with the exception of strong performance in
Ukraine. Researchers found only sporadic exam-
ples of data use-cases, mostly led by media and
civil society organizations. This points to a lack of
engagement with data from academia and the pri-
vate sector actors in many countries. Even where
media were using data, this often relied on civil so-
By Teona Turashvili and David Eristavi
ciety as intermediaries. With an absence of open
datasets and analytical tools, carrying out in-depth
Regional profile data processing can be too time-consuming for
fast-paced media outlets, and for this reason, they
Central Asian and Eastern Partnership countries mostly cover the studies and reports published by
have one major common denominator in the form CSOs, particularly those based on political finance
of the Soviet past, the consequences of which are data and public officials’ asset declarations.
still fairly apparent in terms of governance and ad-
Furthermore, in several countries of the region,
ministration. These countries share many common
there are virtually no tools for public oversight of
characteristics of post-soviet governments to vary-
officials and governance processes. Their political
ing degrees, such as complex bureaucracies, au-
systems remain closed for any meaningful socio-
thoritarian-leaning leadership, under-developed
political engagement of citizens and civil society
digital infrastructures, low literacy and challenges
actors. There is a lack of genuinely independent
to freedom of the press. However, despite the sim-
institutions that can identify, expose and highlight
ilarities, there are vastly different data ecosystems,
the government’s failures in all authoritarian-lean-
with fairly developed examples such as Ukraine at
ing countries of the region. The national re-
one end of the spectrum and more suppressed
searchers from these countries have reported that
structures such as Turkmenistan and Belarus at
the very few activists that speak out against the
the other.
government in their respective countries, regularly
When it comes to marginalized groups, most re- face intimidation, harassment and imprisonment.
searchers defaulted to identifying ethnic minorities
Out of all data categories, procurement data
residing in their respective countries, such as the
seems to be the most available in the region. Most
Uzbek population in Tajikistan, ethnic Armenians
countries surveyed had innovative procurement
and Azeris in Georgia, various groups in Azerbai-
portals in place and were actively using the Open
jan, etc. For conflict-affected areas such as Geor-
Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) to varying de-
gia and Ukraine, a common theme was the popu-
grees of adherence. In contrast, lobbying data
lations isolated in rural areas and internally dis-
seems to be the most challenging in the region,
placed people. More generally, the following
with most of the countries either not having a func-
groups were mentioned as potentially marginal-
tional framework to collect such data or not mak-
ized groups in the case of several countries:
ing it publicly available. Another challenge that
women; the LGBTQ+ community; Roma people;
stands out, especially in the post-pandemic recov-
people with disabilities; the elderly; and rural popu-
ery period, is the lack of disaggregated vaccination
lations. An interesting trend that was uncovered

77
Regional Analysis

data. Although overall statistics are available in tized, since they are responsible for generating or
most countries of the region, there is a significant collecting most public data. In parallel, capacity
lack of machine-readable, open datasets in this re- building with other stakeholders, such as civil soci-
gard. ety, media and business, is needed in order to in-
crease the impact generated through the use of
Although this may be true for many other regions, open data.
political integrity data in Eastern Partnership and
Central Asian countries was found to lack interop- Finally, it is of crucial importance for different
erability. Some countries are progressing in terms stakeholders to establish partnerships with each
of improving access to open data legislation and other on the issues of open data collection, publi-
practices, while some countries are stalled and no cation and use. Such multi-sector and multi-stake-
fundamental reforms have been initiated over the holder cooperation will significantly increase the
past years and others are even backsliding. impact of data initiatives for the public good. Differ-
ent stakeholders with different backgrounds and
experience can better combine their efforts and
Future directions
potentially design innovative services and new
products positively affecting citizens’ well-being.
First and foremost, countries in the region need Benefits to civil society and media are already ap-
solid regulatory frameworks on access to open da- parent at this stage, however the economic poten-
ta, since a majority of the countries lack common tial of data does not seem to be fully generated or
open data standards. To this end, there is a need encouraged at present. Shifting focus towards the
for a strong political will, which will ensure that de- economic aspects of open data may incentivize
cision-makers are aware of the importance, bene- and play a crucial role in enabling and advancing
fits, and key enablers for solid open data ecosys- all open data practices around the region. More-
tems in the country. over, a focus on economic aspects of open data
may help convince decision-makers to put open-
Another important component is the capacity
data related reforms on the political agenda and
building of all relevant stakeholders in open data
may engage the private sector in dialogue with civ-
management: which includes data collection, pro-
il society and the public sector regarding the need
cessing, publication, and use. In particular, civil
for improved data management systems and in-
servant qualifications with respect to data man-
creased access to public data for public good.
agement and open data also need to be priori-

Hub Perspective: Open Data Kosovo (Kosovo and Albania)

Regional profile

Kosovo and Albania are both new democracies

with a difficult historical past. Albania has suffered
a long transitional state that began in the early
nineties and followed half century of a communist
dictatorship, during which time the government
had total control over the economy and revoked
civil liberties. The Republic of Kosovo, which has
been in existence as a country for roughly thirteen
years, also has a communist dictatorship past, as
well as an economy recovering from the destruc-
tions of war. Both countries are currently democra-
tic societies and have in force modern constitu-
tions. Through these both countries express: the
determination to build free, democratic, and
peace-loving countries for all citizens; commitment
to the development of a state that ensures civil
By Dafina Olluri freedom, equality, and the rights of every citizen
before the law; and commitment to promoting eco-
nomic wellbeing and social prosperity.

78
Regional Analysis

Findings from the field publishes the properties, assets, incomes, and
debts of all notable public officials. This data,
available and easily accessible online for free,
The process of opening data in Albania and Koso-
contains more than ten years worth of declara-
vo has intensified during the last four to five years,
tions, providing a control base for tracking the
mainly due to drivers coming from the civil society,
wealth of Kosovo’s politicians. On the other hand,
where non-governmental organizations such as
data regarding land tenure is not available as open
Open Data Kosovo have played a crucial role.
data and thus there is no evidence that the data is
Open government portals are run by the respec-
being used for influencing policy in the interest of
tive agencies of the government for information
equitable and inclusive land tenure and use. In ad-
society but are not populated sufficiently with data
dition, the country does not have a health informa-
from other public entities, ultimately containing on-
tion system available to centrally host citizens’ da-
ly a limited selection of datasets. However, open
ta.
data is published by a variety of public entities and
state government agencies in different formats,
and these act as a valuable source of information Future directions
and decision-making for citizens and officials. The
statistical data on public procurement, public fi- Both Kosovo and Albania, despite their efforts to
nance, political integrity (data published by the An- open all public data, are still in the initial stages of
ti-Corruption Agency) is quite complete and open, this process and a stronger legal requirement will
leading towards a more transparent country. De- be vital to help positively boost the open data
spite this, there is more that needs to be done in process and support the use of data for the public
order to engage the private sector, as examples of good. In particular, attention needs to be given to
open or shared data from the private sector as still how compliance with data governance, open data
very rare. and data sharing rules will be ensured. Looking at
the use of data for the public good more widely,
In addition to open data, we note that the legal
specific efforts should be made to raise awareness
framework regarding data protection and access
about the data produced in the private sector and
to public information is quite advanced and is in
the importance of using and opening it to both
accordance with European Union requirements.
public and private sector stakeholders.
Kosovo is one of the few countries that openly

79
Regional Analysis

European Union, United Kingdom, North America,

Israel, Australia and New Zealand
The Barometer covers 20 European Union countries, which have been analyzed alongside the United
Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel in a group defined by generally
high levels of national income and data-related capabilities. Comparable governance scores hide some
significant differences between countries with some countries strong on sectoral rules for data disclo-
sure, while others are stronger on the universal applicability of data protection frameworks. Continued
work on data interoperability, improving sub-national capabilities, addressing issues of equity and inclu-
sion in data collection and use, and strengthening open data and data sharing related to climate action
should be particular areas of priority for countries in this group.

Overall Score Governance Capabilities Availability Impact and Use

52.08 51.8 60.55 49.59 29.56

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Re- Use &
Country Overall Score Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) gional) Impact
Policy tiative

Australia (A) Biodiversity (G) Public consultation data 81.0 80.0

55.5 52.7 67.7 53.3 25.7
▣ ▣
Bulgaria (U) Influencing policy for (A) Company register 70.0 70.0
49.7 59.0 54.4 40.7 45.0
gender and inclusion ▲ ▣

(A) Lobbying data RL GL

🔻
Canada (G) Public consultation data 90.0 80.0
60.8 59.5 68.0 62.2 12.8
▣
Czechia (G) RTI performance (G) Public consultation data 80.0
45.0 45.1 59.7 37.9 31.4 72.0 ▲
▲

🔻
Germany (C) Sub-national (A) Company register 50.0 81.0
58.1 61.1 68.8 53.6 18.2
▣
Denmark (A) Beneficial ownership RL (G) Open data policy
🔻
0.0 51.0
GL
58.2 45.2 67.3 65.5 23.6
▣
Spain (C) Sub-national RL GL (G) Public finance data
55.8 58.5 74.4 46.6 20.6
70.0 80.0
▣ ▣
Estonia (C) Political integrity interop- (A) Real-time healthcare 50.0
67.4 61.9 91.2 60.7 35.1 90.0 ▲
erability RL GL system capacity ▲

(A) Biodiversity RL GL
🔻
Finland (A) Real-time healthcare 30.0 80.0
54.5 48.3 68.9 52.3 37.9
system capacity ▣
France (C) Government support for (C) Civil service 80.0 100.0
66.2 69.7 70.5 63.6 41.3
re-use RL ▣ ▣

🔻 🔻
United (A) Beneficial ownership (A) Real-time healthcare 50.0 63.0
64.5 64.1 68.9 64.2 45.1
Kingdom system capacity
Greece (G) Beneficial ownership RL (G) Political finance
36.6 37.3 47.4 32.3 12.0
60.0 63.0
▣ ▣

🔻
Croatia (A) RTI performance data (G) Open data policy 0.0 45.0
47.9 55.4 42.8 47.3 28.8
▣
Ireland (G) Data management (G) Public finance data 72.0 90.0
46.0 47.2 66.5 36.7 12.8
▲ ▣
Israel (A) Company register (A) Existing land use 53.6
42.1 38.0 49.6 41.3 35.5 76.5 ▲
▣

🔻
Italy (A) Beneficial ownership (C) Civil service 50.0 60.0
56.5 62.3 54.5 56.4 26.9
▣

80
Regional Analysis

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Re- Use &
Country Overall Score Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) gional) Impact
Policy tiative

Lithuania (A) Real-time healthcare (G) Public consultation data 36.0 56.0
37.3 36.8 49.7 31.9 23.0
system capacity ▢ ▢
Latvia (A) Beneficial ownership (A) Existing land use 81.0
49.2 43.5 50.4 53.9 35.1 50.0 ▲
▲
Malta (G) Public finance data (A) Vital statistics 0.0 16.0
36.5 45.8 44.8 27.0 18.0
▢ ▢
Netherlands (U) Corporate due diligence (G) Asset declarations
🔻
42.5
RL 54.0 49.3 70.4 48.8 45.8 90.0 ▲

🔻
New RL GL (G) Beneficial ownership 81.0 70.0
(A) Land tenure 65.6 63.7 62.4 69.8 53.7
Zealand ▣
Portugal (C) Civil service (G) Public consultation data 70.0 50.0
41.9 43.8 50.2 38.2 17.5
▲ ▣
Romania (G) Public consultation data (A) Existing land use 30.0 51.0
RL GL 43.0 55.1 44.8 35.6 19.1
▢ ▢
Slovakia (A) Real-time healthcare (A) Biodiversity 63.0 80.0
50.9 54.6 57.9 45.8 34.0
system capacity ▣ ▣

🔻 ▣
Sweden (A) Biodiversity (G) Public consultation data 0.0 80.0
42.8 32.0 58.6 43.6 20.2

🔻 🔻
USA (A) Lobbying data (G) Data protection 42.0 54.0
68.0 56.7 64.4 80.0 49.4

🔻
G = Governance pillar; C = Capabilities pillar; A = Availability pillar; U = Use and Impact pillar; RL = Regional Leader (among the highest scoring regionally) on this indicator;
GL = Global Leader (among the highest scoring globally) on this indicator. ▲ = GDB score higher than ODB score on related indicator; = GDB score lower than ODB
score on related indicator; ▣ = less than 1pt change in score; ▢ = No data for comparison.

81
Regional Analysis

Hub Perspectives: Access Info Europe (Europe and Beyond)

ber of companies making use of public data, as

well as use by civil society and investigative jour-
nalists.

These are countries with strong reputations for

good governance and successfully controlling cor-
ruption, although there are significant variations
around the region, as can be perceived, for exam-
ple, in the Corruption Perceptions Index, having
better scores in the north and west of the Euro-
pean continent than in southern and eastern Euro-
pean countries. This has not stopped there being
multiple corruption scandals linked to money laun-
dering, offshore financing, stolen assets from other
regions of the world and irregular public procure-
ment during the Covid pandemic.

These countries are all members of the Open

Government Partnership, which means every two
By Helen Darbishire and Marta Morcuende or four years, they have to submit an action plan
co-created with civil society that outlines concrete
Regional profile commitments to enhance transparency, account-
ability and public participation in government.
Access Info Europe acted as regional hub for a
group of 27 countries, most of them in the Euro- Findings from the field
pean region. From these 27 countries, 20 are
member states of the European Union (EU) and Countries in this regional cluster perform, as a
share common policies in many areas, such as whole, higher than the global average. This in-
data protection. The United Kingdom, also located cludes on the four key pillars of the Barometer, as
in the European region and included in the study, well as on all thematic modules. The region scores
formally left the European Union in 2020, but it al- highest with respect to the capabilities pillar, with
so shares many norms and policies with the EU the lowest scores in the use and impact pillar. Po-
member states that were approved before its de- litical integrity is the lowest-scoring thematic mod-
parture. Outside of the European region, Access ule, reflecting that comparably fewer countries
Info coordinated the research in several countries meet the high-bar of data governance and publica-
from different parts of the world, such as North tion across the breadth of topics this module cov-
America (Canada and the United States), Oceania ers.
(Australia and New Zealand), Western Asia (Is-
rael) and Eastern Asia (Republic of Korea). Korea This region scores particularly well on the exis-
is included in the ‘South and East Asia’ tables and tence of data protection frameworks, thanks in part
statistics, but all these other countries are treated to mandatory EU data protection rules since 1995
in the Barometer as part of the ‘EU, North America and the strengthened General Data Protection
+’ cluster. Regulation of 2016, which came into force in all
EU countries in May 2018. Legal frameworks re-
These countries are, in general, some of the most quiring collection and publication of political fi-
developed countries in the world in terms of both nance and asset declarations data exist in most
economic and democratic development. They are countries in the region, although it is important to
countries which led the open data movement, and note that most asset declarations data is not avail-
the European Union countries led the way with able in machine-readable formats.
common standards on opening up public sector in-
formation as part of ensuring a level playing field Other data sets which were generally available in
for reuse of data, with a large and increasing num- this region were those on Covid-19 vaccinations,
asset declarations, public procurement, emissions,

82
Regional Analysis

political finance, budget and spending data, and A gap between Northern/Western and Southern/
vital statistics. The survey also found that there Eastern European countries can still be perceived.
are few regulations requiring collection and publi- Open data policies applying across all EU coun-
cation of right to information performance and lob- tries, such as the Open Data Directive, if properly
bying data, and the lack of regulation directly implemented, would level the playing field and im-
translates into a lack of availability of this informa- prove the data landscape across the region. A
tion in practice. number of specific legal frameworks are also still
largely missing, including lobby regulations: adopt-
A number of further observations can be drawn ing rules requiring collection of data on lobby activ-
from data for this group of countries: ities is a priority to enable monitoring of the influ-
ence of lobbying on decision-making. Where
• Having regulations requiring the collec-
frameworks are already broadly in place, countries
tion and/or publication is important to
need to focus on improving availability, openness
guarantee that there is more data
and usability of key datasets, including company
available. In most cases, the absence
and beneficial ownership registers in particular.
of a legal framework requiring data col-
This data has been established to have high value
lection/publication translates into a
for users, and evidence on the use of this data has
lack of data availability in practice.
been found in almost 20 countries with its use key
• Beneficial Ownership data is still not
to effectively fight corruption and money launder-
available in many countries, and where
ing.
it is available, it is usually not available
for free, under open licenses or in ma- Governments also need to take more action to
chine-readable formats. Company In- promote the reuse of public data to enhance the
formation is available in more coun- benefits that data brings to societies and
tries, but it is not fully free of charge in economies. To this end, data should always be
many of them. made available for free, under open licenses
• When company information and public which allow for any type of reuse, in machine-
procurement data are available, there readable formats and having machine-readable
is strong evidence that they are well- datasets available as a whole, released in a timely
used by a range of stakeholders. manner, updated, and with historical data avail-
• Despite climate change being one of able to allow users to track change over time,
the most pressing issues, and the re- available in all the languages of the country, and
gion having high capability to produce having accessible and open tools to help users ex-
and use data, there is still suprisingly plore the data. Governments should also promote
little data available on climate vulnera- greater interoperability among datasets to truly un-
bility, such as information on future leash the full potential that open data can bring to
natural hazards, extreme weather society. This said, releasing open data alone is not
events, or climate variability. enough. Relevant data strategies need to be im-
plemented along the way, ensuring public officials
Future directions are properly trained and that there is active promo-
tion on the benefits of releasing and reusing data.
The countries in this group score better than the
global average, but there is still significant room
for improvement.

83
Regional Analysis

Latin America and the Caribbean

The Barometer covers 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Despite mean scores lower
than the global average on governance and capability, the region matches global average for data avail-
ability and use and impact, reflecting, in particular, the role of community-led open data initiatives in
supporting data publication and use. Further developing and embedding participatory and inclusive ap-
proaches to data policy, and developing stronger frameworks to govern data sharing and algorithmic
use of data, should be on the agenda for the region in coming years, alongside work to strengthen sec-
toral open data initiatives through ongoing peer-learning.

Overall Score Governance Capabilities Availability Impact and Use

32.71 35.16 37.18 29.49 21.27

84
Regional Analysis

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Region- Use &
Country Overall Score Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) al) Impact
Policy tiative

85
Regional Analysis

Hub Perspectives: Iniciativa Latinoamericana de Datos Abiertos - IL-

DA (Latin America)

making. This in turn, fuels disinformation cam-

paigns that affect political debate and political in-
stitutions.

Governance as a whole is now heavily debated

and new forms of political representation and par-
ticipation are needed. The environmental crisis is
also hitting Latin Americans. Some governments
have a poor record in releasing datasets about the
environment and natural resources, but there are
also capacity issues preventing them doing so.
Without proper data on the environment, action
against climate change remains wishful thinking.
The emergence of AI has the potential to augment
several social and economic risks. Latin American
countries still do not have a shared approach that
could strike a balance between privacy, productivi-
ty, innovation and justice.

By Fabrizio Scrollini and David Zamora

Findings from the field
Regional profile
The mean score for Latin America on the Barome-
ter’s data governance pillar was similar to the
Latin America is the most unequal region in the
global average, showing limited general progress
world. The problems the region faces are complex,
in the region compared to the world. A closer look
the result of a legacy of weak political institutions,
at individual governance indicators shows some
poor economic management, and inefficient and
performing better than others with higher scores
insufficient social and innovation policies. Never-
present for data protection frameworks and open
theless, Latin America is also a place where social
data policies. On the other hand, indicators on da-
and business innovation flourish, and where a set
ta sharing frameworks had among the lowest
of new “digital unicorns” emerged in the last ten
score in the region. Data sharing is one of the
years. Most Latin American governments joined
most complex areas to address but is critical to
the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an al-
advance the use of data for development.
liance of government and civil society organiza-
tions, where many of them have played prominent The mean score for Latin America for data capa-
roles leading the way in openness and digital bilities was slightly lower than the world average.
transformations. The Web Foundation’s Open Da- Specifically, the government support for data
ta Barometer - among other indicators - helped reuse presents a significant weakness, followed by
demonstrate these achievements. But openness concerns about the quality and resourcing of open
is, at the moment, at a standstill in the region. data initiatives. A total of 14 of the 15 participating
countries lack funding schemes to support data
The last regional Open Data Barometer coordinat-
reuse, and 10 stated that the government does not
ed by ILDA shows limited advances from govern-
conduct any form of information sessions about
ments, and this reflects a larger and worrying pic-
data reuse. And a total of 7 countries lack senior
ture currently emerging in Latin America. More-
political leaders to back the open data initiative,
over, democracy is on the backfoot. While the re-
and another 7 do not have an allocated budget for
gion always faced challenges, a new wave of gov-
open data activities. Despite these regional weak-
ernments and social movements has emerged
nesses, more than half of the countries of the re-
with a tendency to disregard data as a valid
gion (as per count) are above the world average.
source for political debate and policy decision-
Capacity building activities remain a priority for

86
Regional Analysis

Latin America and an area where international co- Future directions

operation, development banks, the private sector
and governments can collaborate.
Our recent regional event - Abrelatam Condatos -
While globally the political integrity module had the was focused on the future of the open data field.
lowest average scores, in Latin America this mod- Amidst the pandemic, thinkers and doers from the
ule was the second lowest, some points above the region gathered to brainstorm about the possibili-
global average. The frameworks on assets decla- ties the future could bring. This is part of what the
rations and political finance were the two indica- world can learn from Latin America: regional fo-
tors with the highest scores in the region, followed rums to set up dialogues and set standards are
by the data availability on political finance. Op- amazingly effective. Synthesizing these dialogues,
posed to these indicators, the interoperability of and drawing on Barometer research, we think
political integrity data, and the availability of lobby- there are three key areas where the field needs
ing data were the two indicators with the lowest improvement.
average in the region. Also, the region has an im-
First, openness needs to be defended. The open-
portant gap between the top performing countries
ness record in the region has stalled and there
and the ones with poor performance. This second
seems not to be enough support from govern-
group has 4 countries with significant low scores.
ments in order to improve the supply of open data
In short, Latin America has great room to improve
in several fields. There is an urgent need to bring
in this area.
together a coalition of stakeholders able to focus
The average regional score on climate action data on defending openness in sectors where the re-
was above the global average in the Barometer. gion needs it most: environment, public finances
The three assessed indicators (data availability on and integrity. To sustain openness, it is important
emissions, biodiversity and vulnerability) had a to support an emergent group of civil society, me-
higher average in the region than in the world, with dia outlets and academics using these data in
climate vulnerability data as the indicator where these sectors.
the region has the largest positive gap when com-
Second, data goes beyond openness. The way
pared to the global average. This is the result of
data is currently treated by businesses and gov-
some positive efforts of specific countries in pub-
ernments is, to a certain degree, uncertain. Latin
lishing climate data. Despite this, the general re-
American privacy frameworks are evolving, but the
sults on climate action data cannot be considered
region does not have a coherent and shared view
satisfactory in the region, because overall scores
of how openness, privacy and innovation are
still obtained only half of the possible points avail-
linked together. In the age of AI, this becomes cru-
able, showing that there are still many pending
cial to reap the benefits of innovation. New gover-
tasks both on the openness of data and, for a cou-
nance models need to emerge based on evidence
ple of countries, making basic climate data avail-
and respect of human rights.
able online in any form.
Third, capacity and inclusion matter. Many design
On the specific topic of privacy, the Barometer
and implementation decisions are still in the hands
identified that 14 of the 15 participating countries
of a small number of people who are not able or
of Latin America have a data protection frame-
willing to create inclusive policy design processes
work, and 13 of these frameworks have the force
and implement the emerging designs. The inclu-
of law, showing a general progress on the topic.
sion of criteria that are able to adequately and
Most of the frameworks provide data subjects with
safely include different genders, as well as repre-
rights of choice or consent and the rights to ac-
sent excluded communities such as indigenous
cess and correct data about themselves. However,
populations, matter. Investment in robust and reli-
none of them explicitly cover the protection of lo-
able public infrastructure to sustain the data field is
cation-related data, and only one addresses in
also needed to continue to build capacity in the re-
some context the algorithmic decision making,
gion.
which, in general, gives the impression that the
data protection frameworks in the region require All in all, Latin America has work to do if the data
updates to address modern privacy issues. field is to contribute towards the genuine develop-
ment of the region. The evolution will be inextrica-
bly linked with the evolution of political institutions

87
Regional Analysis

in the region, and as result, the critical question to

ask is: to what degree will the data field serve
democracy?

Hub Perspectives: Caribbean Open Institute (The Caribbean)

Findings from the field

In terms of overall assessment, the Caribbean as

a region ranked just below the global average
across all four pillars. The margin from the aver-
age was greater for availability and least for use
and impact. This is consistent with findings from
prior studies (Open Data Barometer) that suggest
that while businesses and entrepreneurs in the re-
gion demonstrate the capacity and readiness to
take advantage of the social and economic oppor-
tunities offered by data for development, this is not
sufficiently matched by a commensurate commit-
ment and action on the part of governments in
terms of appropriate data initiatives and policies.

Exploring the Governance pillar further revealed

the Caribbean to be strongest in data protection
By Suzana Russell, Lila Rao-Graham, Maurice mechanisms but weakest in data sharing frame-
McNaughton works. For the Capabilities pillar, while there is
some evidence of active government-led open
government data initiatives in several countries,
Regional profile related activities to support data capacity-building
for civil servants, and to encourage wider data
The Caribbean Open Institute (COI), based at the reuse were less evident. In terms of the secondary
Mona School of Business & Management, UWI indicators reflecting capabilities, “political free-
Mona Campus, is one of a global community of re- doms and civil liberties”, “human capital” and
gional hubs that supported the first Global Data “business use of digital tools”, were all significant
Barometer project through engaging in the data enabling factors for the Caribbean, while the
collection, data analysis and dissemination of the weakest were “digital government” and “data insti-
results as part of the 2021 global study. Eight tutions”. This finding supports the narrative that
Caribbean countries participated in this initial the governments of the region need to be more
study: Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint proactive in establishing an enabling environment
Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti and Dominican and building institutional capacity to support the
Republic. data ecosystem.

The Caribbean is one of the most culturally and Drilling down further in availability and into use
politically diverse regions in the world. With a long and impact pillars through the thematic modules,
history of cultural and commercial “openness”. Sit- the region scored highest with respect to procure-
uated as it is, astride the major East–West ship- ment and health-related data. Surprisingly, the
ping lanes, colonial histories have given the lowest thematic module was in the availability and
Caribbean region an eclectic legacy of influences use of Climate Action data, given the Caribbean’s
in political, social, cultural, and administrative insti- particular vulnerability to climate change.
tutions. All the countries covered in this region are
considered to be Small Island Developing States
(SIDS), raising particular challenges with respect
to public resources for data-related work. When it
comes to open data, the region has been charac-
terized as ‘high demand, but slow supply’.

88
Regional Analysis

Future directions The Global Data Barometer is an important multi-

dimensional Index for the Caribbean, as it helps
regional policymakers and decision-makers in both
The most recent World Development Report[28] public and private sectors to measure and bench-
outlines that countries can only realize the full val- mark progress across all of these dimensions.
ue of data for development by establishing an inte- Healthy national and regional data systems are
grated national data system that is built on: seen as a critical component of equitable digital
ecosystems and an explicit pre-requisite for the re-
• intentional, whole-of-government and
alization of the sustainable development goals
multi-stakeholder data governance and
(SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.
institutions that safeguard and protect
data from misuse; The early findings above suggest a particular need
• highly skilled human resources in gov- for adequate funding and targeted investments in-
ernment, civil society, academia, and to data institutions and the technical skills of public
the private sector; sector agencies to coordinate data sharing efforts,
• available data that are produced, as well as work to strengthen critical processes
open, quality-controlled, used and and service delivery channels related to data.
reused.

89
Regional Analysis

Middle East and North Africa

The Barometer covers 8 countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. While the region is signifi-
cantly below the global average on governance, data availability and use and impact, it is comparatively
strong in terms of both government and private sector capability to manage data, with limits on capabili-
ty scores shaped by restrictions on political freedom. Further developing partnership models that can
harness capacity in the private sector to promote use of data for the public good, particularly in relation
to sustainable development challenges, offers one route to deepen support for data re-use. Through
work on data sharing frameworks and capacity building activities, there is also a need to focus on en-
suring equality of access to the benefits of data and to protection from potential harms.

Overall Score Governance Capabilities Availability Impact and Use

21.6 20.19 38.26 14.08 11.29

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Region- Use &
Country Overall Score Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) al) Impact
Policy tiative

UAE (C) Sub-national RL (G) Data protection

26.7 16.1 58.2 17.6 12.0
20.0
72.0 ▲
▣

🔻
Bahrain RL (C) Open data initiative 63.0 20.0
(G) Data protection 22.0 23.6 28.1 18.4 10.8
▲
Egypt (A) Emission RL (G) Open data policy
21.8 25.0 34.7 13.2 12.0
0.0 16.8
▣ ▣
Jordan (G) Public consultation data (G) Data protection 63.0
RL GL 22.2 34.5 33.7 7.8 12.3 80.0 ▲
▲
Oman (A) Budget and spend data (C) Open data initiative 54.0
RL 14.1 8.6 25.1 12.1 12.0 0.0 ▢
▢
State of (C) Open data initiative RL (G) Data protection
14.7 9.1 32.3 9.2 9.6
37.8
81.0 ▲
Palestine ▲
Qatar (G) Data protection (A) Public procurement data 40.0
22.2 16.6 44.9 14.2 12.0 80.0 ▲
▣
Saudi Ara- (G) Data management RL (G) Asset declarations
29.0 28.0 49.1 20.1 9.6
63.0 80.0
bia ▲ ▣

🔻
G = Governance pillar; C = Capabilities pillar; A = Availability pillar; U = Use and Impact pillar; RL = Regional Leader (among the highest scoring regionally) on this indicator;
GL = Global Leader (among the highest scoring globally) on this indicator. ▲ = GDB score higher than ODB score on related indicator; = GDB score lower than ODB
score on related indicator; ▣ = less than 1pt change in score; ▢ = No data for comparison.

90
Regional Analysis

Hub Perspectives: CEE Birzeit University (Middle East and North

Africa)

Further breaking down the data by sub-regions

and countries reveals further disparity in both ac-
cess to, and use of, the Internet. For example, the
percentage of Internet users in the Gulf area is
over 90%, between 60-65% in Northern African
Arab countries (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and
less than 40% in other parts of the MENA region
such as Sudan (30.9%), Yemen (26.7%), Syria
(34.3) and Mauritania (20.8%). Similar trends also
exist in terms of individual ICT skills (e.g., ability to
use devices, software and apps).

At the legal and policy level, only six Arab coun-

tries have laws related to right to information (Jor-
dan (2007), Morocco (2011), Yemen (2012), Su-
dan (2015), Tunisia (2016) and Lebanon (2017)),
and three are members of the Open Government
Partnership (OGP).

By Raed Sharif with Abed Khooli

Findings from the field
Regional profile
Despite country-level differences, the survey re-
vealed modest progress towards more data shar-
Over the past decade, global changes and several
ing, openness and usability in the MENA region.
rounds of uprising in the MENA region have funda-
There is also a growing political will and official
mentally changed the government-citizen relation-
support for data and open data initiatives in coun-
ship. These shifts have reshaped what citizens
tries such as UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Ara-
now perceive as their rights and duties, especially
bia. Additionally, there are encouraging signs of
in areas related to accountability, transparency
civil society and other non-governmental actors
and openness. More recently, the rapid digitaliza-
playing a more active role in promoting effective
tion of economies and societies in response to the
data management, sharing and usability, and in
COVID-19 pandemic has created pressures for
helping governments in translating their policies
faster and more effective data and open data
and visions into tangible data products and ser-
strategies, tools and applications.
vices.
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge
However, persisting capability gaps can have a
some of the fundamental infrastructure and policy
negative impact on the potential impact of national
challenges that the region is facing. According to
initiatives. Limited or lack of infrastructure and
the International Telecommunication Union (ITU),
weak digital literacy can hamper citizens’ ability to
55% of residents in the Arab countries had access
fully utilize the available data and meaningfully
to the Internet in 2019, with more than two thirds
participate in public consultations and decision-
of them (67%) being youth between 15-24. Broken
making processes. For example, one of the prac-
down by gender, 47% of women and 61% of men
tices that has proved popular and effective in the
had access to the Internet in 2019. This means a
region to incentivize citizens and key stakeholders
gender disparity of 0.77. In terms of geography,
to get involved in the open government and data
74% in urban areas (mostly 4G) and 34% in rural
domain (and the wider government digital transfor-
areas had access to the Internet, with rural areas
mation process) has been data ideathons and
mostly reliant on slower 3G mobile connections.
hackathons, where citizens, innovators, activists,
researchers and data scientists collaboratively ex-
plore and test the potential of a wide range of

91
Regional Analysis

datasets to create solutions for the social, eco- use of data that is made available. There is also a
nomic and environmental challenges their soci- need for more data-related professional training
eties face. and academic programs that can increase and im-
prove the region’s human capital around data for
the public good.
Future directions
Finally, we encourage data agencies and initia-
The Barometer survey revealed specific areas in tives in the MENA region to explore the potential
need of action, including: for regional collaborations, and the exchange of
knowledge, skills and lessons learned, to build re-
• gional capacity in responsible AI and data analyt-
ics. This is especially important in areas related to
Additionally, we encourage data agencies and ini-
Arabic language machine learning tools and tech-
tiatives in the MENA region to form strategic en-
niques, advanced data analytics and data visual-
gagements with civil society organizations, the pri-
ization, with more focus on infrastructure and re-
vate sector and other key stakeholders to build the
gional regulatory frameworks.
capacities necessary for effective and strategic

92
Regional Analysis

South and East Asia

The Barometer covers 15 countries in South and East Asia. The diversity of countries within the region
is also reflected in significant variation in regional scores across all four pillars. Despite widespread
presence of open data policies and initiatives, data availability and open data publication of key
datasets could be stronger: particularly in relation to political integrity, company information and climate
action.

Overall Score Governance Capabilities Availability Impact and Use

32.79 35.9 37.05 28.62 27.65

Open Open
Comparative Strength (Region- Comparative Weakness (Region- Use &
Country Overall Score Governance Capability Availability Data Data Ini-
al) al) Impact
Policy tiative

Bangladesh (A) Political finance data (G) Public consultation data 63.0 49.0
23.8 21.1 32.1 22.1 10.8
▲ ▣
China (G) RTI performance (A) Vaccination (COVID-19) 18.9
39.8 35.8 55.5 35.3 24.3 68.0 ▲
▣
Hong Kong (A) Emission RL (G) Data management
48.6 37.5 58.2 52.9 30.1
54.0 80.0
▢ ▢
(G) RTI performance RL
🔻
Indonesia (G) Data protection 0.0 76.5
40.2 48.0 46.2 32.2 29.8
▣
India (G) Data management (G) Data sharing frame- 90.0 80.0
46.7 53.2 51.4 41.6 22.9
works ▲ ▣
Cambodia (C) Civil service (G) Public consultation data 0.0
13.2 5.6 25.0 12.2 8.4 0.0 ▢
▢
Republic of (A) Beneficial ownership RL (A) Vulnerability
64.5 66.4 80.4 57.0 32.6
90.0 100.0
Korea ▣ ▣
Sri Lanka (G) RTI performance (G) Public consultation data 0.0 40.0
16.3 13.4 35.0 8.2 12.0
▢ ▢
Malaysia (C) Government support for (G) Data management 54.0 63.0
41.6 44.8 68.8 24.2 35.3
re-use ▲ ▣
New Cale- (G) Data protection RL (G) Public consultation data
30.7 32.2 37.9 27.2 13.0
80.0 54.0
donia ▢ ▢
Nepal (U) Procurement data ana-
lytics
(G) Public consultation data
18.9 16.7 23.0 18.3 18.6
0.0
▣
0.0 🔻
🔻 🔻
Philippines (A) Beneficial ownership (A) Company register 50.4 40.8
34.0 44.7 33.4 28.3 18.2

Thailand (G) Political finance (G) Public finance data 70.0

41.7 42.2 55.0 35.9 19.7 80.0 ▲
▲
Taiwan (G) Lobbying register RL (C) Civil service
51.1 48.9 55.4 52.7 23.4
72.0 80.0
▢ ▢
Viet Nam (G) Public finance data (A) Real-time healthcare 36.0
33.3 40.7 41.8 24.7 17.7 40.8 ▲
system capacity ▲

🔻
G = Governance pillar; C = Capabilities pillar; A = Availability pillar; U = Use and Impact pillar; RL = Regional Leader (among the highest scoring regionally) on this indicator;
GL = Global Leader (among the highest scoring globally) on this indicator. ▲ = GDB score higher than ODB score on related indicator; = GDB score lower than ODB
score on related indicator; ▣ = less than 1pt change in score; ▢ = No data for comparison.

93
Regional Analysis

Hub Perspectives: D4DAsia (Southeast Asia)

At the end of 2021, Southeast Asia also faced dis-

astrous floods and tropical storms, and, with the
climate crisis, extreme weather conditions are like-
ly to continue to affect the region more often in
coming years. Tropical forests hold over 68% of
world global carbon stocks, and Southeast Asia is
home to 15% of the world’s global tropical forests.

Findings from the field

Southeast Asia is an outlier among the other sub-

regions of Asia, having higher capability than
availability of data. In general the overall Barome-
ter scores in the region correlate with the level of
economic development (per capita/income) of a
country. The notable outlier within the region is
Taiwan, which has high data availability, but poor
scores for governance.
By Khairil Yusof and Pyrou Chung
With the exception of South Korea, the top scoring
Regional profile Asian country in the study, the data capabilities of
countries do not appear to translate well into im-
pact. This raises questions about the kinds of in-
Asia is a populous and diverse region, with differ-
terventions that might be needed to support wider
ent languages, cultures, forms of government, lev-
use of data.
els of economic development and varying political
context even within sub-regions. As such, when With respect to open data, countries in the region
reviewing general trends and overall scores, one appear to have good legislative, legal and policies
will need to have a deeper dive into each country foundations for open data, with the notable excep-
and each pillar/module in detail to better under- tion of Cambodia, where data availability and ca-
stand the challenges and opportunities for data for pabilities are provided by both local and interna-
development. tional civil society organizations, rather than by the
government.
For Southeast Asia, as for many regions, in addi-
tion to health issues, Covid-19 also has resulted in The diversity of the region is evident from the
rapidly declining civic space, particularly in Hong Barometer data. For each country in the region,
Kong, and to a lesser extent in Malaysia, Thailand there are a few modules or indicators where they
and Philippines, with political instability and the score weakly in comparison to overall scores.
use of emergency measures having impacts on However, country data strengths do not appear to
data availability in a number of cases. always follow the most pressing issues they face,
suggesting there may be a disconnect between
East and Southeast Asia is also a geopolitically
the data infrastructures countries have and those
important region for international trade and invest-
they need to address future challenges. For exam-
ments. Many disruptions in the global supply chain
ple, a number of the countries recently affected
due to Covid-19 lockdowns can be traced to key
severely by climate change have comparatively
manufacturing exports and shipping of goods from
low scores in the climate action module when
the region. The capacity of governments to pro-
compared to their overall capabilities.
vide quality data and digital services related to
trade and investment will be key for economic re-
covery in the region.

94
Regional Analysis

Future directions As we look to the future uses of the Barometer, we

also note that in a connected world, data of rele-
vance to each country may also be found at the
Rather than focusing on overall scores, countries
global level or across borders. For example, we
can use the Global Data Barometer website to
should pay attention to global data publication sys-
take a deep-dive into indicators and modules
tems, such as UN COMTRADE for trade statistics,
where their scores are comparatively weak, look-
and the US/NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics In-
ing at how individual measures might be targeted
vestigation mission (GEDI) that can provide forest
for improvement. Looking at the comparative
coverage data for countries that do not have the
strengths of other countries is equally important.
capacity to generate or publish such data. Similar-
Each country has something unique that it does
ly, international non-government organizations and
well and that others could learn from. For exam-
development banks have and should make avail-
ple, South Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, In-
able the data they gather in the countries they
dia and Nepal have very strong right to information
work in, providing alternative sources of data avail-
laws and capacity that other countries can learn
ability for countries that currently lack the capacity
from. There is great potential to further develop
to provide key datasets.
the opportunities for sharing good practices across
the region. Using the current Barometer, we can already look
at potential cross-border data that could help solve
Overall, Southeast Asia appears to have good ca-
domestic challenges, such as beneficial ownership
pacity in theory to secure public good from data,
and asset disclosures data available from coun-
but in comparison to other regions, there is a large
tries with large financial sectors like the United
gap between data collection and availability for re-
Kingdom and United States, which can be used to
use. The evidence collected by the Barometer sur-
gain insights into the foreign assets of politicians,
vey provides a wealth of insight into where this
or political financing flows from other countries. To
locked up data may exist and can help in shaping
support data-informed decision-making around
strategies to unlock this data through government
East and Southeast Asia, we need to continue to
and civil society initiatives. In particular, for a re-
develop both regional data governance and avail-
gion that has been affected by severe weather due
ability, but also to continue to develop awareness
to climate change, much more needs to be done in
of the region-related data resources on climate
terms of data for climate action. Many countries
change, vaccine exports, trade and many other
have large populations living on flood plains and
topics being made available elsewhere in the
are affected annually by floods and tropical storms
world.
along with deforestation, but the scores registered
in the Barometers’ Climate Action module for the
region were relatively poor.

Hub Perspectives: Internet Society Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

By Benjamin Zhou

Regional profile

Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Ad-

ministrative Region of the People’s Republic of
China (HKSAR), is governed under the “one coun-
try, two systems” principle, which allows the city to
maintain a legal system different from the main-
land of China. In practice, the city government en-
joys a high level of autonomy for local affairs in-
cluding formulation of data policies. Hong Kong is
also an international financial hub recognizing Chi-
nese and English as official languages, and both
are widely used.

95
Regional Analysis

Regarding data policies and measures, the Hong sult of voluntary disclosure. Compared to other ju-
Kong government has adopted a sector-specific risdictions in the Barometer assessments, Hong
rather than a holistic approach. There is no law or Kong’s data availability is good in general.
policy document laying out a strategy of collecting,
sharing and protecting data, nor evidence indicat- The major issue of Hong Kong lies in governance:
ing that they plan to make one. Except for the data it has lower scores on governance indicators than
privacy law - Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance - in other pillars including capability as the city has
enacted in 1996, the government’s data-related yet to set up a governance structure or provide
initiatives are mostly administrative measures any data strategy. Among all indicators in this
without legislation. For example, while an open da- module, only the data protection indicator scores
ta portal was launched in 2011 in a pilot scheme, it higher than 80% due to the privacy legislation in
wasn’t until December 2017 that the government place. Open data policy exists, but simply asks
officially addressed “open data” in a high level poli- each government department to make an annual
cy paper and in the chief executive’s annual policy open data plan by themselves and make sure
address. The portal data.gov.hk is maintained by datasets published on the open data portal fulfill a
the Office of Government Chief Information Officer few criteria (i.e. machine-readable, timely, metada-
(OGCIO) as a platform for all government depart- ta and open license). Indicators for data manage-
ments, public organizations and some private ment and sharing frameworks score the lowest as
companies (voluntarily) to publish data. Mean- they are not clearly documented, if not unavail-
while, some other departments built their own data able. Some sector-wide data sharing initiatives ex-
platform, such as an on-going project on Common ist, for example, a platform developed by the Hos-
Spatial Data Infrastructure developed by the pital Authority to share healthcare data from public
Lands Department. hospitals for research purposes, but no data shar-
ing framework for the society at large was found
during research. A data management framework,
Findings from the field regardless of whether it is open data or not, may
exist in the form of national/local data strategy,
The assessment results show that, among all four guidance or standards according to the Barometer
pillars of the Barometer, Hong Kong performs bet- guidelines, however, none of these policy tools are
ter on data availability than the other three pillars publicly available in Hong Kong.
by means of global ranking, while governance is
the weakest one in this regard.
Future directions
The datasets examined by the Barometer’s the-
matic modules are mostly available, except for Although the evidence shows a good foundation of
three: beneficial ownership, lobbying and political data availability, merely pushing government de-
finance. The beneficial ownership indicator in the partments to publish more datasets is inadequate
company information module scores zero, as to address challenges in the big data era and to
Hong Kong’s Companies Ordinance (amended in unlock data values. A lack of data governance
2018) which requires companies to maintain the structure and strategies in the administration risks
information of their significant controllers does not impairing current achievements and government
mandate a centralized beneficial ownership regis- capability to deliver public service, facing an in-
ter. Hong Kong also fails to receive credit on lob- creasing amount of data all around. The Hong
bying and political finance indicators in the political Kong government should invest more in formulat-
integrity module as there is no legislation regulat- ing a long-term roadmap on coordinating collec-
ing political parties including their financing, tion, management, sharing, publishing, and utiliza-
though the issue has been debated publicly on tion of data across all sectors in the society at
and off for many years. In fact, such data is not large. Vision and leadership are essential for the
available from the government or any authorized governance structure to ensure the strategies and
third party, but from some political parties’ as a re- policies will be constantly reviewed and adapted to
address new challenges.

96
Conclusions and future work

This report reviews data from the first edition of the Global Data Barometer, organized around four pil-
lars: data governance, data capabilities, data availability, and data use and impacts. Through a global
survey and secondary data, the Barometer has explored different dimensions of data governance, in-
cluding the prevention of data mis-use, the management of data to make sure it is fit for use, and the
promotion of data availability for re-use. It has addressed the extent to which data related resources and
skills, and the freedom and opportunity to deploy them, exist and are distributed across each country. It
has looked at the extent to which data needed to address pressing issues is shared or open in each
country, including data related to the climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, political integrity, company
ownership, land use and management, and the oversight of public procurement and finance. It has
gathered examples of data use, along with evidence of impacts, across four use-cases with relevance to
public, private, civil-society and media sector stakeholders. The evidence and indicators gathered
through our survey fill critical knowledge gaps, and the Barometer’s networked model of regional re-
search hubs and data collection by country researchers has supported capacity building for more holis-
tic action on data for the public good.

Through a weighted index the Barometer summarizes hundreds of data-points for each of the 109 coun-
tries covered within detailed ratings. In this report, we’ve used those quantitative scores, and the individ-
ual metrics that generate them, as an entry point for comparative analysis and exploration. We have
been able to cover only a small subset of the evidence gathered by the Barometer. This report sits
alongside the Barometer dataset, country and thematic profiles, and in-depth data stories, all available
at https://www.globaldatabarometer.org, as well as the analysis and outputs being produced by regional
hubs. We invite and encourage readers to engage with these companion resources in order to dig
deeper into Barometer findings and to interrogate how they can inform your own priorities and practice.

Data for the public good: from goal to reality?

If we take the highest score achieved on each Barometer indicator and imagine those scores were all
achieved by a single country, it would score 95.92 out of 100 on the overall Barometer weighted index.
Given that the Barometer sets a high benchmark, based, in most cases, on globally agreed norms and
standards rather than the de-facto practice of any particular country or region, this is a striking finding.
Across each theme explored, it is possible for data to be governed, made available, and used, in ways
that meet broadly agreed aspirations and that maximize the opportunity for public good outcomes. How-
ever, the average overall score across all countries was just 34.38 out of 100, showing a significant gulf
between the ideal benchmark and current realities.

In short, conditions for data to help deliver the public good can be created, but they are by no means
guaranteed. Policy choices and practical actions over the coming years must focus explicitly on building
the capabilities, institutions and infrastructures around data that will ensure individuals and communities
have effective protection from data-enabled harms, while critical datasets are reliably collected, man-
aged, shared and published with the features that are needed for widespread, collaborative and high
impact re-use.

In some cases, there are quick wins to be had. By looking to the practice of nearby peers, or focusing on
missing fields and features from published open data, governments may be able to make rapid progress
against selected Barometer indicators. In other cases, making progress requires larger and longer-term
interventions, such as identifying opportunities to reform legal frameworks to better reflect current risks
and opportunities related to data and to put disclosure of structured data on a statutory footing or
investing in sustained and inclusive capacity-building programmes for data production and

98
Conclusions and future work

use. Global initiatives that support peer-learning and that provide practical assistance to governments in
translating policy commitments into practical data provision appear to have been particularly valuable in
accelerating progress in a number of sectors such as public finance and public contracting, and there is
a growing case for donors to invest in data infrastructure building. The baselines provided by this first
edition of the GDB will be invaluable to track how far other emerging agendas, such as transparency of
company ownership, use of data for land governance, or greater disclosure of political lobbying, are
able to embed and spread good practices around structured, open and interoperable data publication in
the coming decade, and to create diverse data ecosystems that help us reach the Sustainable Develop-
ment Goals.

The challenge of ensuring that data works for the public good should not be underestimated. The rela-
tively low scores seen across Barometer pillars and indicators provide a reality-check. There are rela-
tively few countries that are anywhere near having interoperable public datasets that cover a breadth of
topics. Many low- and middle-income countries have significant data-divides to overcome, and for high-
er income countries, legacy systems can frustrate attempts to create modern joined-up data infrastruc-
tures. Looking also at low scores against inclusion-related questions in the Barometer reveals data-di-
vides within countries can be as significant as those between them. In many cases, the public datasets
or skills that might be needed to drive new algorithmic systems, to support analysis to design more in-
clusive policies, or to enable scrutiny of public decision making through data, are simply not present in
any comprehensive forms, let alone widely available. A drive towards data-driven decision making may
have very different dynamics in a country that already has reasonably inclusive public data and active
community of data users from one where the data needed is only available from private actors, and
where data was originally collected with solely private intent. Similarly, the impact of new data collection
efforts may vary substantially between countries that have robust data protection frameworks and insti-
tutions from those that do not. The Barometer offers a means to critically interrogate claims about how
data might transform development in different settings and provides a starting point for the design of
more tailored and context-appropriate interventions.

Comparing evidence from this first edition of the Global Data Barometer with comparable indicators
from five past editions of the Open Data Barometer (2012 - 2020) reveals an open data agenda that is
still alive, but more-or-less stalled. With a number of past open data leaders losing their focus on open-
ness, and a churn among the countries rated as having strong policies or initiatives, we see open data
struggling to retain attention. Although some countries are building open data principles into sectoral
legislation, there is a significant risk that the idea that public data should be ‘open by default’ will contin-
ue to lose traction, and gains in making public data open could be lost. If approached carefully, work to
strengthen frameworks for data sharing could provide an opportunity to also restate the importance of
openness, framing data sharing as the fallback alternative when ‘open by default’ cannot be adopted.

The challenge of making sure data is available for meaningful re-use is well illustrated by data gaps
around climate action and COVID-19. Disaggregated data, available for problem-solving practical use
by national, and particularly sub-national, stakeholders, can and should be available. Yet, in hundreds
of cases, data that’s reported in aggregate to global stakeholders is not accessible to communities, jour-
nalists or entrepreneurs in-country or working at the grassroots. While our survey of data use and im-
pact revealed many examples of the work-arounds and accommodations that users may employ for
missing or unstructured data, the myriad of barriers to effective data access and use continue to limit
how far data-enabled innovation and problem-solving can scale. In this report, we’ve identified a range
of potential ways forward to close some of these gaps, from governments on focusing more on the use
of their own (open) datasets, and developing more robust data infrastructures, through to increased
partnership and collaborative working both around the supply and use of data. Just as the detail of the
public good is ultimately defined in each country and community, data infrastructures also need to be
defined and shaped through engagement and dialogue.

In summary, this first edition of the Global Data Barometer is ultimately an invitation to dialogue. It is our
hope that you may be able to:

99
Conclusions and future work

• Use the findings and evidence presented in this report to spark discussion and debate about
the way data is governed, made available and used in your region, country or sector;

• Explore the visualizations or data stories on the Global Data Barometer website to access
new insights, questions or ideas, and to find potential peers to talk with and learn from;

• Download the detailed survey data and use it as part of new research, analysis or explo-
ration - whether that involves statistical analysis of indicator scores, or taking the URLs pro-
vided be researchers as the starting point for more globally representative qualitative study;

• Share your feedback with us to help us improve the data and methodology of the study. We
know there is a lot to be done to improve both the method and data of the study. Look for
details on the website of how to input to shape future iterations of the Barometer.

• Keep in touch with developments by signing up for updates on the Barometer website.

Methodology reflections and future directions

There are, of course, significant limitations in this first edition. As discussed in the methodology section,
constraints caused by COVID and the scale of the research challenge in a first edition (where all the re-
search involves new evidence collection, rather than updating past evidence), mean that we have covered
fewer thematic areas than we had originally planned, and we were not able to develop negative indicators
looking directly at evidence of harms from data mis-use or poor governance frameworks, or that more ro-
bustly measure issues of governance in practice rather than in law. We faced particular challenges in sourc-
ing secondary data and developing robust primary survey questions to explicitly address issues of gender
and equity, and we are committed to continued work to address these gaps. We also identified that we
would not be able to do justice to issues of artificial intelligence within the Barometer and scaled back our
planned focus on this topic. We look forward to the upcoming Global Index on Responsible AI which we
hope will be able to inform future editions of the GDB. It is our intention that in future editions of this study,
we will be able to include new indicators (both primary and secondary) and refine some of the existing mea-
sures to further develop an approach to measuring not only conditions to govern and use data for the public
good, but to provide better evidence on whether or not all residents of countries across the world are living
in contexts where the net effect of data in society is to drive sustainably and equitable development that is
aligned with globally and community-defined visions of the public good.

We have identified areas where a number of our indicators, and the training for researchers to operational-
ize them, could be strengthened: and at times this has had impacts on the quality of the data generated.
With 107,389 data points in the survey, we cannot guarantee that every value is error-free. Indeed, we are
certain that there are responses that remain open to question: whether due to different interpretation of
guidance across researchers and reviewers, false negatives when sources went undiscovered, or false pos-
itives when a source has been interpreted over-generously. While the review process has resolved many of
these issues, it has by no means caught them all. Rather than hide these limitations of the data by keeping
our source material closed, we prefer the path of sharing our full research data, errors and all, so that re-
users can make their own assessments on the accuracy of particular indicators and calibrate how they use
the data for their own particular use-cases. Ultimately, when considering the use of data for the public good,
all data should be approached critically, ours included.

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Appendix

Appendix: Methodology
This appendix contains details of the weightings applied for calculation of Global Data Barometer
scores. More details on the survey methodology used for data collection can be found in the research
handbook which is not reproduced here.

Structure
The Barometer is structured around four pillars and is composed of 39 primary indicators from an expert
survey and 14 secondary indicators.

Governance Capabilities Availability Use and Impact

Covering data manage-

Covering foundations
ment; data protection;
(e.g. connectivity; education), Addressing data existence,
data sharing and open
government data capability features (quality), openness, Preliminary analysis based
data, as well as looking
and institutions, and capability and coverage (extent) across on example use-cases.
at how data is addressed
within private sector & civil so- a number of thematic areas.
within sectoral regula-
ciety.
tions.
Weight: 30% Weight: 24% Weight: 42% Weight: 4%

Each indicator belongs to one pillar and to one thematic or cross-cutting module (with one exception:
the secondary indicator on ‘Data use by international organizations’ which is only in the use pillar and
not in a module). This supports the calculation of an overall score, pillar scores and module scores.

Each primary indicator is calculated based on the weighted responses given to closed sub-questions or-
ganized in a set of subsections. Each primary indicator has a written justification and source links. Indi-
cator sub-questions may have supporting open questions requesting evidence.

With a few exceptions, indicators are structured in the following subsections:

• Existence - assessing whether there is evidence that a governance framework, capability,

type of data, or data use exists in the country, and the nature of that existence.
• Elements - generally split into two parts to assess:
• Quality related features of a law, dataset or capability. Wherever possible, the
selection of features was based on both widely agreed international norms and
on clear use-cases.
• (Open) data related features of a law or dataset, using a common set of sub-
questions to assess issues such as references to/presence of structured data
and licenses.
• Extent - assessing whether the governance, capability or data evaluated is applicable, rele-
vant or useful to across the whole country and for all citizens, whether it has limitations, or

101
Appendix

whether data use has related evidence of impacts.

Barometer data is therefore organized into the following structure, with different information captured or
calculated at each level.

• Overall score - Weighted score

• Pillars or Module - Weighted score
• Indicator - Weighted score, justifications and evidence
• Sub-section - Weighted score or multiplier
• Sub-question - Raw responses, scores,
weighted scores, supporting data

The full research handbook, with details of each primarily indicator, sub-questions and supporting data
points requested, can be found at https://handbook.globaldatabarometer.org/2021/.

Question level multipliers and weights

The Barometer design aims to provide both a range of discrete data points, that can support exploratory
or hypothesis testing research about specific datasets, data uses, capabilities or governance rules, and
to provide indicators and metrics that support higher-level comparison across countries and contexts.
For this reason, we both present the raw data collected from our expert survey and, to calculate compa-
rable indicators, we apply a number of weighting and multiplier rules to data points. In this, we seek to
strike a balance between respecting the uniqueness of each issue or theme surveyed and adopting a
common approach.

• Fixed weights are assigned to each elements sub-question.

• Multipliers are used to modify the overall indicator score based on existence and extent
sub-questions.

Element scoring and weights

The element section of each indicator is initially scored on a range from 0 to 100 before multipliers are
applied.

The element section is divided into groups (e1, e2 & e3). Within the group, sub-questions are generally
equally weighted with minor adjustments on theoretical grounds. The weight of each group is set based
on the question justification and seeks to balance the relative importance of the sub-questions to an
overall evaluation of the indicator drawing on established frameworks and precedent, as well as sup-
porting comparability between indicators. For example, in Availability indicators, upwards of 60% of the
element score is made up from a common checklist of properties of the surveyed dataset, while around
40% of the score comes from dataset specific elements.

For some indicators, a fourth set of element questions is present (labelled ‘eb’) which count against the
score on this indicator. These generally can remove up to 20 points from the elements score.

The weights assigned to each individual element group and sub-question can be found in the weight
column in the Barometer dataset.

Most individual sub-questions can be answered ‘Yes’ (1), ‘Partially’ (0.5) or ‘No’ (0). The research hand-
book provides general guidance on when to use the partially response, and specific guidance is provid-
ed for certain questions (detailed in the handbook under those sub-questions).

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Appendix

Worked example

The following example shows the elements for the indicator ‘To what extent do relevant laws, regula-
tions, policies, and guidance provide a comprehensive framework for protection of personal data?’.

Variable Name Sub-question Weight Note

The highest score on all

G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e Elements 100 elements would sum to
100
For this indicator the e1
element group is worth
80 of the 100 points
(Element group) Rights and re-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e1 80 available. There are five
sponsibilities
elements in this group,
so each is worth 16
points.
The framework provides data sub-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e1.CONSENT jects with rights of choice or con- 16 -
sent.
The framework provides data sub-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e1.AC-
jects with rights to access and cor- 16 -
CESS_CORRECTION
rect data about themselves.
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e1.DA- The framework sets out clear re-
16 -
TA_HOLDER_RESPONSIBILITY sponsibilities for data holders.
The framework provides rights of
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e1.REDRESS 16 -
redress
The framework requires data con-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e1.BREACH trollers to notify an appropriate au- 16 -
thority of data breaches.
For this indicator, the e2
element group is worth
20 out of the 100 points
(Element group) Specific consider-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e2 20 available. There are two
ations
elements in this group,
so each is worth 10
points.
Frameworks explicitly cover the
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e2.LOCATION 10 -
protection of location-related data.
The framework addresses algo-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.e2.AI 10 -
rithmic decision making.
For this indicator, the eb
element group can re-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.eb (Element Group) Negative scoring -20
move up to 20 points
from the score gained
Exceptions to the usual data pro-
G.GOVERNANCE.DPL.e.eb.COVIDEX- tection framework have been
-20 -
CEPTIONS made as part of the country’s
COVID-19 response.

If we imagine a country where the researcher answers ‘Yes’ to CONSENT (1 (score) x (weight) 16), AC-
CESS_CORRECTION (1 x 16) and DATA_HOLDER_RESPONSIBILITY (1 x 16), ‘Partially’ to RE-
DRESS (0.5 x 16), BREACH (0.5 x 16) and LOCATION (0.5 x 10) and COVIDEXCEPTIONS (0.5 x -
20), and ‘No’ to AI (0 x 10), then we would calculate the element score as 59.

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Appendix

Existence multipliers
A multiplier is applied to the elements score based on existence questions. Different multiplier ap-
proaches are taken in the different pillars of the Barometer.

Governance

Core governance questions ask to what extent a particular governance framework exists and
what form it takes. Where researchers found no framework exists, they were asked “In the
absence of a strong legal framework, are there alternative norms or customs that play this role in
the country?” and in some cases, have provided structured data about these. To remove scoring
values from responses where no framework is present, the total indicator score is multiplied by 0
in such cases.

Where a framework exists but lacks the force of law, the overall indicator score is marginally re-
duced. This means that if there are two countries with equal features in their frameworks, but one
has the force of law, and the other does not, the former country would score higher.

Response Multiplier

No framework exists. 0
A framework exists but
0.9
lacks full force of law.
A framework exists and has
1
the force of law.

Thematic governance existence questions come in two parts, asking whether frameworks exist or
are in draft, and asking about the strength of data-re-lated rules.

The following multipliers are applied:

Response Multiplier

Frameworks do not exist. 0

Frameworks are being
drafted, or are not yet im- 0.6
plemented.
Frameworks exist and are
1
operational.

Response Multiplier

There is no mention of da-

ta or the publication of da-
0.6
ta in relevant laws, poli-
cies, or guidance
Requirements to publish
data are set out in non- 0.85
binding policy or guidance

104
Appendix

Response Multiplier
Requirements to publish
data are set out in binding 0.95
policy, regulations, or law
Requirements to publish
this information as open
1
data are set out in binding
policy, regulations, or

The ‘Accessibility coverage & data’ governance questions do not use an existence multiplier, and
instead, the two existence questions are treated the same as elements, allocating up to 40 points to the
base indicator score.

Capabilities questions
Capabilities existence questions use either a three or four-point scale, with multipliers assigned ac-
cordingly.

Multiplier in 3 point Multiplier in 4 point

Response
scale scale

0 0 0
1 0.8 0.6
2 1 0.8
3 - 1

Availability

Availability indicators ask whether data is available online, and whether that is as a result of government
action or not. The highest scores are reserved for cases where data is provided by government, but re-
searchers are able to use element questions to describe the features of alternative methods of data ac-
cess, offering key qualitative insights into how data is provided where governments are not reliably of-
fering access to it. The following multipliers are applied:

Response Multiplier

Data is not available on-

0
line
Data is available, but not
as a result of government 0.5
action
Data is available from
government, or because 1
of government actions

Use

Use indicators ask whether there are cases of use identified, and whether these are isolated or wide-
spread cases. The highest indicator scores are reserved for widespread data use.

Response Multiplier

No evidence 0
Isolated cases 0.5
A number of cases 0.9
Widespread cases 1

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Appendix

Extent multipliers

Indicators have different extent questions, based on whether a full extent might be considered to be na-
tional coverage, coverage of all ministries and agencies, and so-on. Some indicators have a single
three-element extent question. Others have two extent questions, leading to 6 or more possible values
in the extent score. The calculation of the multiplier is based on a threshold such that:

• The most limited level of extent as assessed by the sub-questions receives a weight of 0.7
• Responses reaching the mid-level on extent receives a weight of 0.85
• Where there are more than three extent options, responses between the mid and highest
level receive 0.9
• The highest values of extent assessed by the sub-questions receives a weight of 1

Applying multipliers: worked example

Using the worked example from earlier, the governance indicator ‘To what extent do relevant laws, reg-
ulations, policies, and guidance provide a comprehensive framework for protection of personal data?’
has:

• An existence question asking whether the framework has the full force of law
• Two extent questions, asking about how broadly the framework applies (e.g. to different
sectors) and about geographical coverage (i.e. does it apply across the whole country?).

Let us imagine that the best available data protection framework in the country lacks full force of law
(existence multiplier of 0.9), and that it applies across the whole country, but that it does not apply to
every sector (giving a response between the mid, and highest available level, so an extent multiplier of
0.85).

To get the final indicator score we multiply the elements score as follows:

Element Score x Existence Multiplier x Extent Multiplier

In our example this gives:

59 * 0.9 * 0.85 = 45.135

So the final indicator score is 45.135.

Finding sub-question weights

All the question weights used can be found in the published Barometer dataset (Available at
https://www.globaldatabarometer.org) which contains a number of key fields that combined show the
weights that have been applied.

To find the weight of each sub-question:

• Filter on the hlevel column to hlevel=4 (hierarchy level = 4 = sub-questions)

• Filter on the data_type column to data_type='response' (to see responses rather than jus-
tifications, supporting data, examples or other content)

Weights can then read from the following fields:

field description

response The answer selected or entered by the reseacher. For data_type='response'

106
Appendix

field description

this will generally be a fixed option provided by the survey.

The numeric value assigned to the score. For questions with ‘No’ (0), ‘Partial-
response_value ly’ (1), ‘Yes’ (2) answers this will be in the range 0 - 2. For some Existence
and Extent questions this can range 0 - 3 or 0 - 4.
normalized_response_value Each score is re-scaled on a 0 - 1 scale
A multiplier applied to calculated score to get the weighted contribution of this
weight question to the indicator. With minimal exceptions, sub-question weights are
held constant within the same subsection of the indicator.
score normalizad_response_value*weight

Indicator level weights

The contribution of each indicator to module and pillar scores is also weighted. Taking into account is-
sues of data quality, the sensitivity of each indicator, and the number of indicators in each pillar or mod-
ule, and following discussions with the advisory board, seven weighting principles have been used:

• Primary data from one of the two GDB core modules (governance and capability) receive
the first weight priority.

• Primary data from Governance core module weights slightly more than Capability core mod-
ule.

• Primary data from one of the GDB thematic modules (from any of the four pillars) receive
the next weight priority.

• Primary data from Availability weights slightly more than the rest of data in the GDB themat-
ic modules.

• Primary data from Use and Impact weights less than the rest of the data in the GDB themat-
ic modules.

• Secondary data presented as an index (processing several variables) receive the sixth
weight priority.

• Secondary data presented as a metric (processing few variables that typically belong to an
index) receive the seventh weight priority.

• Secondary data presented as single dichotomous variables receive the eighth weight priori-
ty.

Based on these rules, the number of indicators inside each pillar, and the exploration of various weight-
ing options and alternatives, the individual pillars have been weighted as follows: governance 0.30; ca-
pability 0.24; availability 0.42; and use and impact 0.04

The tables below show all the indicators in each pillar, along with their pillar weight.

Governance

The governance pillar of the Barometer is made up of 14 indicators (13 primary, one secondary). One
indicator (Language coverage & data) is not included in the pillar scoring, because post-survey checks
on data quality suggested responses were not robust enough to rely upon, although the qualitative data
for this indicator is still included in the Barometer dataset to support future work.

107
Appendix

Weight Weight
Indicator
Module Type Question / Source in Pil- in
Name
lar Module

To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and

Data protec-
Governance Primary guidance provide a comprehensive framework for protection 0.1 0.2000
tion
of personal data?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Open data
Governance Primary guidance provide a comprehensive framework for generating 0.1 0.2000
policy
and publishing open data?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Data sharing
Governance Primary guidance provide a comprehensive framework for data shar- 0.1 0.2000
frameworks
ing?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Data man-
Governance Primary guidance provide a comprehensive framework for consistent 0.1 0.2000
agement
data management and publication?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Language guidance require that data collection and publication process-
coverage & Governance Primary es be available in the country’s official or national languages? 0 0
data If the country has no official or national languages, are these
processes available in the languages used in the country?
Accessibility To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
coverage & Governance Primary guidance require that data collection and publication be ac- 0.1 0.2000
data cessible to people with disabilities?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Beneficial Company
Primary guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing benefi- 0.065 0.275
ownership Information
cial ownership data on companies?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Political fi- Political In-
Primary guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing data on 0.065 0.075
nance tegrity
campaign and party finance?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Asset decla- Political In-
Primary guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing data on 0.065 0.075
rations tegrity
the interests and assets of public officials?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Lobbying Political In-
Primary guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing data on 0.065 0.075
register tegrity
lobbying activities?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Public con-
Political In- guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing data
sultation da- Primary 0.065 0.075
tegrity generated through and about public consultation on rulemak-
ta
ing?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
RTI perfor- Political In- guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing data on
Primary 0.065 0.075
mance tegrity the performance of right to information (RTI) / freedom of in-
formation (FOI) processes?
To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and
Public fi- Public Fi- guidance provide a basis for collecting and publishing data on
Primary 0.065 0.45
nance data nance public finances? (E.g., government budgets, government
spending, debt, and borrowing.)
RTI frame- Political In-
Secondary RTI Rating: RTI Rating 0.045 0.052
work tegrity

Capability
The capabilities pillar of the Barometer is made up of 5 primary indicators, and 10 secondary indicators.

Weight
Weight
Indicator Name Module Type Question / Source in
in Pillar
Module

To what extent is the government providing training to de-

Civil service Capabilities Primary 0.12 0.09500
velop civil servants’ data literacy and data skills?

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Appendix

Weight
Weight
Indicator Name Module Type Question / Source in
in Pillar
Module
Open data ini- To what extent is there a well-resourced open government 0.09500
Capabilities Primary 0.12
tiative data initiative in the country?
Government
To what extent is there evidence that government is pro-
support for re- Capabilities Primary 0.12 0.09500
viding support for data reuse?
use
To what extent do city, regional, and local governments
Sub-national Capabilities Primary 0.12 0.09500
have the capability to effectively manage data?
Political integri- To what extent is political integrity data interoperable
Political In-
ty interoperabil- Primary across different political integrity datasets, as well as other 0.08 0.075
tegrity
ity datasets associated with relevant information flows?
World Bank - DGSS dataset: Is there a DG/GovTech Strat-
egy?; Is there a dedicated GovTech institution; Is there a
Digital Govern-
Capabilities Secondary national strategy on disruptive technologies?; Is there a 0.0575 0.07250
ment
government cloud (shared platform)?; Is there a govern-
ment service bus / interoperability platform in place?
Government UN E-Government Survey: UN eGov Online Service Index
Capabilities Secondary 0.0575 0.07250
online services (2020)
UN E-Government Survey: UN eGov Human Capital Index
Human capital Capabilities Secondary 0.0575 0.07250
(2020)
Political free-
FreedomHouse: Political Rights score & Civil Liberties
doms and civil Capabilities Secondary 0.0575 0.07250
score
liberties
Business use
Capabilities Secondary WE Forum: Business use of digital tools 0.035 0.07250
of digital tools
World Bank - DGSS dataset: Is there a government entity
Data institu-
Capabilities Secondary in charge of data governance or data management?, Is 0.035 0.05500
tions
there a data protection authority?
International Telecomunication Union (ITU): Fixed broad-
Internet access Capabilities Secondary band basket as a % of GNI p.c; Individuals using the Inter- 0.035 0.05500
net, total (%)
Knowledge-in-
Global Innovation Index / ILO: Employment in knowledge-
tensive em- Capabilities Secondary 0.035 0.05500
intensive occupations (% of workforce)
ployment
Use of stan-
dards and Statistical Performance Indicators: Dimension 5.2: Stan-
Capabilities Secondary 0.035 0.05500
methods in sta- dards and Methods
tistic offices
Digital skills Capabilities Secondary WE Forum: Digital skills among active population (score) 0.035 0.05500

Availability
The availability pillar is made up of 17 primary indicators and 2 secondary indicators. One more sec-
ondary indicator is included in the dataset, but it was assigned zero weight during index review because
it was found not to adequately track differences between countries.

Weight
Weight
Indicator Name Module Type Question / Source in Mod-
in Pillar
ule

Beneficial own- Company In- To what extent is company beneficial ownership infor-
Primary 0.0570 0.325
ership formation mation available as structured open data?
Company regis- Company In- To what extent is company information available as
Primary 0.0570 0.325
ter formation structured open data?
To what extent is detailed land tenure information avail-
Land tenure Land Primary 0.0570 0.45
able as open data?

109
Appendix

Weight
Weight
Indicator Name Module Type Question / Source in Mod-
in Pillar
ule
Existing land To what extent is existing land use information available
Land Primary 0.0570 0.45
use as open data?
Political finance Political In- To what extent is political finance information available
Primary 0.0570 0.095
data tegrity as open data?
Asset declara- Political In- To what extent is interest and asset declaration informa-
Primary 0.0570 0.095
tions tegrity tion available as open data?
Political In- To what extent is lobby register information available as
Lobbying data Primary 0.0570 0.095
tegrity open data?
Public consulta- Political In- To what extent is public consultation information avail-
Primary 0.0570 0.095
tion data tegrity able as open data?
RTI perfor- Political In- To what extent is detailed RTI performance information
Primary 0.0570 0.095
mance data tegrity available as open data?
To what extent is government budget and spending in-
Budget and Public Fi-
Primary formation (budget execution) available as structured 0.0570 0.55
spend data nance
open data?
Public procure- To what extent is detailed structured data on public pro-
Procurement Primary 0.0570 0.825
ment data curement processes available as open data?
Climate Ac- To what extent is emissions information available as
Emission Primary 0.0570 0.3334
tion open data?
Climate Ac- To what extent is information on endangered species
Biodiversity Primary 0.0570 0.3333
tion and ecosystems available as open data?
Climate Ac- To what extent is climate vulnerability information avail-
Vulnerability Primary 0.0570 0.3333
tion able as open data?
Health & To what extent is civil registration and vital statistics
Vital statistics Primary 0.0570 0.26
Covid-19 (CRVS) information available as open data?
Real-time
Health & To what extent is information about the real-time capaci-
healthcare sys- Primary 0.0570 0.26
Covid-19 ty of the healthcare system available as open data?
tem capacity
Vaccination Health & To what extent is COVID-19 vaccination information
Primary 0.0570 0.26
(COVID-19) Covid-19 available as open data?
Healthcare sys- Health &
Secondary ODW Open Data Index: Health facilities 0.02 0.14
tem capacity Covid-19
Testing data Health & World Health Organisation (WHO): Cases - cumulative
Secondary 0.011 0.08
(COVID-19) Covid-19 total

Use and impact

The use and impact pillar is made up of four primary indicators and one secondary indicator.

Weight Weight
Indicator Name Module Type Question / Source in Pil- in
lar Module

Corporate due Company In- To what extent do products or services exist that use open
Primary 0.22 0.075
diligence formation company data to support due diligence?
Influencing pol- To what extent is there evidence that land data is being
icy for gender Land Primary used to influence policy in the interests of equitable and in- 0.22 0.1
and inclusion clusive land tenure and use?
To what extent is there evidence of political integrity data
Accountability Political In-
Primary being used to identify, expose, or highlight failures of gov- 0.22 0.023
uses of PI tegrity
ernment?
To what extent is there evidence of government procure-
Procurement
Procurement Primary ment data being analyzed to improve procurement prac- 0.22 0.175
data analytics
tice?
Data use by in- Use and Im- Secondary Statistical Performance Indicators: Dimension 1.5: Data 0.12 -

110
Appendix

Weight Weight
Indicator Name Module Type Question / Source in Pil- in
lar Module
ternational or-
pact use by international organizations
ganizations

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