Open Data at the World Bank

A public good for the public good

Neil Fantom

Vision is Open Development

Open Knowledge

Enable researchers, students, local communities to collect data, measure results, increase knowledge

Open Data

Share tools and essential information on the global economy and Bank’s operations

Open Solutions

Work together to find solutions to development problems

Open Data

April 20, 2010

We went from this

To this…

data.worldbank.org

In five languages

Data catalog with full downloads

We’ve developed new apps

And provided new data

maps.worldbank.org

• Project locations geo-referenced on a pilot basis from publicly available documents

• Basis for displaying projects on maps

• New “Mapping for Results” application allows overlay with other indicators, such as those for measuring the MDGs

Latest addition: survey microdata

microdata.worldbank.org

Warm response

Andrew McLaughlin, Deputy White House Chief Technology Officer:

“It’s really fantastic to have the World Bank join -- and now lead -- the global open data movement. It

opens huge new possibilities.”

What we’ve learnt about implementing Open Data

Free data is not free

Revenues

Investment

But it’s good for business

Data “curation” matters

Data licensing matters• Creative Commons Zero is a good model (CC0): no

copyright, public domain

• Encourage use and re-use, including for commercial purposes

• Require attribution to primary and secondary sources

• Main usual exclusions: no endorsement, association, warranty, liability

• Need special terms for “raw” data collected under confidentiality agreements

It’s not about developing a pretty website

Others can reach users better

Create incentives for intermediaries

• First global competition to create innovative software applications for development

• Must use some World Bank data, and address one of the MDGs

• Aim: bring together software developers and development practitioners

Open Data brings new opportunities

The winning apps…

Guiding future development• Open Data is good for the data and official statistics

business

• But some countries and partners face obstacles to adopting an Open Data policy:– Data access restrictions for some datasets– Capacity and incentives– Technical barriers– Open Data not prioritized in NSDSs

• Working together, and through PARIS21, we can make progress

A public good for the public good