Hi,
SM nailed it: Any time your tax money is used to collect data, you
should be able to access that data. This covers many topics, but a few
examples are:
- Property prices & sales (every house sold is recorded by the land
registry department, but not really published in an accessible form)
- Property planning applications (these seem to be semi-secret in
Mauritius, and very public in other countries like the UK)
- Meteorological (I'd love to see the raw data that is collected on
sunshine, temperature, rainfall, etc)
- Water quality
- Government Spending
- Transport
The UK government has done a lot of work to support Open Data. You can
see their good work here:
http://data.gov.uk/data/search. The USA has a
similar project:
https://www.data.gov/. Warning: you'll be drowned in
data looking at those sites.
Open Data has lots of positive benefits, including:
* Transparency and democratic control (i.e. allows the public to keep an
eye on government corruption)
* Participation & Self-empowerment (allow the public to analyse the
facts for themselves)
* Improved or new private products and services
* Impact measurement of policies
(source <
http://opendatahandbook.org/en/why-open-data/>)
Cheers,
Dan.
On 04/30/2015 04:14 PM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hi Nadim,
> At 02:35 30-04-2015, Mohammad Nadim wrote:
>> I find this idea interesting. But I would like to know which data can
>> be made available?
>
> I propose that all data paid for through public funds be made
> available for public use unless the government agency can provide a
> valid reason for keeping the data secret.
>
>> _at_SM: What data do you expect to be made available? Are there any
>> standards to be followed for the data?
>
> I'll use
> http://consumer.govmu.org/English//DOCUMENTS/PO%20CHART_FEB_2015.PDF
> as an example. The data would be published in a CSV format.
>
> Please see
> http://statsmauritius.govmu.org/English/Publications/Pages/Crime-Year-2013.aspx
> You would have access to data which would allow you to find out the
> crime rate in your area, road traffic contraventions in your area,
> etc. You would have access to the health and safety records so that
> you can process that data and find out whether it is safe to buy from
> that person/company. You would have access to census data and climate
> data, etc.
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
>
>
--
Daniel Laeng
Software Developer
+230 5775 1037
Received on Thu Apr 30 2015 - 14:24:54 PST