Hi folks,
Last night I sent an email to the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (MCCI) asking about their support for open data. I inquired about
the facts and figures I saw on the website[1].
On the "trade tools" page[2] it is mentioned that import & export figures
are available through Excel figures. Microsoft Excel is a proprietary
software that reads spreadsheets.
On the openAfrica[3] website, under datasets for Mauritius, I found the
resource file is downloadable as a CSV. It is also provided under Open Data
Commons Attribution License[4].
Coming back to the Excel file provided by MCCI, the following line from the
disclaimer[5] makes it unclear to me if I can freely use the information
from the Excel sheet.
*"All the rights in the Information, including but without limiting the
generality of the foregoing, and all intellectual property rights, belong
solely to MCCI."*
Searching for "open data in mauritius" on Google didn't return useful
information about the adoption in Mauritius. Last year I first raised my
question about "Open Government Data (OGD)" during a workshop by the
National Computer Board on the National Open Source Software Policy. On 21
September 2014 I wrote the following about OGD[6] in Mauritius:
*Mauritius has an e-Government Strategy plan set over 2013 – 2017. The
first time I had a look at this document I was optimistic. The document
mentioned adoption of Open Source and Open Government Data. As an ardent
advocate of open standards I was particularly interested with these two «
recommendations » among many others. e-Government Strategy plan can be
downloaded from the Central Informatics Bureau’s website.*
There has not been a proper awareness by the Government, NGOs or the
private sector to educate the population about Open Data.
[1]
http://www.mcci.org/en/doing-business/inside-mauritius
[2]
http://www.mcci.org/en/our-services/trade-tools
[3]
http://africaopendata.org/dataset/world-bank-contract-award-2010-2012-mauritius/resource/658fda64-78c7-4bee-8686-a290e041ae19
[4]
http://opendefinition.org/licenses
[5]
http://www.mcci.org/en/disclaimer
[6]
http://hacklog.in/mauritius-e-government-strategy-demystified
Regards,
--
Ish Sookun
- Geek by birth, Linux by choice.
- I blog at HACKLOG.in.
https://twitter.com/IshSookun ^^ Do you tweet?
Received on Tue May 26 2015 - 10:16:35 PST