Workshop on Open Data Readiness Assessment - Tuesday

From: S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:00:08 -0700

Hello,

There was a workshop on Open Data which was
hosted by the World Bank and the Ministry of
Technology, Communications and Innovation in the
conference room of the Central Informatics Bureau at 15:30 hrs.

The meeting was to get a list of the datasets for
Open Data. Mr Jochen Kirstätter, as Founder of
the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community,
introduced the group and commented that the group
usually organises a Code and Coffee meeting. A
World Bank official commented that a presentation
about Open Data could be done at one of the
Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community
meetings when the team comes back to Mauritius.

Mr Ish Sookun, as representative of the Linux
User Group Meta, introduced the group and was
asked some details about the group
membership. He commented that participation was
low. He mentioned that the Linux User Group Meta
has been working on a project for a Zone
Education Prioritaire school and explained the
difficulties he encountered in getting content
from the Mauritius Institute of Education.

As representative of the Mauritius Internet
Users, I commented that the group's focus is the
internet in Mauritius and that we support open
standards. I mentioned that we had around 60
persons subscribed to the mailing list and that
participation was low, i.e. 10 persons
participating. I explained that there were
issues about internet quality and it would help
consumers to compare the internert service being
offerred if we could get datasets from the
Information and Communication Technologies
Authority about the upload speed, download speed
in the different regions. I also requested datasets for the following:

   - Exchange Rates
   - Crime
   - Consumer Prices
   - Road Accidents
   - Water
   - Weather
   - Bus tariffs and bus routes

I provided information about the government
agency holding the data, the current format of
the data and what would be done with the datasets.

There was some discussion about the dataset for
water. I mentioned that there were water
shortages in Mauritius while Mr Kirstätter and Mr
Sookun commented about the water problems in
Mauritius. The official from the World Bank
asked a person from the Meteorological Services
for information about weather data. The answer
was that there were two weather stations
officially distributing data, around 20 automated
weather stations and 50 weather stations where
the collection of data was manual. I suggested
that information about electricity consumption would also be useful.

Mr Sookun explained that he would like to have a
dataset about the Open Source Software in use in
the government. I commented that there was an
inventory available and it would be better to
request that as a dataset. There was a
discussion about the procurement of information
technology products/services by the
government. An official from the Central
Informatics Bureau commented that information
such as the name of the supplier is
confidential. I pointed out that in an example
during yesterday's workshop it was argued that
the United Kingdom published that information and
it has helped in having more competition and the
government could get lower prices. The officials
from the World Bank agreed that information about
the suppliers would not be considered as
confidential. By publishing this data, suppliers
can also get a better view of government
expenditure in the information technology sector.

Mr Rambaran asked for geospatial data and
explained how it would help shoponline.mu in its
business. Mr Kirstätter requested information
about company registration and explained that he
could use that information to sell a service
where other companies could verify whether the
company is credible before doing business with it
if the financial statements of the company were
publicly available. There was some discussion
about the fees being charged per search and
whether publishing the names of the directors
would be a privacy issue. Mr Laeng asked for
real estate datasets and the PDFs which were
currently available for a free. There was some
discussion about the LAVIMS project and the data
which was being collected through that project.

Mr Omdeep Gokhool asked for data from the
University of Mauritius and explained that there
were problems with the internet connectivity and
financial allocation. I asked Mr Gokhool about
whether the University of Mauritius was a
government institution as it was not clear
whether the datasets would be part of Open Government Data.

There was a discussion about internet access in
Mauritius. Mr Kirstätter and Mr Sookun commented
that although there were 12 Internet Service
Provider licenses issued, there were only Orange,
Emtel and two over ISPs. Mr Sookun explained
that the only ISP available in his region was
Orange. I commented that there was a lack of
competition in the internet service market for
residential customers and that there wasn't any
regulation by the Information And Communication
Technologies in respect to the prices charged to residential customers.

Mr Rambaran commented about what he considered as
the high price being charged for internet access
by businesses. Mr Kirstätter commented that
internet access offered by Orange in Reunion
Island was cheaper than in Mauritius. Mr
Kirstätter also commented that Google was
planning to set us a campus in Mauritius. It
decided against doing that because of the high
price of internet access and settled for a campus
in Reunion Island. Mr Kirstätter argued that a
campus in Mauritius could have created a lot of
jobs as Google could hire a lot of students. Mr
Laeng commented that he found the internet access
in Mauritius affordable and did not have any
problem with the quality of the service. The
officials from the World Bank asked about whether
it was normal for internet access to be that slow
in hotels in Mauritius. I commented that it may
be because the hotels might not have a connection
which can support that many users. Mr Sandeep
Ramgolam commented about the price for 1 Mb/sec
internet access being the same as the price for
10 Mb/sec internet access over Fibre.

Mr Sookun asked about the Open Data Portal and
proposed to create a site which lists the
datasets instead of a having a Portal. An
official from the World Bank responded that the
proposal would be to set up something simple
quickly so that people can get start accessing
the datasets instead of waiting for a Portal to
be ready. There was some discussion about
whether the portal would be something along the
lines of the ones using in Africa. There was a
discussion about the postal codes for Mauritius
and Mr Rambaran commented that the second class
post was very slow. Ms Shelly Bhujun joined the meeting around 17:00.

The meeting ended at 17:45.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Tue Jun 09 2015 - 16:00:43 PST