Open Data (was: Open Source Strategy)

From: S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 02:53:00 -0700


Hi Rajnish,
At 19:02 31-07-2016, Rajnish Hawabhay wrote:
>As regards open data, we are currently studying the World Bankšs final
>Open Data Readiness Assessment report. Also, budget 2016/2017 makes
>provision for an open data portal. Necessary action has been initiated.

Thank you for the explanation. The opening
workshop on Open Data was in June 2015. Cabinet
has agreed to the report. The Ministry of
Technology, Communication and Innovation has been
studying the report since over a month. I would
like to study the report too. Unfortunately, I
cannot do that as the The Ministry of Technology,
Communication and Innovation has been unable to
provide me with a copy of the report.

According to the vision which is documented in
one of the existing government policies [1], "the
Government of Mauritius shall also foster all
measures to design and create sustainable
communities surrounding OSS and the growth of OSS
user communities". It is not possible to sustain
a community if that community does not produce
any results. It is not possible to produce any
results when the results depend on the Ministry
and there is a bottleneck at that end.

The policy [1] also states that "the Government
of Mauritius shall, in accordance to their
eGovernment strategy 2013- 2017, follow general
Open Data guidelines and shall publish all data
collected, edited by government organizations and
all software developed by government
organizations or paid for by taxpayers’ money in
such technical format and under such license
scheme, to make it available to the public to the
greatest extent possible to further study,
analyze or reuse, without any license fees". In
my opinion, it is ill-advised to rely on a
strategy for 2013 to 2017 if there isn't any
evidence to show that the government has been able to follow its guidelines.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1.
http://mtci.govmu.org/English/Documents/2016/Policy%20n%20Strategy/Mauritius%20OSS%20Policy%202014%20final.pdf
Received on Fri Sep 16 2016 - 09:57:57 PST

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