Governments and public organisations produce and collect a wide range of data when performing their day-to-day activities. Open government data (OGD) is a strategic policy tool that can generate significant benefits within and outside the public sector. Using OGD can help governments design and deliver better policies and services, to better anticipate emerging societal trends and user needs and to improve performance monitoring. Furthermore, OGD can empower citizens to make better-informed decisions, to enhance their understanding of government activities and to participate in the design and implementation of public policies, thereby improving public services. OGD can also help businesses, the economy and society as a whole to produce better outcomes, as well as create new business opportunities.
The numerous benefits of OGD call for governments to implement overarching open data strategies, as well as to provide a framework promoting data availability, accessibility and reuse. The OECD OURdata (Open-Useful-Reusable Data) Index aims to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of countries on a selected set of indicators and to help identify potential areas for action. It measures the implementation level of the International Open Data Charter principles at the central/federal level, based on a framework developed by the OECD.
In half of the eight countries surveyed, there are no formal requirements for all public sector organisations to make their data open by default. Four countries (Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) publish a single document listing legitimate reasons for public sector organisations to restrict the release of government data. This stands in contrast to most OECD countries, which require that public sector organisation data should be open by default, either in law or in executive decrees. Most OECD countries have also released online in a single document the list of legitimate reasons for restricting the release of government data by default.
In most countries there has been relatively little effort to engage stakeholders in the open data ecosystem (the different actors inside or outside the public sector contributing to the publication and reuse of OGD), to either promote government data release or to enhance its quality. Only Malaysia and Thailand have overarching requirements for public sector organisations to regularly conduct consultations with users to inform them of open data plans. In Indonesia and the Philippines, such requirements have been adopted by some ministries/agencies. Five of the eight countries actively consult different groups of users to develop open data plans, although few of these countries have formal requirements to do so.
The SEA countries do not have initiatives in place to promote OGD reuse, either within the public sector or outside of it, apart from Indonesia and Malaysia. Only Singapore has organised focus groups or information sessions (often with business representatives) to better understand data needs or present the benefits of OGD. Only Indonesia and Thailand have organised frequent focus groups or information sessions with civil society representatives. Indonesia alone has run frequent sessions to train public servants on the reuse of OGD; in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia and Thailand, these have never taken place, and in the remaining countries they happen rarely. However, in most OECD countries in the region, training sessions for public servants are on average run more than 11 times a year.
Indonesia and Malaysia are the only countries that have undertaken comprehensive assessments to understand the main barriers to businesses reusing OGD. Malaysia alone has done so for civil society organisations as well. Research on the economic and social impact of OGD as well as on public sector performance has not been carried out in most countries. Of the four OECD countries in the region, Japan and New Zealand have done research on the economic and social impact of OGD.
