For government data to be accessible, they must be made available free of charge and without any barriers that may restrict their access and re-use. Governments can create frameworks with standards on data formats and publication procedures for greater accessibility and quality. Open licenses allow the reuse and redistribution of government data, but to benefit from them, data must be easy to process and use by both humans and machines. Furthermore, creating channels to access open government data (OGD) and interact with government institutions enhances data accessibility by allowing citizens to report issues or provide suggestions, and promote collaboration, thus enabling the government as a platform.
Central open data portals can help in providing a single point of access to open government data (e.g. through data federation or harvesting), thus reducing fragmentation. According to the survey results, with the exception of the Bahamas, Dominica and Honduras, all LAC countries have established central OGD portals. Around half of the governments with accessible portals include a user feedback section but only three countries (Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay) display users’ comments. By contrast, 47% of OECD countries display such comments.
In terms of the format in which data can be accessed, 62% of countries including Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Guatemala always provide data in machine-readable format; another 62% including Argentina, Brazil and Chile provide the associated metadata. Fewer countries (six out of 16 LAC countries) always include visualisation tools, while only one out of 32 OECD countries do so. The most popular datasets in Mexico include census data and surveys on housing and agriculture, and economic indicators; while in Uruguay, the most downloaded dataset are bus timetables. This shows the wide range of purposes for OGD, which range from making informed decisions to conducting academic research.
Pillar 2 of the OURdata Index on Accessibility of government data has three sub-pillars: content of unrestricted access to data policy, stakeholder engagement for data quality and completeness, and implementation, each scoring a maximum of 0.33 points. The LAC average for 2019 is 0.55, compared to 0.70 for the OECD. These results signal that countries could share more high-value datasets and enhance their accessibility. LAC countries need to make more effort in stakeholder engagement where they averaged 0.08, compared to an OECD average of 0.14.
Colombia is the LAC country with the highest overall score, obtaining the highest score (0.33) in content of the access to data policy. It also obtained a high score in implementation (0.32) and in stakeholder engagement (0.30). Colombia’s success is driven by the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications’ strong efforts to plan and implement a digital strategy nationwide.
Uruguay scored 0.33 in implementation, and 0.32 in content of the access to data policy. It performs better than the LAC average in stakeholder engagement (0.23), yet more efforts could be made to collect and publish usage statistics, and to foster the interaction among users through the portal. Chile and Mexico obtained 0.33 in content of the access to data policy, and performed well on implementation (0.26 and 0.28 respectively), but fared poorly in stakeholder engagement.
