Data form some of the most valuable resources in today’s world. Open government data (OGD) policies aim to ensure everyone has access to data from public bodies in open, free and accessible formats. They have become crucial for addressing both longstanding and emerging policy issues, such as the recent pandemic and the green transition.
The Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index benchmarks efforts made by governments to design and implement national OGD policies. The 2023 results show that, on average, the six Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries included in the OURdata Index score 0.37 (out of a maximum of 1), which is below the OECD average of 0.48. Brazil (0.56), Colombia (0.55) and Peru (0.52) perform above both averages, demonstrating more mature open data policies, in particular in the area of data availability. Mexico (0.27), Costa Rica (0.19) and Chile (0.13) still have room to improve, especially in government support for data re-use (Figure 9.6).
On average, the LAC countries surveyed score below the OECD average in all three pillars of the index. The data availability pillar measures the extent to which governments have adopted and implemented requirements to publish open government data. It also assesses engagement with stakeholders to identify data demand and whether high-value datasets are available as open data. LAC countries score an average of 0.26 for this pillar, significantly below the OECD average of 0.48 (Figure 9.7). These lower results are explained by the lack of robust policy frameworks and stakeholder engagement among some LAC countries.
The second pillar, on data accessibility, measures both the existence of requirements to provide data in open, timely and re-usable formats, with good-quality metadata, delivered through application programming interfaces (APIs), and the implementation of those requirements. It also assesses stakeholder engagement on the central open data portal. This pillar has the highest average score (0.31) for the surveyed LAC countries, albeit still below the OECD average of 0.59 (Figure 9.7).
The third pillar, on government support for data re-use, measures the extent to which governments proactively promote the re-use of open government data inside and outside the government. The LAC average is 0.20, compared to the OECD average of 0.37 (Figure 9.7). This indicates that governments could do more to partner and engage with external stakeholders and potential data users to deliver better policies and services (OECD, 2023).
