Governments across the globe have a great opportunity to generate public value by enabling the publication, sharing of and access to public sector data. Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries are highly committed to the open data agenda. The LAC region has the largest number of countries (11 in total) adopting the International Open Data Charter. In addition, 81% of LAC countries already have an appropriate medium-term strategy on open government data (OGD), compared to 84% of OECD countries, and 75% have a national OGD action plan that includes implementation of open data portals and the release of data.
More than half of the LAC countries that responded to the survey have a steering committee responsible for monitoring the implementation of the OGD policy at the central or federal level. In the vast majority of cases, such a committee involves stakeholders from public sector organisations, civil society and academia.
The Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index supports the development, implementation and impact of sound open data policies for OECD countries. For the first time, data from both LAC and OECD member countries can be compared using the final version of OURdata. The Index benchmarks the design and implementation of open government data policies. It ranges from 0 to 1, 0 being the lowest score and 1 the highest. It is composed of three indicators, which have an equal weight of 0.33: data availability, data accessibility and government support to the re-use. Each indicator ranges from 0 to 0.33.
On average, LAC countries scored 0.43, in comparison to an OECD average of 0.60 in 2019. There is a stark contrast on development levels of the LAC region in OGD. Colombia (0.88), Mexico (0.71) and Brazil (0.63) lead in the region having higher scores than the OECD average (0.60). However, Caribbean countries such as the Bahamas (0.04) and Dominica (0.00) are not yet implementing OGD policies as measured by OURdata.
Data availability refers to the policy frameworks that regulate the release of government data. Both Colombia and Mexico rank first on this dimension (0.26), followed by Brazil (0.23), Argentina and Dominican Republic (0.17). Data accessibility measures how OGD are released (e.g. in machine-readable formats). It is the component of the OURdata index where LAC countries score the highest. For instance, the regional average for data availability is 0.14 (compared to an OECD average of 0.20) while that of data accessibility is 0.18 (compared to 0.23). Additionally, while Ecuador and El Salvador score below average on data availability (0.09 and 0.08 respectively), they score in line with the LAC average on data accessibility (0.17 and 0.18 respectively).
Government support for data re-use measures the efforts to encourage stakeholders from the government and the civil society to use OGD. LAC countries scored an average of 0.11, compared to 0.17 for the OECD. In this aspect, the region needs to intensify its efforts to support the re-use of OGD.
