Indigo recently supported an open data unconference in Cape Town in collaboration with our grantee, Code for South Africa. The conference proceedings are now available to read. In just a couple of days, the conference examined a huge range of issues from how to get government data, mapping political financing, collaborating on open data and coding for journalists. Write-ups of each session are available here, but for now this is a quick taste of some the common themes that emerged from the diverse sessions:
- There is a clear need for an open data portal to collate available datasets at a single location;
- A policy of “open by default” for data is needed in contrast to the current “closed by default” mindset;
- Data needs to be released responsibly to ensure that it does not compromise the privacy of individuals;
- Data providers (such as government) should only be responsible for making data available, and info-mediaries such as the media, civil society and the private sector will package and present data to end-users.