Dear fellow list members and in particular Dr Ndemo, Please have a look at this initiative by the British government http://data.gov.uk/home, similar to the american one http://www.data.gov/
From the home page
*Advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt and others,
government are opening up data for reuse. This site seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data and is under constant development. We want to work with you to make it better.*
*We’re very aware that there are more people like you outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative relationship with you.*
I cannot think of a better way for the government to demonstrate transparency, confidence in local talent, public private partnership and harnessing local resources to realize economic growth, effective planning and realization of vision 2030. As the largest data collector, Government has a lot of information that it does not (or will not) do anything with. Why not avail it to bright, enterprising talent to make use of it. Analyze, cross reference and find relationships with. There is even a correspondng campaign where the British Government solicits ideas from the public http://showusabetterway.com/. Here is a link of some of the initiatives the public came up with http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/call/2009/02/new-year-progress-update.html This to me is an idea whose time has come. It boggles the mind what analysis can be done by given raw data like population, gender, education, crime, geography, minerals, finance etc. If the ingenuity of 4 kenyans is helping Haiti deal with its earthquakes ( http://www.haiti.ushahidi.com) what can the ingenuity of the entire private sector do?