Examples Open Data in New York
Listers Sorry for cross posting. This article appearing on mashable.com online is very interesting in illustrating how open data can be deployed. As Kenya is the first country in Africa to open up it's data, we must seek examples that encourage our entrepreneurs and our policy makers as well. Enjoy.. Local Governments Motivate App Developers With Contests Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 04:42 PM | Sarah Kessler The past two years, New York City has hosted contests for mobile apps that use city data. Now New York State’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is launching a similar contest of its own. A number of cities, including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, have made their data publicly available. It makes sense: Apps that improve parking situations or make public transportation easier to navigate benefit the city without sucking its resources. But New York City, and now New York State, are some of the first governments to add a contest to the process in order to incentivize developers to make such apps. To be eligible for “MTA App Quest” and its $15,000 in cash prizes, the biggest requirement is that apps need to use at least one of the MTA’s data sets. The MTA first posted databases online for developer use in January 2010, and 40 or so apps have been created using the data. But many of these, like NYC Way [iTunes link], were entries in New York City’s BigApps contest, which borrowed several MTA databases. For its own contest, the MTA has released six new or updated data sets, including one that shows where platforms, elevators, turnstiles and station agent booths are located inside subway stations. Beyond that, the two contests are pretty similar, despite one being run by the city and the other by the state. The MTA has partnered with the same contest platform that NYC did, ChallengePost. In this case, ChallengePost is putting up the prize money for the contest. Usually, it collects money to run crowdsourcing contests for clients like the World Bank and Michelle Obama. ChallengePost CEO Brandon Kessler says that NYC was the first city to use a contest on his platform for an open data app contest. Now that New York State has also caught on to the publicity method, we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not the last. More About: BigApps, MTA, new york, public transportation Paul Kukubo CEO Kenya ICT Board Kenya ICT Board Facebook:KenyaICTBoard, tweeter: @TANDAAKenya Personal: Tweeter: @pkukubo FB: www.facebook.com/pkukubo -- Paul Kukubo Chief Executive Officer, Kenya ICT Board PO Box 27150 - 00100 Nairobi, Kenya 12th Floor, Teleposta Towers Koinange Street Tel +254 20 2089061, +254 20 2211960 Fax: +254 20 2211962 website: www.ict.go.ke local content project: www.tandaa.co.ke, www.facebook.com/tandaakenya twitter:@tandaaKENYA BPO Project: www. doitinkenya.co.ke Digital Villages Project: www.pasha.co.ke personal contacts _______________ Cell: + 254 717 180001 skype: kukubopaul googletalk: pkukubo personal blog: www.paulkukubo.co.ke personal twitter: @pkukubo ____________________ Vision: Kenya becomes a top ten global ICT hub Mission: To champion and actively enable Kenya to adopt and exploit ICT, through promotion of partnerships, investments and infrastructure growth for socio economic enrichment
Dear Paul, thank you for the article. I've been planning on building an annual statistics World Bank/Donor Community Loans performance site. It seems the Donor Community do not openly share data on the loans/amounts given to Kenya, which I believe should be mandatory disclosure and will compliment the Open Data Initiative. So far the World Bank ( http://maps.worldbank.org/afr/kenya ) has a somewhat decent site though lacking in specific details of all the loans e.g. for various projects in Kenya. The site gives a very basic brief for various amounts allocated for projects. However, further basic analysis shows that there are some clarifications needed, such as this project : - P122163 : Extending Mobile Applications in Africa through Social Networking - Kenya (Akirchix) : Amount : Close to Ksh 40million. ( 0.49million USD ) - Further info on P122163 : http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?Projectid=P122163&theSitePK=356509&piPK=64290415&pagePK=64283627&menuPK=64282134&Type=Overview On the other list Akirachix kindly responded and wrote back to my query that they have no knowledge of these funds nor have access to them, so I find the data listed on the World Bank site very inaccurate and not useable. *Questions :* 1) How is the Open Data Initiative going to address the data release of all Loans and Disbursements use? Are these datasets going to be available? 2) And this question is for the listers, How can we propose that the next govts will only play a ceremonial and caretaker role in World Bank & Donor Funds where the people are able to choose allocation of these funds? For example, shall we hand over requests and allocation responsibilty to Parliament that shall decide on what Citizens want? Shall we finally have a say that parts of Kenya are in more need of such funds more than some of the various projects? Shall we design a national system that collects inputs from all kenyans across the country, compiles the data and provides information for the development of the country? Just sharing some thoughts and thanks again for your time. Rgds.
Aki, I think it'd be a great idea to include debt data in the open data initiative - the more transparency on that issue the better. This is very obvious, but actually not very easy to do: - Debt data are surprisingly difficult to get accurate, and the IMF (with probably the best outside access to such data), when engaging with a country, often spent a lot of time and effort trying to sort these out. You're dealing with different currencies, different terms, and debt is incurred on different levels - it can be incurred by government directly or by parastatals, for example. - Also, not everything the World Bank and other donors finance will necessarily have to be debt - some of it is, and some of it is a grant. Bilateral aid agencies often provide grants (which is, strictly speaking, where the term donor comes from - it's a donation). Some loans are tied to purchases from the lending country. That can be hardware, or consulting inputs. - So donors aren't responsible for all government debt, and similarly, you want to look out for funds that government borrows from non-donor sources on commercial terms - that's usually more expensive. - Classified information is more difficult to fit into this: security sector procurement, for example, is classified, and so that throws a cover over related borrowing as well - remember the rather costly AngloLeasing mess. - You need to compute the different debt write off initiatives. - Finally, look out for domestic debt. That's an increasingly large share in many African countries. Regarding the use of debt: No, I don't think it's a good idea to put each and every loan to a public vote and government should only play a ceremonial role. That's the whole point of democracy and having a government: It's elected to take care of national matters - including public finance management and national borrowing. President Kibaki was elected to appoint the finance minister, and the finance minister's role is to manage this. The new constitution includes clauses for devolution and I believe counties can borrow as well, so in principle, this will bring public finance decisions down a level. Have a good day, Andrea On 13 July 2011 08:23, aki <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Paul, thank you for the article.
I've been planning on building an annual statistics World Bank/Donor Community Loans performance site. It seems the Donor Community do not openly share data on the loans/amounts given to Kenya, which I believe should be mandatory disclosure and will compliment the Open Data Initiative. So far the World Bank ( http://maps.worldbank.org/afr/kenya ) has a somewhat decent site though lacking in specific details of all the loans e.g. for various projects in Kenya. The site gives a very basic brief for various amounts allocated for projects. However, further basic analysis shows that there are some clarifications needed, such as this project :
- P122163 : Extending Mobile Applications in Africa through Social Networking - Kenya (Akirchix) : Amount : Close to Ksh 40million. ( 0.49million USD )
- Further info on P122163 : http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?Projectid=P122163&theSitePK=356509&piPK=64290415&pagePK=64283627&menuPK=64282134&Type=Overview
On the other list Akirachix kindly responded and wrote back to my query that they have no knowledge of these funds nor have access to them, so I find the data listed on the World Bank site very inaccurate and not useable.
*Questions :*
1) How is the Open Data Initiative going to address the data release of all Loans and Disbursements use? Are these datasets going to be available?
2) And this question is for the listers, How can we propose that the next govts will only play a ceremonial and caretaker role in World Bank & Donor Funds where the people are able to choose allocation of these funds? For example, shall we hand over requests and allocation responsibilty to Parliament that shall decide on what Citizens want? Shall we finally have a say that parts of Kenya are in more need of such funds more than some of the various projects? Shall we design a national system that collects inputs from all kenyans across the country, compiles the data and provides information for the development of the country?
Just sharing some thoughts and thanks again for your time.
Rgds.
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@Andrea, much thanks for the input, its a great way to look at the analysis of data. :-) Some general comments: -I'm sure many are as keen as some of us to get the datasets from the Open data initiaitve, and especially dealing with debt issues. I see no point in comparing the dataset usage to creating a better parking system when we have even more unique issues to address at root level. We will leave "parking lot" datasets for the board-room display presentations and those looking for VC funds to finance their mobile dreams. My request to those developing using the datasets should try and have a national outlook of their applications and usage because it matters that we have a national impact with such data. - On the whether future governments being ceremonial/caretakers of international funds, I believe this is essentially very necessary. For decades, all developing countries have shown data that the funds rarely get used for intended purposes, whether high level or low level. If we are able to move the process to parliament with an anti-corruption authority as a process watcher, I think we will then have transparency and implementations that will have far reaching development results. Kenyans choose what matters, not govt nor individual politicians. The closed door activities system just has not worked, not here nor in other developing countries. Over to the IMF, World Bank, Donor Community, KICTB and the rest to share and compliment the Open Data Initiative with data that matters. We need it as much as being the first african country to go with the initiative. Rgds. On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Andrea Bohnstedt < [email protected]> wrote:
Aki, I think it'd be a great idea to include debt data in the open data initiative - the more transparency on that issue the better. This is very obvious, but actually not very easy to do:
- Debt data are surprisingly difficult to get accurate, and the IMF (with probably the best outside access to such data), when engaging with a country, often spent a lot of time and effort trying to sort these out. You're dealing with different currencies, different terms, and debt is incurred on different levels - it can be incurred by government directly or by parastatals, for example. - Also, not everything the World Bank and other donors finance will necessarily have to be debt - some of it is, and some of it is a grant. Bilateral aid agencies often provide grants (which is, strictly speaking, where the term donor comes from - it's a donation). Some loans are tied to purchases from the lending country. That can be hardware, or consulting inputs. - So donors aren't responsible for all government debt, and similarly, you want to look out for funds that government borrows from non-donor sources on commercial terms - that's usually more expensive. - Classified information is more difficult to fit into this: security sector procurement, for example, is classified, and so that throws a cover over related borrowing as well - remember the rather costly AngloLeasing mess. - You need to compute the different debt write off initiatives. - Finally, look out for domestic debt. That's an increasingly large share in many African countries.
Regarding the use of debt: No, I don't think it's a good idea to put each and every loan to a public vote and government should only play a ceremonial role. That's the whole point of democracy and having a government: It's elected to take care of national matters - including public finance management and national borrowing. President Kibaki was elected to appoint the finance minister, and the finance minister's role is to manage this. The new constitution includes clauses for devolution and I believe counties can borrow as well, so in principle, this will bring public finance decisions down a level.
Have a good day, Andrea
participants (3)
-
aki -
Andrea Bohnstedt -
Paul Kukubo