Banco Mundial

The ability to collect, analyse and share data plays a crucial role in the context of the global challenges we face as a society today. From pollution and climate change, through poverty and pandemics, to sustainable mobility and lack of access to basic services. Global problems require solutions that can be adapted on a large scale. This is where open data can play a key role, as it allows governments, organisations and citizens to work together in a transparent way, and facilitates the process of achieving effective, innovative, adaptable and sustainable solutions.

The World Bank as a pioneer in the comprehensive use of open data

One of the most relevant examples of good practices that we can find when it comes to expressing the potential of open data to tackle major global challenges is, without a doubt, the case of the World Bank, a benchmark in the use of open data for more than a decade now as a fundamental tool for sustainable development.

Since the launch of its open data portal in 2010, the institution has undergone a complete transformation process in terms of data access and use. This portal, totally innovative at the time, quickly became a reference model by offering free and open access to a wide range of data and indicators covering more than 250 economies. Moreover, its platform is constantly being updated and bears little resemblance to the initial version at present, as it is continuously improving and providing new datasets and complementary and specialised tools with the aim of making data always accessible and useful for decision making. Examples of such tools include:

• The Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP): designed to monitor and analyse global poverty and inequality. With data from more than 140 countries, this platform allows users to access up-to-date statistics and better understand the dynamics of collective well-being. It also facilitates data visualisation through interactive graphs and maps, helping users to gain a clear and quick understanding of the situation in different regions and over time.
• The Microdata Library: provides access to household and enterprise level survey and census data in several countries. The library has more than 3,000 datasets from studies and surveys conducted by the Bank itself, as well as by other international organisations and national statistical agencies. The data is freely available and fully accessible for downloading and analysis.
• The World Development Indicators (WDI): are an essential tool for tracking progress on the global development agenda. This database contains a vast collection of economic, social and environmental development indicators, covering more than 200 countries and territories. It has data covering areas such as poverty, education, health, environmental sustainability, infrastructure and trade. The WDIs provide us with a reliable frame of reference for analysing global and regional development trends.

Figure 1. Screenshots of the web portals Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP), Microdata Library and World Development Indicators (WDI).

Data as a transformative element for change

A major milestone in the World Bank's use of data was the publication of the World Development Report 2021, entitled "data for better lives". This report has become a flagship publication that explores the transformative potential of data to address humanity's grand challenges, improve the results of development efforts and promote inclusive and equitable growth. Through the report, the institution advocates a new social agenda for data, including robust, ethical and responsible governance of data, maximising its value in order to generate significant economic and social benefit.

The report examines how data can be integrated into public policy and development programmes to address global challenges in areas such as education, health, infrastructure and climate change. But it also marked a turning point in reinforcing the World Bank's commitment to data as a driver of change in tackling major challenges, and has since adopted a new roadmap with a more innovative, transformative and action-oriented approach to data use. Since then, they have been moving from theory to practice through their own projects, where data becomes a fundamental tool throughout the strategic cycle, as in the following examples:

• Open Data and Disaster Risk Reduction: the report "Digital Public Goods for Disaster Risk Reduction in a Changing Climate" highlights how open access to geospatial and meteorological data facilitates more effective decision-making and strategic planning. Reference is also made to tools such as OpenStreetMap that allow communities to map vulnerable areas in real time. This democratisation of data strengthens emergency response and builds the resilience of communities at risk from floods, droughts and hurricanes.
• Open data in the face of agri-food challenges: the report "What's cooking?" shows how open data is revolutionising global agri-food systems, making them more inclusive, efficient and sustainable. In agriculture, access to open data on weather patterns, soil quality and market prices empowers smallholder farmers to make informed decisions. In addition, platforms that provide open geospatial data serve to promote precision agriculture, enabling the optimisation of key resources such as water and fertilisers, while reducing costs and minimising environmental impact.
• Optimising urban transport systems: in Tanzania, the World Bank has supported a project that uses open data to improve the public transport system. The rapid urbanisation of Dar es Salaam has led to considerable traffic congestion in several areas, affecting both urban mobility and air quality. This initiative addresses traffic congestion through a real-time information system that improves mobility and reduces environmental impact. This approach, based on open data, not only increases transport efficiency, but also contributes to a better quality of life for city dwellers.

Leading by example

Finally, and within this same comprehensive vision, it is worth noting how this international organization closes the circle of open data through its use as a tool for transparency and communication of its own activities.That is why among the outstanding data tools in its catalogue we can find some of them:

• Its project and operations portal: a tool that provides detailed access to the development projects that the institution funds and implements around the world. This portal acts as a window into all its global initiatives, providing information on objectives, funding, expected results and progress for the Bank's thousands of projects.
• The Finances One platform: on which they centralise all their financial data of public interest and those corresponding to the project portfolio of all the group's entities. It aims to simplify the presentation of financial information, facilitating its analysis and sharing by customers and partners.

The future impact of open data on major global challenges

As we have also seen above, opening up data offers immense potential to advance the sustainable development agenda and thus be able to address global challenges more effectively. The World Bank has been demonstrating how this practice can evolve and adapt to current challenges. Its leadership in this area has served as a model for other institutions, showing the positive impact that open data can have on sustainable development and in tackling the major challenges affecting the lives of millions of people around the world.

However, there is still a long way to go, as transparency and access to information policies need to be further improved so that data can reach the benefit of society as a whole in a more equitable way. In addition, another key challenge is to strengthen the capacities needed to maximise the use and impact of this data, particularly in developing countries. This implies not only going beyond facilitating access, but also working on data literacy and supporting the creation of the right tools to enable information to be used effectively.

The use of open data is enabling more and more actors to participate in the creation of innovative solutions and bring about real change. All this gives rise to a new and expanding area of work that, in the right hands and with the right support, can play a crucial role in creating a safer, fairer and more sustainable future for all. We hope that many organisations will follow the World Bank's example and also adopt a holistic approach to using data to address humanity's grand challenges.

Content prepared by Carlos Iglesias, Open data Researcher and consultant, World Wide Web Foundation. The contents and views reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.

Content prepared by Carlos Iglesias, Open data Researcher and consultan, World Wide Web Foundation.

Contents and points of view expressed in this publication are the exclusive responsibility of its author.

Earlier this year the World Bank announced that its next annual World Development Report would focus on the role of data in development. Each annual report of the World Bank has always been an important milestone in the world of development, but the next report, scheduled for next year, will be even more special because it is the first one focus on the world of data.

We already know that the main theme guiding the development of the report will be "Data for Better Lives", and it will be based on the premise that, while recent years have shown that high-quality data are indispensable tools for effective public policy formulation, the availability of the data needed for proper decision-making is still too low today. As a consequence, a large part of the value of data remains untapped.

Thus, the final objective of the report is to understand the barriers to the proper exploitation of data in the developing world and to explore two possible avenues that together would lead to the solution needed to unlock the full potential of these data:

• On the one hand, addressing data governance considerations and making the necessary changes in the way data is collected, managed, analysed and used in the current global environment.
•     On the other hand, by considering how combining public and private data could lead to better results, with public data offering better coverage of populations of interest and private data with greater frequency, timeliness and granularity.

To this end, the World Bank team has been working on an initial draft as a proof of concept, explaining their vision of how data could have a positive impact on development, while introducing us to the other issues to be addressed by the report, including: "the use of data in public policy, data in the private sphere, synergies triggered by data, and the various challenges in terms of infrastructure, regulatory systems, economic policies and data management systems that we will have to face in the process".

In addition, the World Bank has prepared a round of consultations that will run until the end of this month and which aim to deeply understand the scope of the challenges outlined by answering a number of questions:

How can data contribute to development? 

It seeks to understand how data can contribute to improving people's lives in the context of global development, as well as the role of governments and data markets in making more effective use of data. It will also discuss how data can be used to understand the impact of public policies and improve services while mitigating potential risks associated with their intensive use, and how data must be managed to make this possible.

What are the current gaps in national data systems? 

To explore what types of resources and investments will be needed, both financially and humanly, to realize the long-term vision of a large data system that can unify data management. This system will be managed by a fully resourced government agency. In this aspect, it is also fundamental to understand what barriers managers and users face through the different layers of the infrastructure.

What are the legal and regulatory challenges? 

The objective is to establish the legal basis and the necessary actors to establish and regulate reliable data flows, maximizing their benefits while minimizing the possible associated risks. Here the key will probably lie in finding the right balance between sometimes conflicting concepts such as openness, transparency, right to information, interoperability, accountability, privacy and security.

What are the economic policy challenges? 

The report will analyse what is the real impact on less developed countries of an economy that is increasingly driven by data, resulting in a large market concentration in a rather limited number of companies that in turn have the largest capitalization values in the world today. Enabling appropriate policies to ensure competitive markets, adequate trade rules and a fair taxation scheme will be crucial for those countries that are currently disadvantaged by large private players.

This initial round of consultations will remain open until the end of the month and during this time anyone can provide comments on the general concept of the report through this form. The authors of the report are also particularly interested in good practices and examples of how the data has helped improve the lives of those most in need to date, and encourage anyone who want to share a case directly through WDR2021@worldbank.org. 

The next stages in the development of the report will also be announced through the website they have prepared to coordinate all work until the final version is made public early next year.

In reference to the Open Government Data Working Group of the World Bank, could you explain how the entity contributes to the opening and re-use of public information?

The World Bank has been providing technical assistance, capacity building and funding for developing countries’ Open Data programs since 2012. Its activities can be summarized under four domains: (a) tools, (b) technical assistance, (c) capacity building and (d) networks and inter-institutional collaboration.

On tools for open data, the Bank publishes and continually updates an Open Data Toolkit Open Data Toolkit that provide a set of curated resources for initiating or deepening an open data program. The tools include basic explanation of what is open data; advice on open data licensing and technology options, training opportunities, research, examples of apps and other uses of open data by sector and many other similar tools. Some of these tools have been developed by the World Bank, but the large majority have been developed by other institutions.

On technical assistance and funding, most developed countries are already harvesting the economic and social benefits that Open Government Data brings about, thus, one of the objectives of the World Bank is to take that knowledge and similar Open Data programs to developing countries. Currently, the World Bank has around 26 Open Data-related lending projects at different completion stages that are being, totally or partially financed, by one of the two lending windows of the World Bank: IBRD or IDA. Some of these projects also have a significant trust fund component.

“One of the objectives of the World Bank is to take that knowledge and similar Open Data programs to developing countries.”

The Bank has primarily focused on two approaches for capacity development on use and engagement with open data.  The first approach has been to collaborate with civic hacker communities around opened data, through an array of generally low-cost hackathons (including on ‘hackable’ questions in key development areas, such as domestic violence, water quality and access, and sanitation).  The second approach is more time and resource-intensive – it focuses on short term ‘open data bootcamps’ or long-term ‘deep dive’ open data training and efforts to institutionalize a ‘culture’ of open data among government and non-government groups.  This approach prioritizes the strengthening of sustainable, endemic (self-reinforcing) capacity and use of open data up and down value chains without subsequent external support.  Additional examples include efforts to integrate teaching curricula on open data into university environments and to integrate open data into private sector business models.

The World Bank has been a main sponsor of the last 3 International Open Data Conferences (Washington 2012, Ottawa 2015 and Madrid 16) and has committed to sponsor the next one (Argentina 2018). The Bank is a funder and founding member of the Open Data for Development (OD4D) program, along with the Canadian Government, the International Development Research Center and DFID. Both directly and through OD4D the Bank also sponsors regional conferences, such as ConDatos (official conference) and AbreLatam (unconference) in Latin America, Africa Open Data conferences and similar ones in other regions that host developing countries. Lastly, the Bank is also a member, but not always a leader, of other global groups that work on Open Data for Development, such as the Open Data Working Group of the OGP, the Open Contracting Data Partnership, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, The Open Data Charter and others.

Among the functions of the working group, what would you highlight and what are their lines of action? In what projects is the group currently immersed?

One of the most important tools in the Toolkit is the Open Data Readiness Assessment (ODRA), a quick diagnostic and action plan builder, tailored to each country’s legislation, institutions and demand/supply of data. The ODRA includes analysis and recommendations in 8 areas: leadership, policy/legal framework, institutions & capacities, data supply, data demand, civic engagement and capability, funding, and national IT infrastructure. ODRA assessments and the resulting reports are joint products of a small Government team and a Bank team. The methodology can be applied at the national, sub-national, city or agency level. Sectoral adaptations of the methodology have been done for energy and transport. The next section has more information on the countries where ODRAs have been done.

As explained above, there are currently 26 active projects financed by a combination of Bank’s own budget, trust funds, IBRD or IDA, or a combination of these. Since 2012 we have supported around 45 open data initiatives in developing countries.

When IBRD or IDA projects count with full government support, ODRA implementation and other related Open Data initiatives can be deepened and expanded, since IDA/IBRD projects assign larger amounts and take several years of implementation. Also, once the Open Data initiative or ODRA implementation is concluded, there is a great possibility to use Open Data applications to shed light on some individual sectors of the economy that need more technical support or financial assistance from IBRD or IDA.

 “Since 2012 we have supported around 45 open data initiatives in developing countries.”

 How do you think that opening up public information and citizen participation in government processes can boost development in emerging economies? Could you illustrate this with some real cases?

When data are made widely available and easy to use, the benefits can be significant. Broadly speaking, the benefits of Open Data include:

• Transparency. Open Data supports public oversight of governments and helps reduce corruption by enabling greater transparency. For instance, Open Data makes it easier to monitor government activities, such as tracking public budget expenditures and impacts. It also encourages greater citizen participation in government affairs and supports democratic societies by providing information about voting procedures, locations and ballot issues.
• Public Service Improvement. Open Data gives citizens the raw materials they need to engage their governments and contribute to the improvement of public services. For instance, citizens can use Open Data to contribute to public planning, or provide feedback to government ministries on service quality.
• Innovation and Economic Value. Public data, and their re-use, are key resources for social innovation and economic growth. Open Data provides new opportunities for governments to collaborate with citizens and evaluate public services by giving citizens access to data about those services. Businesses and entrepreneurs are using Open Data to better understand potential markets and build new data-driven products.
• Efficiency. Open Data makes it easier and less costly for government ministries to discover and access their own data or data from other ministries, which reduces acquisition costs, redundancy and overhead. Open Data can also empower citizens with the ability to alert governments to gaps in public datasets and to provide more accurate information.

Several concrete examples of the use of Open Data in specific countries and sectors can be found here.

It will take time to fully understand the complexity and broad potential of Open Data, as the benefits of Open Data impact on broader populations and additional useful options are continuously discovered.

The World Bank has its own open data portal. You could mention some outstanding project - visualization, service, app ... - that has reused the information of the platform and that has had a positive social impact in its environment.

The World Bank provides several tools to enable use of its own data. These include the Bank’s Open Data website and Databank, which allow users to search, visualize and download development data quickly and easily. The Bank also provides data via application programming interfaces (APIs), which has enabled the development of many third-party apps and greatly expanded the ways in which Bank data can be put to use.

Here are some examples:

• Google incorporates development data from the World Bank into its search engine. Searches for common, country-level development indicators such as GDP of Ethiopia typically produce a visualization of relevant data, sourced from the World Bank’s open data API.
• StatPlanet allows users to select and visualize over 3,000 development indicators for nearly every dimension of economic, social and human development. StatPlanet was the winner of the World Bank’s Apps for Development competition, and its technology has been incorporated into the Bank’s EdStats education data portal.
• Save the Rain is an app that uses World Bank open data to estimate the agricultural impacts of small-scale water conservation on a local scale. Save the Rain was one of the finalists in the World Bank’s Apps for Climate competition.
• WB Panorama is another Apps for Climate finalist that uses World Bank open data to show the impact of climate change on crop yields and local living conditions.

In addition, open data best practices enable other governments and organizations to redistribute World Bank data with virtually no transaction costs. For example, when Edo State, Nigeria launched its open data portal in 2014, it copied open data for that region from the World Bank as a way to augment its own data offerings. Open data allowed Edo State to provide its citizens with a broader set of useful data in a single repository than would have been possible otherwise.

Following your participation in the last edition of the International Open Data Conference held in Madrid. How would you rate the current state of the open data sector on a global scale? What immediate needs do you detect and what do you consider to be the next steps necessary to move forward in openness?

While open data is showing signs of increasing maturity in developed countries and some developing countries, the state of progress is heterogeneous and its impact is hard to measure.  Why is open data succeeding in some contexts and failing to achieve traction in others? Open data is more useful and actionable when it is a strategic element of a larger development initiative and not pushed forward as a standalone issue. There is evidence that open data is progressing where it is aligned with other important agendas such as the climate change or national development plans, as well as with regional and sector-specific discussions, for example standards and best practices in contracting, statistics, transport, open cities’ data and more.  There is also noticeable interest in business models for open data. The future of open data is largely linked to the extent to which the agendas and activities of the organizations and individuals within the open data community align around concrete, shared priorities. 

Realizing the potential of open data for decision-making requires making open data and its applications work for everyone, creating tools for a broad audience and identifying data to be opened based on larger efforts to improve the lives of all people, including the poor, the marginalized, and the chronically underserved.

“The future of open data is largely linked to the extent to which the agendas and activities of the organizations and individuals within the open data community align around concrete, shared priorities.”

In contrast to previous years, the Madrid Conference showed that National Statistical Offices (‘NSOs’) are emerging as a potentially important stakeholder group. This is a qualitative leap for open data in developing countries, where NSOs are often the primary (if not the only) source of high-quality, official data.

Advocates for grassroots open data initiatives in many developing countries need financial, material, and human support. The international community is increasingly interested in data for development. However, it is unclear whether open data has the same level of priority in their agenda. Also, models for implementation that work in the developed world may need to be reconsidered, and merged with other approaches that recognize different circumstances in developing countries.  With this in mind, the business case for open data still needs to be showcased wherever possible (e.g. public services’ efficiencies resulting from open data, contributions to economic growth, job creation, etc.)

Another challenge in developing country contexts is the availability of quality data, on a predictable and frequent schedule and with enough metadata to make it useful for reuse. Use of common taxonomies is essential to extract maximum value from data already opened, and I think we are just starting on this.