Global goals, open data and official statistics

Nowadays, national statistical offices are, to a greater or lesser extent, the public bodies responsible for setting standards, implementing methods, collecting, publishing and disseminating official data. At the same time, in recent years, many countries have committed, through projects such as the IATI (Transparency Initiative on International Aid), to open up their government data and practices. However, despite these commitments, there are still governments that have not implemented open data policies in all their services. In fact, many statistical systems refuse to publish their information in open format despite its value and the great advantages that the openness of information would mean for the whole country.

In this context, during the last International Open Data Conference the session Open Data and National Statistical Offices: experiences and opportunities took place, a panel designed to bring together the open data and statistical data communities and discuss the importance of the openness of the statistical data for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Global goals, open data and official statistics was the claim chosen by Eric Swason, managing director at Open Data Watch, for the presentation that opened the discussion, moderated by Shaida Badiee, which involved four international experts from public bodies and independent institutions.

As Swason showed, 230 indicators have been defined to measure and analyze the achievement of the 27 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN agenda for 2030. For this monitoring and analysis to be possible, data from different sources, such as those provided by national statistical offices, are needed. Censuses, surveys, financial reports, administrative information ... are just a few examples of the great amount of information that these public bodies must collect and, of course, transform into open format to assess the progress of SDGs.

Nevertheless, although the great majority of these data comes from public agencies, the private sector, civil society and the international community also play an important role in contributing to the generation of information. In fact, in Swason's words, both sectors should not be considered rivals, but partners who need to collaborate with each other to make the ecosystem of open statistical data work properly.

Unfortunately, according to the results of the Open Data Inventory which assesses the level of openness of official statistics in the world, open data are published for only 50% of the indicators mentioned above.

Although without open and reliable data, it is not possible to comply with the Goals set by the UN; in the last inventory where 125 nations were analyzed, only 3 developing countries had transformed at least 60% of that information into open data (as shown in the following visualization), highlighting the progress made by Ecuador, Sierra Leone or Malaysia in their efforts to open up public data and adopt open licenses and formats. 

In this context, Aboubacar Sédikh Beye, managing director of the National Agency of Statistics and Demography in Senegal, participated in the debate by sharing with the participants the challenges faced by a developing country in the openness of statistical data. Considering that, for example, in Senegal 20% of the population does not have a birth certificate, it is understandable, as Aboubacar emphasized, that the priority in these cases is to have the necessary resources to collect the basic statistical information. Subsequently, efforts should be focussed on educating the population on the importance of such data to finally convert them into open data.

In order to support these countries on their way to openness, Haishan Fu from the World Bank stressed the importance of developing resources to help governments in their open data policies -such as the World Bank's toolkit for assessing Open data initiatives- added to the international aid through specific programs, such as the OD4D network; the development of technical systems for the implementation of open data platforms and, of course, the financial support to carry out such action plans.

In addition, a deeper dialogue between the open data sector and national agencies - communities that share values and goals- would enable a better data production and the promotion of their re-use. All these initiatives, along with the common international knowledge, are essential to ensure that the openness of public sector information is a reality in all corners of the planet, achieving through innovation based on open statistical data, the SDGs agenda.

In this regard, Oliver Ghinganya, director of the Statistics Economic Commission for Africa, indicated a number of measures necessary for national statistical offices to be aware of the potential of open data and promote the openness of those data: collaboration between both communities, involving public agencies in open data initiatives, improving available technologies to transform statistical data in an open format and, above all, working in the regulatory framework to guarantee access to information.

To put the finishing touch of this panel, Jeff Chen of the US Department of Commerce presented the project undertaken by the European Union and the US Department of Commerce, based on the creation of a library of open statistical data. Through this initiative, still in development, it will be possible to have harmonized and open data from both regions, opening the door in the future to the participation of other countries. A perfect example of how international collaboration and the joint work of national statistical offices with the open data community can lead to an unstoppable progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030.