Today is a big milestone in the Web Foundation’s first Open Government Data (OGD) project:  We are publishing the draft of both reports on our OGD feasibility studies in Chile (read the Chile Report) and Ghana (read the Ghana Report) developed in cooperation with our colleagues at Fundacion CTIC.  Our aim is to gather public comments on these drafts (to be sent to ogd-comments@webfoundation.org) from the OGD community and from the different people and organizations we interviewed. The comment period will be open until the end of March 2011.  We will subsequently answer and integrate comments and produce final versions of the reports.

NB: the original project also included feasibility studies in Turkey. Unfortunately, after preliminary investigation, we were unable to establish enough contacts at the political, public administration and civil society level to conduct the study till the end.

Here is a bit of background about this initial OGD project.  Tim Berners-Lee, our founder, and Nigel Shadbolt, Web Foundation Director, were instrumental in the setup and launch of the UK OGD portal data.gov.uk.  OGD activites are spreading steadily at the national, regional and local levels in high-income countries around the world.

The objectives of the Web Foundation’s actions are to investigate how applicable and valuable OGD initiatives could be in low- and middle-income countries, and how we can assist these countries to bootstrap such a process. This first project investigates the feasibility of possible OGD implementations programs in Chile and Ghana. Our objective in the coming months is to continue to develop this activity at the Foundation, complete additional feasibility studies, start some implementation projects, and assist the growing OGD community by providing tools, best practices and support.  Your input on these reports will be an important contribution to our overall efforts.  Thank you in advance!

Stephane