Using the Global Open Data Index to strengthen open data policies: Best practices from Mexico

This is a blog post coauthored with Enrique Zapata, of the Mexican National Digital Strategy.

As part of the last Global Open Data Index (GODI), Open Knowledge International (OKI) decided to have a dialogue phase, where we invited individuals, CSOs, and national governments to exchange different points of view, knowledge about the data and understand data publication in a more useful way.

In this process, we had a number of valuable exchanges that we tried to capture in our report about the state of open government data in 2017, as well as the records in the forum. Additionally, we decided to highlight the dialogue process between the government and civil society in Mexico and their results towards improving data publication in the executive authority, as well as funding to expand this work to other authorities and improve the GODI process. Here is what we learned from the Mexican dialogue:

The submission process

During this stage, GODI tries to directly evaluate how easy it is to find and their data quality in general. To achieve this, civil society and government actors discussed how to best submit and agreed to submit together, based on the actual data availability.

Besides creating an open space to discuss open data in Mexico and agreeing on a joint submission process, this exercise showed some room for improvement in the characteristics that GODI measured in 2016:

Open licenses: In Mexico and many other countries, the licenses are linked to datasets through open data platforms. This showed some discrepancies with the sources referenced by the reviewers since the data could be found in different sites where the license application was not clear.
Data findability: Most of the requested datasets assess in GODI are the responsibility of the federal government and are available in datos.gob.mx. Nevertheless, the titles to identify the datasets are based on technical regulation needs, which makes it difficult for data users to easily reach the data.
Differences of government levels and authorities: GODI assesses national governments but some of these datasets – such as land rights or national laws – are in the hands of other authorities or local governments. This meant that some datasets can’t be published by the federal government since it’s not in their jurisdiction and they can’t make publication of these data mandatory.

Open dialogue and the review process

During the review stage, taking the feedback into account, the Open Data Office of the National Digital Strategy worked on some of them. They summoned a new session with civil society, including representatives from the Open Data Charter and OKI in order to:

Agree on the state of the data in Mexico according to GODI characteristics;
Show the updates and publication of data requested by GODI;
Discuss paths to publish data that is not responsibility of the federal government;
Converse about how they could continue to strengthen the Mexican Open Data Policy.

The results

As a result of this dialogue, we agreed six actions that could be implemented internationally beyond just the Mexican context both by governments with centralised open data repositories and those which don’t centralise their data, as well as a way to improve the GODI methodology:

Open dialogue during the GODI process: Mexico was the first country to develop a structured dialogue to agree with open data experts from civil society about submissions to GODI. The Mexican government will seek to replicate this process in future evaluations and include new groups to promote open data use in the country. OKI will take this experience into account to improve the GODI processes in the future.
Open licenses by default: The Mexican government is reviewing and modifying their regulations to implement the terms of Libre Uso MX for every website, platform and online tool of the national government. This is an example of good practice which OKI have highlighted in our ongoing Open Licensing research.
“GODI” data group in CKAN: Most data repositories allow users to create thematic groups. In the case of GODI, the Mexican government created the “Global Open Data Index” group in datos.gob.mx. This will allow users to access these datasets based on their specific needs.
Create a link between government built visualization tools and datos.gob.mx: The visualisations and reference tools tend to be the first point of contact for citizens. For this reason, the Mexican government will have new regulations in their upcoming Open Data Policy so that any new development includes visible links to the open data they use.
Multiple access points for data: In August 2018, the Mexican government will launch a new section on datos.gob.mx to provide non-technical users easy access to valuable data. These data called “‘Infraestructura de Datos Abiertos MX’ will be divided into five easy-to-explore and understand categories.
Common language for data sets: Government naming conventions aren’t the easiest to understand and can make it difficult to access data. The Mexican government has agreed to change the names to use more colloquial language can help on data findability and promote their use. In case this is not possible with some datasets, the government will go for an option similar to the one established in point 5.

We hope these changes will be useful for data users as well as other governments who are looking to improve their publication policies. Got any other ideas? Share them with us on Twitter by messaging @OKFN or send us an email to index@okfn.org