As a center of independent expertise in the field of defense and security, established in 1984, we have been able to observe the evolution of the web, what has allowed researchers to access multiple sources of new information. The opacity of the arms industry and, more generally, the defense sector poses an obstacle to the democratic organization of the European area. Substantial public funding allows these companies to arm authoritarian regimes around the world. What is our collective responsibility on this? We believe it is possible to reverse the trend through information.
Today we are working with quality technicians on the establishment of a research, visualization and archiving environment for contextualized information. In fact, with the huge amount of data available on the web, making comparisons of this data is more than necessary. The comparisons make it possible to check the data quality and contribute to the referencing of reliable sources on the web galaxy. The Open Data Editor (ODE) has enabled us to get started on this long-term project by offering a lightweight, cross-platform and user-friendly interface accessible to no-code members of the weapon watch network.
Being able to edit metadata without going through the code was very important for us. This allows us to build our data collection processes in line with quality standards. We can prepare pre-configured “sample” data collection files for network members, to take full advantage of error detection.
As part of this first pilot project, we really appreciated the online data quality courses. Although no specific skills are required to use ODE, it is crucial to know the basics if you want to take full advantage of the software’s functionalities. The comments on errors and tips in the “Advanced” section endorse the software’s educational potential. We feel it’s important to take this aspect into consideration.
In addition, we’d like to share a few ideas for future versions. It might be useful to offer versioning using the git protocol, with offline or locally hosted repositories. It also occurred to us to interoperate with Wikidata standards to offer archiving functionality.
Of course, we’d like to thank the entire OKFN team and all the organizations involved in this pilot project. We were able to discover experienced people with advice and insights that enabled us to better organize our data processes.
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Open Data Editor in Action: Multiple defence spending data sources in a single quality spreadsheet
The Observatoire des armements was able to streamline its work with statistics on arms purchases and sales in France, significantly reduce the time needed to identify and correct errors, and train the team to work with open data.
About the Open Data Editor
The Open Data Editor (ODE) is Open Knowledge’s new open source desktop application for nonprofits, data journalists, activists, and public servants, aiming at helping them detect errors in their datasets. It’s a free, open-source tool designed for people working with tabular data (Excel, Google Sheets, CSV) who don’t know how to code or don’t have the programming skills to automatise the data exploration process.
Simple, lightweight, privacy-friendly, and built for real-world challenges like offline work and low-resource settings, ODE is part of Open Knowledge’s initiative The Tech We Want — our ambitious effort to reimagine how technology is built and used.
And there’s more! ODE comes with a free online course that can help you improve the quality of your datasets, therefore making your life/work easier.
↪ Take the course: Learn how to use ODE
All of Open Knowledge’s work with the Open Data Editor is made possible thanks to a charitable grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. Learn more about its funding programmes here.
