Dear list(s), The OKCon has passed and generated many ideas for exciting future projects.
One of the promising ideas I discussed with several participants was to compile an index to track progress in opening data - both over time and across countries. This would serve several purposes: 1) Enable the public to make cross-country comparisons (i.e. which country performs well?) and track longitudinal developments (i.e. which country has improved on opening data?) 2) Serve as a useful tool for conducting open knowledge research (e.g. correlating the index with socio-economic variables - does open knowledge really foster innovation and growth?) 3) Ideally, increase impact of OKF in public - making the "Open Knowledge Index" a citable measure of open government There are many indices out there - for tracking democracy, corruption, innovation and human development - so why not a measure to track progress in opening government? Such an index (leaving aside methodological problems for now) could greatly increase visibility of OKF's work: A success case here is Transparency International - before Ti published its corruption index, journalists had a hard time reading and understanding all the reports - with the creation of the Corruption Perception Index, Ti has become one of the most known NGOs in fighting corruption. So why not have an Open Knowledge Index, released annually in a report and during the OKCon? This would greatly increase media attention! I have some professional experience in creating indices (my research institute has been compiling the German innovation index for a while and we are currently drafting the funding proposal for an index of IT infrastructure resilience). The Open Economics WG itself has developed some experience with creating composite indices with the Yourtopia app we submitted previously at the Apps4Development competition. I would therefore volunteer to coordinate such an index within the Open Economics group, mainly as an open academic project. The first step would be to construct a prototype; in the longer run, we might also consider applying for research grants in order to create the index annually. Just wanted to start a discussion and see who would be interested - we are planning to discuss this in greater detail during our regular Skype meetups. Guo _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
