Connections Transport & ICT 96255 The Expanding Role for Open Data in Burkina Faso Program Gains Wider Use in the Transitional Government Samia Melhem and Axel Rifon Perez The widening drive to provide open data in the public 140 + sector has taken a new turn in Burkina Faso. Open data has always been recognized as an enabler of economic development and government transparency. But in October 2014, when a popular uprising ousted Burkina Faso’s long-standing leader and established a transitional government, the country’s nascent Burkina Open Data Initiative (BODI) took on new life as an enabler of the transition. With support from the Open The number of government Data Initiative and the World Bank, BODI had debuted data sets currently available just four months before the uprising, showcasing to the public under the about 50 data sets of government information and an Burkina Open Data Initiative app that focused on education. In the months since then, the development of BODI has only accelerated, with more staff, more data sets posted, and new applications launched or planned. Under the transitional government, BODI has expanded with a web page for finding data on government contract awards and a program to help track and manage the country’s persistent drought problems. And BODI envisions a polling-place finder and reporting of vote totals as ways to support turnout and transparency for the scheduled October 2015 national elections. Background based decision making in both the public and private sectors; raise the transparency and ac- Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, countability of the government; improve the created an agency, ANPTIC, to promote and over- delivery of government services as well as citizen see the advance of information and communication engagement with the government; and build an ICT technology (ICT) within the government. In 2012, ecosystem linking the public and private sectors ANPTIC asked the World Bank for assistance in de- with the international community to help build job veloping a program to make important government growth, innovation, and economic development. data sets available online to the public though “open data.” With support from the Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building, the World Bank used its “readi- The goals of the request fit into the World Bank’s ness assessment” process to identify some of the ICT agenda to advance the spread of open gov- challenges facing the country’s development of ernment data: increase the capacity for evidence- open data. APRIL 2015 NOTE 14 The pursuit of open data is much more than a ing budget had added 60 employees to the gov- simple edict requiring agencies to somehow make erning agency, ANPTIC, and the number of staff their data available to the public. It entails an members on the open data team grew to six. elaborate and far-reaching change in procedures and possibilities for e-government. At the heart of In December, the government launched another open data is an internationally recognized set of portal featuring a searchable database of govern- “open data standards,” freely available technical ment procurement offers and contract information. requirements for electronically organizing vari- After a second readiness assessment by the World ous types of data—such as those on budgets and Bank, Burkina Faso received additional funds for procurement as well as social and economic data an open data project to advance the country’s on health, education, industry, agriculture, and adaptation to drought, climate change, and natural transport. Use of an open data standard is critical disasters. to searching, analyzing, and publishing the data in multiple formats in consistent fashion.1 The e-government efforts demonstrated that, de- Next Steps spite less than 5% of the population having online The open data initiative provides the motivation to access, Burkina Faso saw open data as a catalyst. provide training that will increase the data literacy It would stimulate training, job opportunities, and skills of the government as well as members of the international engagement that could help it attain media, students, community leaders, academicians, its development goals by accelerating the country’s and the general public. entrance into the digital era. For the upcoming election, the interim government has invited the BODI team to investigate the cre- The Launch and Evolution of BODI ation of apps that will inform voters of their near- est polling places and enable quick reporting of At its launch on June 5, 2014, BODI made available local election results via text message. The results about 50 government data sets and an Internet will be compiled into national results in a central portal for searching them, data.gov.bf. The event database, where they will be publicly available in also initiated a new app, “Our Schools, Our Data,” close to real time. which provided information on one rural commu- nity of 17 villages and 4,300 students. With train- Now standing at more than 140, the number of data ing that will boost citizen skills and engagement, sets managed and released to the public under residents in other communities will use surveying open data standards will continue to grow. In the techniques and editing software to gradually ex- process, government transparency, service quality, pand the app’s coverage to the entire country. and a climate of trust between government and civil society is also likely to grow, along with the Since the transitional government began in October country’s digital economy, 2014, its support for BODI has clearly increased. By the first quarter of 2015, the government’s operat- For more information on this topic: WBG Open data website: http://data.worldbank.org/ 1 As described by the “briefing document” of the Open Contract- ODRA Toolkit: ing Data Standard Project (http://standard.open-contracting.org/), http://opendatatoolkit.worldbank.org/en/odra.html a technical standard for assembling open data “provides a ready- made approach to sharing data effectively, allowing the [agency entering the data] to focus on content, completeness, and quality. It dramatically lowers … cost…, [allowing use of] various [output] formats…, [and] technology tools and services can use the informa- tion easily and reliably. [As] technical standards gain wider adoption, global comparisons [of the data] are made possible.” Connections is a weekly series of knowledge notes from the World Bank Group’s Transport & Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Global Practice. Covering projects, experiences, and front-line developments, the series is produced by Nancy Vandycke, Shokraneh Minovi, and Adam Diehl and edited by Gregg Forte. The notes are available at http://www.worldbank.org/transport/connections APRIL 2015 NOTE 14