Since its inception on 8th July 2011, the Kenyan Government has made its information in all sectors open to the public through the Kenya Open Data project. Months later, it has registered over 3,500 downloads and embeds, which marks a good milestone of its usage by developers.
European Commission’s Open Data Strategy for Europe late last year launched a strategy to make open data a reality in Europe. In the next two years, European Commission’s Open Data Strategy for Europe will offer 100 million Euros in grants to research on better ways to handle data. Most countries in the developed countries are reluctant to embrace the open data environment.
Kenya has become the first country in Sub Saharan Africa to have an open data by the government and second in the continent after Morocco. The aim of open data is to increase transparency in government operations and also place accountability to the government. In April 2010, the Unite Kingdom’s open data initiative registered 3,241 data sets. The US has also successfully implemented open data initiatives.
Many applications have been developed around the open data that include, charts, PDF document, CVS documents and many more formats. Some of the startups that have used the open data include EduWeb, MedAfrica, Msema Kweli, Upande Limited among many other apps.
Ms. Linet Kwamboka, of Kenya Open Data told HumanIPO that, “We are 85% there, being in operation for 7 months. There have been complaints about the data not being fully there but data collection is an ongoing thing.”
The platform has already got 400 data sets from government bodies and is planning to offer training to developers to help them come up with apps associated with the open data.
