Show HN: Open Data to create transparency in Development Aid

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/open-data-for-transparency-in-development-aid

by fpp • 13 years ago

1 1 13 years ago

fpp• 13 years ago

This campaign is mostly technical (computer / data) hence the post on HN.

It was put online yesterday to create open data on development projects that have till today received more than $24 Billion tax funding with dozens of $Billions planned to follow in the next years.

Once the data is opened up with this campaign, it will also create a rare occasion that hackers working on their computers with the data, can actually contribute to save thousands of lives and get a lit on corruption. There will be many data challenges coming from finding patterns, identifying errors, graph / networks problems to name a few.

You might have followed the stories this month on Obama's executive order to open government data (e.g. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/0... ) - to make government spending more transparent and to save billions of dollars providing these services. Similar approaches are now being implemented with development aid, with the U.S. and the UK leading the way (e.g. in the UK you already have access on all government aid payments > £500, updated monthly).

The organisation (GFATM) that has received those $24 Billion is not a government agency, so these changes don't apply to them. They have, while lots of data has been published since its creation in 2002 (published !== open), seemingly taken the approach to hide important data in thousands of documents and obscuring it with special jargon.

This campaign is also an unique opportunity to have a complete dataset since the creation of such an organisation.

It would be appalling if it's possible to raise $200k to pay someone for a private video of an overweight Canadian smoking drugs, but there would be only little support for a project like this most likely saving thousands of lives (and putting scrutiny on $Billions of tax spending)

Show HN: Open Data to create transparency in Development Aid

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