Northern Ireland has been rated 10th out of 94 countries in this year’s Global Open Data Index, published by the Open Knowledge Foundation. This is the first time that Northern Ireland has been measured separately from the rest of the UK.

The Index was created out of a need for the open data community to measure and compare progress on the level and quality of open data published in any country and to allow national communities to drive advocacy themselves. It measures the availability, openness and usefulness of a range of ten key datasets.

This is the first year that Northern Ireland has been included as a separate entry in the GODI since the index was established back in 2013. Previously the UK was measured as a whole, and this couldn’t account for the difference in open data licensing and availability for our devolved government, instead concentrating only on the data publication initiatives undertaken at Whitehall.

Read the full report on the Belfast ODI website

 

There is  an accompanying report, The State of Government Open Data 2017, written by the core team at the Open Knowledge International, which assess the 2016/17 results on a global scale and how data – and its usefulness – can be made better through public dialogue.