From the about page:
For more information on the Open Data Index, you may contact the team at: index@okfn.org
Each year, governments are making more data available in an open format. The Global Open Data Index tracks whether this data is actually released in a way that is accessible to citizens, media and civil society and is unique in crowd-sourcing its survey of open data releases around the world. Each year the open data community and Open Knowledge produces an annual ranking of countries, peer reviewed by our network of local open data experts.
Crowd-sourcing this data provides a tool for communities around the world to learn more about the open data available locally and by country, and ensures that the results reflect the experience of civil society in finding open information, rather than government claims. it also ensures that those who actually collect the information that builds the Index are the very people who use the data and are in a strong position to advocate for more and higher quality open data.
The Global Open Data Index measures and benchmarks the openness of data around the world, and then presents this information in a way that is easy to understand and use. This increases its usefulness as an advocacy tool and broadens its impact.
In 2014 we are expanding to more countries (from 70 in 2013) with an emphasis on countries of the Global South.
See the blog post launching the 2014 Index. For more information, please see the FAQ and the methodology section. Join the conversation with our Open Data Census discussion list.
It is better to have some data rather than none but look at the data by which countries are ranked for openness:
Transport Timetables, Government Budget, Government Spending, Election Results, Company Register, National Map, National Statistics, Postcodes/Zipcodes, Pollutant Emissions.
A listing of data that results in the United Kingdom with a 97% score and first place.
It is hard to imagine a less threatening set of data than those listed. I am sure someone will find a use for them but in the great scheme of things, they are a distraction from the data that isn’t being released.
Off-hand, in the United States at least, public data should include who meets with appointed or elected members of government along with transcripts of those meetings (including phone calls). It should also include all personal or corporate donations made to any organization for any reason of greater than $100.00. It should include documents prepared and/or submitted to the U.S. government and its agencies. And those are just the ones that come to mind rather quickly.
Current disclosures by the U.S. government are a fiction of openness that conceals a much larger dark data set, waiting to be revealed at some future date.
I first saw this in a tweet by ChemConnector.