
Why the wealthiest countries are also the most open with their data - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/14/why-the-wealthiest-countries-are-also-the-most-open-with-their-data/
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whyme
The the only sentiment I take from the article is that wealthy countries are
open with their data compared to poorer countries, which author seems to
believe, are intentionally hiding things.

That does not sit well with me. I'm from Canada and have spent a decade making
use of gov't data and while Canada does open up a bunch of it, 90% of what
they open is benign. The important data, or rather the data which would expose
problems, is kept from the public.

These wealthy countries also have other ways to hide even the open data from
prying eyes, they simply charge high prices for the data. This easily prevents
the general public, who would use the data more critically, from actually
using the data.

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morganherlocker
The "why" in the headline strongly hints at some sort of causal relationship,
but the article only goes so far as to point out the obvious correlation. The
"why" is never answered at all.

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jfoutz
I suspect wealthy countries release a much smaller proportion of total data. I
would wager there are exabytes of phone calls and satellite imagery, heck, raw
census data is probably pretty elaborate (though not on the same scale). what
fraction of that data do we actually have access to? i'd guess it's a pretty
small number.

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pasbesoin
I should read the OP, for as a quick comment, for me it comes down to
cooperation versus competition. And for cooperation to succeed, there needs to
be effective communication and a shared understanding (albeit not necessarily
or even desirably "perfect" and without diverging opinions).

P.S. I was interrupted by a phone call. The other point I wanted to make,
building off of the above, is that humans have created more and more complex
results through cooperation than competition alone. I view cooperation as an
essential part of modern society and progress.

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lvs
Postcodes? Transport timetables? Maps?

This is an open data metric conceived by the creators of Sim City. What's
important is what data they have, not what data a primitive city-state might
have. And the resultant list is a complete farce: the UK and US is at the top
next to Denmark. Russia has a score in openness about government spending that
is 7-fold higher than Norway.

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ozborn
Can anybody explain why Moldova is doing so well with this despite being so
poor?

I can see various initiatives they have undertaken that would get them moving
in the right direction such as joining the Open Development Technology
Alliance (ODTA) - but I can't figure out the underlying reasons for success.

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finishingmove
Because they're best at lying? Just an idea.

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finishingmove
Downvoted because?

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seszett
Probably because this was a gratuitous accusation that seems to completely
ignore the contents of the article

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finishingmove
Was it though?

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mason240
Yes.

