Martin Tisne at Omidyar Network: “Yesterday in Brisbane, the G20 threw its weight behind open data by featuring it prominently in the G20 Anti-Corruption working action plan. Specifically, the action plan calls for effort in three related areas:
Open data describes information that is not simply public, but that has been published in a manner that makes it easy to access and easy to compare and connect with other information.
This matters for anti corruption – if you are a journalist or a civil society activist investigating bribery and corruption those connections are everything. They tell you that an anonymous person (e.g. ‘Mr Smith’) who owns an obscure company registered in a tax haven is linked to a another company that has been illegally exporting timber from a neighboring country. That the said Mr. Smith is also the son-in-law of the mining minister of yet another country, who herself has been accused of embezzling mining revenues. As we have written elsewhere on this blog, investigative journalists, prosecution authorities, and civil society groups all need access to this linked data for their work.
The action plan also links open data to the wider G20 agenda, citing its impact on the ability of businesses to make better investment decisions. You can find the full detail here….”