Page 40 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

2017 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference

In the Sub-Sahara Africa region, Kenya (35) ranked better
than the upper-middle income countries. Burkina Faso also
did better than the mean of the upper-middle income
countries.

Fig. 4. Relationship between scaled implementation and
readiness scores with measures of impact scaled 1 to 100
(best). Countries grouped by level of GNI.

Fig. 2. Heat map ODB 4th ed. rank (2016) from 1 (best) to 115
(worse).

Fig. 5. Relationship between scaled implementation and
readiness scores with measures of new business density score 1
to 100 (best). Countries grouped by level of GNI.

One of the weaknesses of the ODB in assessing impact and
innovation of open data is that it relies on expert survey
results only. Independent measures of innovation are given
for instance in the GII [26]. While there is not one canonical
measure of innovation, for the purpose of this paper ‘New
business density’ per country of the GII, which refers to new
registrations per thousand population 15–64 years old in
2014 is found to be more appropriate for the case of open
data as other measures such as patents.
Figure 5 shows the relation between the implementation and
readiness scores. It reveals a more complex relationship than
the one shown by the ODB impact in Figure 4.
Figure 3 ODB rank 4th_ed analysis of countries grouped by
geographical regions.
3.1.3. ODB rank and countries’ level of freedom,
transparency and ICT development
3.1.2. Open data readiness, implementation and measures of
impact For this first part of the analysis, the influence of the level of
ICT development, public sector transparency, and the level
Figure 4 shows that there is, in general, a higher level of of political rights and liberties of each country on the rank of
readiness than implementation by the countries, while there countries on the development of open data, are considered.
is a clear correlation between readiness, implementation and In the group of high-income countries, it is possible to see
the measures of impact. Further, low-income countries do how the level of freedom is more related to the ODB rank
not show any impact regardless the level of readiness and than the levels of ICT development and transparency (Figure
implementation. 6). For instance, Qatar, South Arabia, United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain rank high in the IDI index and transparency, but
have a low level of freedom and a low ODB rank.
The countries in the upper-middle income group are scoring
badly in transparency (between 20-60), and together with the
level of ICT development, it seems not having any
relationship with the ODB rank. Regarding the level of

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