Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created — such that 90 percent of the data in the world today have been created in the last two years. The push for greater transparency of government data is increasing, with the United States now requiring executive agencies to make open and machine-readable data the default, to promote agency efficiency and accountability, improve service delivery, and increase public trust.
Examples abound of U.S. government initiatives exhibiting the open data policy in specific sectors: Medicare publishes data on what hospitals charge for common inpatient procedures, and the Department of Education’s College Scorecard uses data on cost, graduation rate, loan default rate, and average amount borrowed to help students choose colleges.
As international development practitioners, we support interventions to strengthen the effectiveness, transparency, service delivery, and accountability of host-country governments, as well as promote conditions that increase public trust in government.