Whythawk and SBC4D have unique experience in developing open data for development ecosystems in low and medium-income countries, and have been involved in open data initiatives in Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. In this project, we teamed up with the University of Dar es Salaam, College of Information and Communication Technologies. The university is a centre for excellence in both ICT and in media development and promises to be the best civil society research and training centre for open data in Tanzania.
Our solution
Whythawk’s objective for the initiative was strengthening the Tanzanian government capacity to:
- Supply open government data in health, education and water – making such data more discoverable, accessible and reusable,
- Increase demand for these data and analysis of the information from within government agencies and across stakeholders such as media, academia, development partners, MPs and citizens, and
- Develop and use sectoral service performance dashboards in health, education and water, powered by open data.
We set up two teams for delivery:
- Technical training and deployment of the CKAN data platform, and handover to the Tanzanian government ICT team.
- Data management and publication training and integration to work with Tanzanian government departments, and with civil society organisations.
We established an onsite team and delivered training and support in Dar es Salaam.
Outcomes
We arrived onsite in the middle of a major political disruption. The government introduced legislation to criminalise the use of government data. The amendments to the Statistics Act prohibited researchers from publicly releasing any data “which is intended to invalidate, distort, or discredit official statistics.”
This created a contradiction in the objectives of the project, and the relationship we had with the Tanzanian government. Further, we were instructed directly by civil society stakeholders that they refused any involvement in the project not only for their own safety, but for lack of meaningful opportunity. We terminated our involvement.
