Following the recent International
Open Government Data Conference, we thought we
would highlight several items of potential
interest to our readers. Chile launched an open government portal, and the
World Bank published
a report on “The
Journey of Open Government and Open Data Moldova.” FrontlineSMS announced
that it would move into the OpenGov Hub
in September, joining founding organizations Development Gateway and Global Integrity.
On the Big-Data-Meets-Global-Philanthropy
front, France Telecom-Orange
and a number of partner organizations, including the World Economic Forum and
UN Global Pulse, have opened the “Data
for Development” challenge. The initiative makes 2.5 billion anonymous
records of mobile phone users across Côte
d'Ivoire available for researchers to mash up with other
datasets and attempt to answer questions about socioeconomic development in the
country. The challenge seems particularly apropos given the report launched by infoDev
and the World Bank this week showing that three-fourths of the world’s
population now has access to a mobile phone, a pace of technological adoption
never before seen in history.
China has pledged
$20 billion in credit for Africa to support infrastructure, agriculture,
and small business development over the next three years. Meanwhile, Hillary
Clinton wrote a piece about the need for the United States to “expand its foreign policy toolbox,” arguing
that being strong is not enough and that “countries such as China, India and
Brazil are gaining influence less because of the size of their armies than
because of the growth of their economies.”
Featured dataset: The AidData
Research Dataset page now includes PLAID 1.9
with Environmental Codes. This dataset has its origins in the Greening
Aid? book publication. For Greening
Aid?, researchers at the College of William and Mary assessed the likely
environmental impact of projects through 1999. In 2009, AidData postdoctoral
fellow Chris
Marcoux led a
team to extend this coding. The environmental impact variable evaluates
the likely environmental impact of a project, as well as the scope of
environmental benefit (if applicable). The release of PLAID 1.9 with
Environmental Codes represents the full assessment of all projects through 2008.
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