Making Open Data Work for the Poor

Shortly after the recent AidData/CCAPS/WBI event, the World Bank’s Shanta Devarajan reviewed four critiques of the open data movement. His summary is insightful and we commend it to readers. Here we would like to push a few of his ideas a bit further. In particular, his third point — “there is limited evidence that information improves outcomes” — deserves further consideration.

The evidence that open data leads to better outcomes is indeed limited and contradictory. For example, one innovative study found that community-level information dramatically improved health outcomes in Uganda, while a concurrent Indonesian study found that an informed public had little effect on perceived government corruption...