Kenya: June 2010

The Kenyan Government has launched an online government data catalogue portal: Open Data.go.ke in beta.

This beta PSI Data Portal is an initiative of the ICT Board, Ministry of Information and Communication, Government of Kenya. The data portal provides online access to government data and documents from the central and local levels as well as parliamentary documents and bills. There is also a government blog in which researchers can upload research papers and comment on government papers. It is possible to search for data and download data directly from the site.

The ‘about’ section of the portal states:

“Open Data.go.ke is leading the way in democratizing public sector data and driving innovation. The data is being surfaced from many locations making the Government data stores available to researchers to perform their own analysis. Developers are finding good uses for the datasets, providing interesting and useful applications that allow for new views and public analysis. This is a work in progress, but this movement is spreading to other countries. After just one year a community is born around open government data.

The site is currently in beta stage, so consider this a preview of what’s to come. Some features are not yet fully developed. There may be some bugs or other issues. If you find any, please let us know! We welcome your feedback – both positive and negative – on anything to do with the site.”

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The recently launched Kenya government data portal has been added to the ePSIplatform Public Sector Information (PSI) Data Catalogues web page. It is the first African PSI Data portal to be included reflecting and confirming the growing international developments and interest in opening up government data for re-use.

The comment by Open Data @ CTIC which says, “the discussion is no longer about whether to create a data.gov but rather the question is ‘how to create it’. (Open Data @ CTIC comments (Spanish) comments (English).

This Kenyan government data portal is included in the ePSIplatform “Category 1”, (PSI Data Catalogues by governments with direct access to raw data).

Entries on the ePSIplatform PSI Data catalogues page are categorised according to 3 types of portals in order to understand the key features of catalogues and what makes them successful and to monitor the development of the catalogues as well as to learn more about the ‘how to create it’.

• Category 1: Catalogues by Governments – data.gov style catalogues (with access to raw data)
• Category 2: Catalogues by Governments – Information Portals (no or limited access to raw data)
• Category 3: Catalogues by Civil Society Initiatives

Related ePSIplatform Topic Report

ePSIplatform Topic Report No. 8: PSI Portals: Overview of Progress (Part 1)