Open Data in Trinidad and Tobago

What is open data? Open data is free to use and share and made available in standard formats that facilitate this. The data is available without legal, technological or social restrictions.

Why open data? At a high level we are looking at ease and facilitating data driven decision making and its benefits. We looking at accountability, efficiency and innovation. The open knowledge foundation does a good job of answering this question in their open data handbook under why open data?

As a coder and web developer, I am particularly interested in the apps, visualisations and infographics, among other things, that can be created. At the recently held GDG POS firebase study jam I saw examples of how the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Health covid-19 stats could be nicely graphed and filtered. That data had to be scraped and manually entered instead of being accessible in an open data format.

We are ranked 67th (out of 94) in the 2016 Global Open Data Index with a score of 21%. That is pretty dismal and leaves a lot of room for improvement. From the Open Data Barometer website we see that the data exist and most is available online BUT not in machine readable and useable format. We have data.gov.tt and data.tt with very little to show. Where is CSO in all of this? They have a nice enough website and platform and some useful stats. Can't be too hard to extend this. Every Ministry should be mandated to provide at least 10 open data feeds as part of their website development to get the ball rolling so to speak.

While researching for this blog post I came across this link that says that Trinidad and Tobago has been withdrawn from the Open Government Partnership. It states that, "This decision follows the 2018 resolution of the OGP Steering Committee to designate Trinidad and Tobago as inactive in OGP due to failure to deliver an action plan since 2016." Open data is a big part of open government.

Open data and open government are things that we should be prioritising. The benefits and needs are clear but we seem to be lacking the will power and guidance. I want to see a dedicated Minister of Technology. Someone who appreciates the importance of open data and who could pick up the slack.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where is the end of the internet?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns Sometimes I feel like I have reached the end of the internet. I have seen it all. There is nothing else to see and do. But where is the end of the internet? Is it a magical place like the end of a rainbow? Does the end take us back to the beginning? Maybe the internet is like the universe and it is infinitely big and there is no end? https://hmpg.net/ claims to be the end of the internet. Now that I have reached the end of the internet they suggest reading a book or planting a tree. I came across this article a Verge writer did in 2013 about the year he came off the internet for a year. It was a sort of case study to learn what it would be like to disconnect from the internet for a year and learn what the internet had done to him. From what I gathered he realized it was not the internet's fault. It is just a tool and we have to make the most of it. There are traps in the offline world in the same way we think of trap
Read more

Why does the Earth hum?

Image
This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I found an article but before I started reading I devised my own answer. The answer can be found in us humans. Humans = hum + ans(swer). I will talk about the swer part later on. We humans create the hum of the earth. Do we want the hum of the earth to be one of painful sorrow or one of blissful contentment? We have a responsibility to take care of the Earth. Take care of the environment. Live in harmony with nature. To be mindful housekeepers for future generations. The article explains the hum scientifically and states that the hum of the earth is outside the hearing range of humans. The article explains that the hum is created by the ocean waves with the seafloor and Earth's crust. We may not be able to hear the hum of the Earth literally but we should be able to hear the hum of the Earth figuratively. Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and meditation master, when asked by some of his pupils, "Sir,
Read more

What is an equation for life?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns https://youtu.be/5OzZqJcltpM I was watching this youtube video today called "It's just a coincidence" and I went down a rabbit hole afterwards and made a few notes The Srinivasa Ramanujan magic square was most fascinating. What is special about the number 139? My research led me to this quote "Coincidence Is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous" - Albert Einstein I noticed that the name Einstein has ein twice. I learnt about the Einstein tile (nothing to do with Einstein. Just so happens that ein stein is German for "one stone" or "one shape") So Einstein = one + st + one Which led me to this quote "We still do not know (one) thou(s)and(t)h of (one) percent of what nature has revealed to us" - Albert Einstein st separates thou and h (see later thouGh-ts) I could not find many quotes by Ramanujan but I found this commonly repeated one. "An equation for me has no meaning
Read more

Where does this door lead?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns It is 333pm on a Sunday afternoon. I was just watching a youtube short with Kes and I learnt about his "Man with no door" album. He was inspired literally by a man who he found that lived with no door to his house. In an interview Kes says, "He just lives free" and "I felt like that creatively at the time. I am the man with no door." This is how I want to be when I write my next book called Freedom. Freedom can easily be written as freedoor in the context of the beginning of this chapter. I found a bed and breakfast in Poland called Pokoje FreeDoor. Pokoje means rooms in Polish but no idea what FreeDoor means. I will email them. I once created an art piece where a door was created from the letters of the word love and I captioned it "love opens doors". Through a Google search of "door 333" I found the https://doorsoftallinn.com/ website. A beautiful collection of ornate an
Read more

What book do I write next?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I find myself writing with God on my mind more often. I decided to count how many times I have used the word God in this book so far and counted 42 times. There is that number again. A geeky coincidence for all the fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have never seen that movie except maybe some pieces of it. In May I will be 42+2 years old. I find myself asking God to guide and protect us more and more. I closed my eyes and selected a surah and verse from the Quran. I got surah 93 verse 4 - And surely what comes after is better for you than that which has gone before. I take that as a good sign. Surah Ad Duha (The morning hours) was revealed to prophet Muhammad (pbuh) after not receiving a revelation for 6 months. This caused depression and the surah was welcomed hope for him (pbuh). We too can find similar comfort in these verses. This surah has 40 words. This has me thinking about what is next for me in t
Read more