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Public Procurement Data in the Philippines and Where to Find It

Meg Foulkes - March 6, 2019 in Fellowship, Reflections From The Field, Uncategorized

Ben Hur Pintor, our fellow from the class of 2018, here shares his thoughts and research on public procurement data in the Philippines.

During the selection process for the 2018 School of Data Fellowship here in the Philippines, I was informed that the selected Fellow will be working with data related to public procurement. As I wasn’t a public procurement expert, I did a little research on the topic. Here, I’d like to share some of the interesting observations that I noticed:

Public Procurement Data in the Philippines

In theory, we expect public procurement in the Philippines to produce a lot of data considering how the process is defined by RA 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act.

Under the law, public procurement includes all “acquisition of Goods, Consulting Services, and the contracting for Infrastructure Projects by any branch, department, office, agency, or instrumentality of the government” including procurement for projects that are wholly or partly funded by Foreign Loans or Grants pursuant to a Treaty or International or Executive Agreement unless different procurement procedures and guidelines are expressly stated or if the foreign loan and grant is classified as Official Development Assistance (ODA) under RA 8182 or the Official Development Assistance Act.

From this definition alone, we can see that almost all government spending falls under public procurement and, thus, it is logical to assume that whenever the government spends, public procurement data should be produced.

Aside from the definition of public procurement, the law also provides, as a general rule, that all procurement shall undergo Competitive Bidding except for specific cases when Alternative Methods of Procurement such as Limited Source Bidding, Direct Contracting, Repeat Order, Shopping, and Negotiated Procurement are allowed. These specific cases are subject to the prior approval of the Head of the Procuring Entity (HOPE) and should be justified by the conditions provided by the Act.

Most of the time, Competitive Bidding which has the following steps — advertisement, pre-bid conference, eligibility screening of prospective bidders, receipt and opening of bids, evaluation of bids, post-qualification, and award of contract — is followed.

Steps in Public Procurement by Competitive Bidding

Each step in the public procurement process produces its own data — bid posts, pre-procurement and pre-bid conference proceedings, submitted bids, winning bids, information on the bidders, and the awarded contracts to name a few. There are also monitoring and evaluation documents and reports that are regularly created during the implementation of a government project and even after its completion.

So with all this public procurement data supposedly being produced, where can it be found?

Where to Find It

The Government Procurement Reform Act or RA 9184 enacted in 2003 is the comprehensive law governing public procurement in the Philippines that put together all procurement rules and procedures covering all forms of government purchases from goods, to consulting, to infrastructure services. It sought to address the complexity and vagueness of public procurement and its susceptibility to abuse and corruption due to multiple procurement laws by simplifying and standardizing the procedures with a focus on transparency and accountability.

The law added two interesting features to ensure transparency and accountability:

the creation of an electronic portal which shall serve as the primary and definitive source of information on government procurement (PhilGEPS); and
the establishment of the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB).

The PhilGEPS (Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System) is the country’s single, centralized electronic portal that serves as the primary and definitive source of information on government procurement. Government agencies, as well as suppliers, contractors, manufacturers, distributors and consultants, are mandated to register and use the system in the conduct of procurement of goods, civil works, and consulting services.

On the website, the government can publish what goods, consulting services, and civil works projects it needs while suppliers, private contractors, and companies can search and view these procurement opportunities. It features an Electronic Bulletin Board where all procurement opportunities, results of bidding, and related information are posted; a Registry of Manufacturers, Suppliers, Distributors, Contractors and Consultants; and an Electronic Catalogue of common and non-common use goods, supplies, materials and equipment. When fully implemented, the system is also intended have a Virtual Store, Electronic Payment System, and Electronic Bid Submission. The system is managed by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management.

The PhilGEPS website (version 1.5)

PhilGEPS also releases public procurement data published by different government agencies as mandated by the Government Procurement Reform Act together with other infographics and reports.

Some datasets available in PhilGEPS

Standard Reports and Datasets

Sample data (Number of Registered Organizations per Year)

Reports, Notices, and Infographics

The GPPB, as established by the Government Procurement Reform Act, is an independent inter-agency body with private sector representation envisioned as the policy making entity and the governing body overseeing the implementation of procurement reform in the country. Its objectives include the preparation of a generic procurement manual and standard bidding forms for procurement; establishing a sustainable training program to develop the capacity of Government procurement officers and employees; and ensuring the conduct of regular procurement training programs by the procuring entities.

It also stores and displays public procurement data submitted to it by procuring entities and regulatory bodies. These include information on Annual Procurement Plans, Procurement Monitoring Reports, List of Blacklisted Suppliers and Constructors, Constructors Performance Evaluation Summaries, Pre-Selected Suppliers and Consultants, List of Observers, and Status of Protests.

GPPB Website and Monitoring Data

Sample data (PDF format)

Aside from the PhilGEPS and GPPB, the different government agencies also publish procurement records on their respective websites in compliance with National Budget Circular No. 542. This Circular is more commonly known in the Philippines as the Transparency Seal Circular because it directs government agencies to have a Transparency Seal visible on their websites where the public can access information related to their agency.

Some of the data that the circular requires to be released are: annual reports, approved budget and corresponding targets, major programs and projects, program and project beneficiaries, status of implementation and program/project evaluation and/or assessment reports, annual procurement plans, contracts awarded, and the name of contractors/suppliers/consultants.

For example, the Department of Public Works and Highways has a Civil Works page on their website that shows key documents related to the public procurement of civil works projects.

DPWH Civil Works page

Is it Enough?

As highlighted by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) on their report “Public Contracting in the Philippines: Breakthroughs and Barriers” about the infrastructure projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), there are challenges in terms of the completeness and accessibility of public procurement data in the country. Tracking the process from planning to implementation is difficult because not all the documents related to the procurement of infrastructure projects are published. This is compounded by the weak organization of files in agency websites which can confuse those unfamiliar with the procurement process. For example, even though the different documents related to one infrastructure project are available in the DPWH site, they are located on different web pages and are not linked to one another thus preventing users from easily understanding how documents might connect to each other. Aside from this, even though PhilGEPS and the GPPB are good sources of public procurement data, they are only repositories and are dependent on the data submitted to them by procuring entities. This becomes problematic when the procuring entities themselves fail or even refuse to submit their data.

Another important thing I noticed about public procurement data in the Philippines is this: Publishing public procurement data in machine-readable formats is not (yet) the norm in the Philippines. If you look at the Government Procurement Reform Act, there is no mention about releasing or publishing procurement data and documents in machine-readable formats. The training programs by the GPPB designed to develop the capacity of procurement officers and employees for both the private sector and the national government agencies, government-owned and controlled corporations, etc do not include parts on working with or publishing machine-readable data. As a result, procuring entities and agencies release data without considering the implications of the format they are releasing it in.

In fact, aside from those found in PhilGEPS, most of the public procurement data in the country are in non-machine-readable formats — as PDFs, documents, or even scanned images. Now, the procuring entities releasing the data might not consider this as a problem since compliance with the law only requires them to release the data but from the point of view of a data practitioner analysing public procurement data, a civil society organization creating visualizations in support of its advocacy, a journalist investigating government infrastructure projects, or even just a citizen trying to look for possible evidence of corruption in the procurement process, this adds a lot of extra steps to convert and standardize the data before any meaningful work can be done on it. Steps that could have been skipped had the data been released in a machine-readable format such as a spreadsheet, a comma-separated value (CSV) file, or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file.

One of the positive things pointed out by the PCIJ report was the opportunity to standardize, link, and publish more contracting data given by the current trend of government agencies creating or upgrading their information-management systems. This should be supported by efforts to raise awareness and convince the procuring entities, journalists, CSOs, and citizens of the benefits of releasing machine-readable data.

Public procurement data should not be released just for the sake of releasing it. It should be released for the purpose of ensuring transparency, accountability, and equitability in the procurement process. To do this, it is imperative that the documents and information for each step in the procurement process, from planning to implementation, should be released in an open, transparent, and timely manner. Public procurement data should also serve the purpose of encouraging citizens, individuals, and organizations to keep themselves informed and engaged in how public money is spent. Towards this end, it is important to release data in formats such as spreadsheets, CSV, or JSON that make it easier for stakeholders to analyse, share, and re-use the data. One of the ways to ensure that data is easily shareable, analysable, and reusable is by following a standard like the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). Of course, simply following a standard is not enough and could even be counterproductive when done without the right preparation. It is equally important to study how a standard complements the process and how it can be integrated with the current system.

Sources

Civil Works – Department of Public Works and Highways. http://www.dpwh.gov.ph/dpwh/business/procurement/civil_works/awarded_contracts

Open Contracting Data Standard. Open Contracting Partnership. http://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/

Philippine Transparency Seal – Department of Budget and Management. https://www.dbm.gov.ph/index.php/about-us/philippine-transparency-seal

Public Contracting in the Philippines: Breakthroughs and Barriers. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) with support from Hivos and Article 19. http://pcij.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PCIJ.-Open-Contracting-in-Philippines-Report_01102018_b.pdf

RA 9184 (Government Procurement Reform Act). https://www.gppb.gov.ph/laws/laws/RA_9184.pdf

The 2016 Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 9184. https://www.gppb.gov.ph/laws/laws/RevisedIRR.RA9184.pdf

The Government Procurement Policy Board. https://www.gppb.gov.ph/

The Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System. https://www.philgeps.gov.ph/

The Procurement Service. http://main.ps-philgeps.gov.ph/

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Using the procurement process as a lens for assessing audit reports: what to watch out for

Meg Foulkes - March 4, 2019 in Fellowship, Reflections From The Field

Odanga Madung, our 2018 Fellow, was fortunate to collaborate with the Institute of Economic Affairs in Kenya on their recent study into public procurement. In this article, Odanga reflects on his experiences and offers some tips for those tackling similar work.

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in Kenya recently carried out a study entitled ‘Public Procurement in Kenya: An Analysis of the Auditor General’s Reports’. I was fortunate enough to contribute as part of my fellowship with the School of Data.

The Auditor General’s Office (OAG) was established in Kenya in 2004 under an Act of Parliament. Its aim is to provide independent oversight over how the Kenyan Government and its agencies spend taxpayers’ money. The audit process involves obtaining the accounts of a government entity, scrutinising them against proposed budget plans and contractual obligations, then providing a professional opinion on the state of the accounts. The OAG opinions consist of three types:

Unqualified: represents a clean bill of health. This means that the Auditor did not find any problem with the documentation and the entity has managed its funds properly.
Qualified: occurs when the Auditor General has found some problems but they are not pervasive. The auditor received all the information required for audit, but it revealed gaps in adherence to procedures and budgets.
Adverse: occurs when the auditor general is able to review the ministry’s documentation, but found pervasive problems and considerable changes will be necessary in order to rectify. This kind of finding should be of concern to oversight bodies.
Disclaimer: when the auditor is unable to review fully the ministry’s documentation because there is a substantial amount of information that the ministry has not made available. The record keeping is so bad that the auditor cannot give an opinion.

The IEA’s study looked at the Auditor General’s report through the lens of public procurement. They analysed the OAG’s reports by using the OC framework of the tender process, i.e. placing each violation in either the Pre Tender, Tender or Post Award stages. As a result, it highlighted what steps are often breached when the OAG does not give an unqualified opinion to a state entity’s accounts.

This was a much needed breath of fresh air in the corruption conversation that Kenyans are currently having. Mainly because it focussed on the how (the methods) rather than the what (numbers, figures and personalities) of corruption. I say this as corruption is not something that just happens, it is engineered.

The main finding of the study was that majority of procurement breaches tend to happen in the post award stage. A process that the IEA states often lends itself to the least public scrutiny and transparency in comparison to the other parts of the tender process in Kenya. This is very important in the Kenyan context because at the heart of the corruption problem in Kenya is the Tender process. However, very few Kenyans understand what it looks like. Few Kenyans also understand how the Tender process is used in the plunder of public funds.

The reason the problems in the above paragraph exist are twofold:

Firstly, how the Kenyan media covers stories about corruption. They tend to focus on the figures lost and the personalities involved rather than how the money was stolen. This may be because media practitioners feel that is what will sell newspapers as opposed to producing reporting that may drive significant action both publicly and legislatively. It’s no surprise then that Kenya’s corruption coverage ends up echoing tabloid reporting. The fundamentals in understanding how corruption happens are missing at large.

Secondly, lack of public awareness on the intricacies of the tender process leads to lack of accountability demands from them. This is in part due to lack of government outreach and the current coverage afforded by the media.

IEA’s report sought to address the problems above. The points below are some key lessons learned from my collaboration:

It is important to define the professional opinions the Auditor gives and provide examples of what may lead to specific outcomes.

The Auditor General’s report is a very technical document. The majority of ordinary citizens either tend to misunderstand or have no knowledge about the content at all. Given that they are a target audience for these reports, a key task when doing the research was to define the opinions that the auditor gives in a simple manner. Providing examples as to what each opinion meant was also important. Lack of a clear definition also lends itself to misinterpretation from the press, something that may lead to unintended consequences down the line.

Descriptions provided in the IEA report of the auditor opinions.

For relatability, try to show how much expenditure each Opinion represents.

This gives a clearer picture to audiences about how much of public spending comes under threat due to procurement violation in specific cases.

Multiple levels of procurement breaches may occur and it may be worthwhile to highlight serial offenders.

Corruption is something that is engineered to escape the prevailing systems of accountability in a country. IEA found that many procurement violations occurred at multiple stages of the tender process. In some cases they found unsupported expenditure leading to exaggerated prices for products, or single sourcing leading to incomplete projects that have been fully paid for. It is therefore important to highlight how many violations occur at multiple levels when carrying out such a study.

Try your best to advocate for machine readability of report releases in machine readable formats to reduce errors that could be caused in transcribing.

One of the biggest hurdles experienced in working with government reports currently in Kenya (and this would probably be the case in a lot of other African countries) is that the reports are produced in the form of scanned PDFs. It makes the process time consuming and error ridden due to transcription of the documents. This problem is something that we see being widespread across government institutions. As we press for better systems of accountability, making sure that accessibility of information is easier should be part of it.

If you encounter such a problem, I would recommend using sandwich pdf (https://www.sandwichpdf.com/) to try to make majority of the text recognizable.

An example of one of the outputs from the Auditor General’s Office.

Media houses have a habit of misinterpreting or exaggerating the findings found in such reports. Training them and holding them accountable for their reporting is important.

Journalists and CSOs are a key conduit of this kind of information to the public. However, we have found cases where a lot of them do not understand the terminologies and reasoning contained in Audit reports. What this means is in an attempt to simplify the information for the public, a lot of it gets lost in translation. The IEA had an open forum with journalists explaining how to go about reading the report they wrote and the Auditor General’s as well.

To conclude, the IEA did an amazing study that used the Open Contracting framework on the tender process to analyze the auditor general’s report. Corruption is a problem plaguing the developing world. However, audit and oversight organisations are gaining more powers and prominence in these countries. Looking at the information provided by them could reveal a lot about how corruption happens around the world. If you do decide to undertake a study like the one IEA did, the above points I mentioned should help you come up with a study that becomes an effective advocacy tool against corruption.

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“Not a scary concept”: Reflections from the Standard Group Data Conference

Meg Foulkes - October 10, 2018 in Event report, Fellowship

In his first piece for the School of Data blog, our 2018 Fellow, Kelvin Wellington, reflects on his experiences at the Standard Group Conference in Accra in July 2018.

To date, the conversation around open data has been firmly centred in its importance and the implications of championing the cause. Is it a cause worth fighting for, and are policymakers doing the right thing by opening up data to the public eye? As citizens, is it important to know the finer details of how our country is run? These are questions that were lingering in my mind during an open data presentation that was part of a data conference held by the Standard Group in Accra, Ghana a few days ago. I will attempt to dissect some findings from this session.

What can open data do?

Open data should not be a scary concept, and should be embraced. It should not be seen as a means of taking off ‘protective shields’ on data. When we talk about open data, we should be looking at the following:

Empowerment: open data can give citizens of a country a stronger voice on public services they use and create a channel of dialogue between the citizen and local authorities or government.
Transparency: open data should be the next frontier in citizens’ quest for transparency. Freedom of information enables citizens to make informed decisions regarding their government, and allows us to better understand our world.
Participation: open data should bring about inclusiveness; from data providers to users. Everyone has a part to play in innovating with data and making a difference through building data-driven solutions.

Who should be driving open data?

Ideally, policy makers should be the driving force for open data in any setting. Policy makers in Ghana are, however, driving at a turtle’s pace. The public should be weighing in on the conversation as well, but at the moment thoughts are too scattered to produce a collective force. The private sector should also be heavily involved in the Open Data push since they have access to huge amounts of data.

In addition, the policies and procedures should be open as well, not just data. Ultimately, it is up to governments, public bodies, community groups, citizens and businesses to facilitate the growth of open data, propagate its benefits and see that it achieves its full potential.

The Open Data Initiative in Ghana has stalled with the online platform lacking in up-to-date data, and data unavailable for a good number of industries. Financial constraints have been pointed out as a major issue, and as citizens, we owe it to our country to challenge authorities to resolve this.

Why is it important?

We spend our time talking about making decisions without focusing on making data-driven decisions. If data is not being processed into knowledge and that knowledge does not become wisdom, then the purpose of data in itself is dead. Opening data gives us all a chance to contribute to creating more knowledge and making wiser decisions. Data has become a gold standard, and keeping an ‘open culture’ makes for a healthier ecosystem for policymakers and citizens alike.

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Reflections from the Field #2: Cultural Heritage Conservation as a Data Problem

Meg Foulkes - October 8, 2018 in Fellowship, Reflections From The Field

For the second in our series of blog posts – ‘Reflections From The Field’ – our 2018 School of Data Fellow, Ben Hur Pintor, is inspired to ask questions about cultural heritage data.

“Can this be considered a data problem?” asked Tatine, one of the participants of the Data Pipeline training conducted by Hani and I, referring to her work on the conservation of the Mangyan script and language of the Mangyan indigenous people in Mindoro, Philippines.

The question piqued my interest because, as mentioned by Tatine, indigenous communities rarely have physical records of the information related to their culture and language. Most of the time, this information is passed from generation to generation as a form of oral tradition or oral history. So how do we take something intangible and make data work for it?

Fieldworks

One of the most common ways of working with language and other cultural heritage data is through the conduct of fieldworks. Terry Crowley’s Field Linguistics: A Beginner’s Guide highlights this process, discussing ethical issues such as informed consent and voluntary participation, the importance of selecting language helpers — people who speak the language you are studying but also share a common language with you, and how to keep track and archive the data using daily records, filing systems, and computer storage.

Linked Open Cultural Heritage Data

Linked open data is open data available on the world wide web in a standard markup format. It has a lot of potential uses in cultural heritage conservation especially when utilized together with traditional cultural heritage institutions such as libraries, archives, and museums. With linked open data, users can create and share their own cultural heritage experiences using different media, applications, maps, etc.

“We believe linked open data has the potential not just to preserve cultural heritage for users, but to offer users new opportunities to understand, manipulate, and recreate cultural heritage experiences.” (Linked Open Data for Cultural Heritage, J. Marden, 2013)

The combination of data, technology, and cultural heritage is an interesting one and it will be fascinating to see how these three fields interact, grow, and collaborate with each other in the future.

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Introducing the 2018 Class of School of Data Fellows!

Meg Foulkes - June 22, 2018 in Announcement, Fellowship

School of Data is delighted to announce its sixth class of fellows. From June until January 2019, the programme will allow fellows to deepen their data literacy skills and work alongside local partner organisations to enhance the data literacy network local to them. We were really pleased to receive a large number of applications and would like to both congratulate and wish all our new fellows the very best for their fellowship!

Pamela Gonzales is passionate about data visualization and bridging the digital divide for women. She is the co-founder of Bolivia Tech Hub, a collaborative space for tech projects to contribute to the prosperity of an innovative ecosystem in Bolivia. Pamela is also the Regional Ambassador for Technovation, a San Francisco based program that equips girls with the skills needed to solve real-world problems through technology. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Universidad Mayor de San Andres.

Odanga Madung is the co-founder and Data Science Lead at Odipo Dev, a data science and analytics firm operating out of Nairobi Kenya that delivers services to various bluechip companies and NGOs across the country. Odanga’s deepest interest is at the intersection between data and culture and it is through this that Odipo Dev has been able to carry out data analysis and visualisation on various activities for a wide range of clients and occurrences in Kenya and the world.Some of his work has been featured in publications such as Adweek, Yahoo, BBC, CNBC, Quartz, and Daily Nation, just to mention a few. He will be working on Open Contracting in Kenya during the period of his fellowship. You can follow him on Twitter @Odangaring and Odipo Dev @OdipoDev for more information.

Nzumi Malendeja is a Research Associate at an Independent Evaluation and Research Cell of BRAC International in Tanzania, where he leads larger-scale research projects in education, agriculture, and health. Here, he has developed mobile-based data collection platforms (ODK Collect and SurveyCTO), which replaced the traditional paper-based methods. Before this, Mr. Nzumi worked as a Field Monitor and Research Assistant at SoChaGlobal and Maarifa ni Ufunguo respectively, both in education and construction sector transparency projects. Mr. Nzumi has attended a 4 week Summer School Training on Research Methods and Teaching Skills, hosted by Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, funded by the Germany Academic Exchange Services (DAAD). Presently, Mr. Nzumi is working on his thesis towards the fulfillment of the Master of Research and Public Policy at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Sofia Montenegro A fan of nature and the teachings it hides, Sofia has dedicated herself to research in the social sciences. She studied Political Science at the Universidad Francisco Marroquin and Public Opinion and Political Behavior through a Masters degree at the University of Essex, where she deepened her interest in data methodologies in social research. Sofia is interested in academia only as long as it drives political action. She looks to help other women to be involved freely in data practice and political spaces. Sofia is also interested in network analysis, studying corruption as a social phenomenon, following electoral processes and learning research methods.

Elias Mwakilama is a lecturer at University of Malawi-Chancellor College and Coordinator of Research, Seminar and Consultancies, and Diploma in Statistics programme in the Mathematical Sciences Department, Elias Mwakilama is a computational and applied mathematician in the field of operations research. He lectures and supervises undergraduate students in Mathematics & Statistics fields. His research interests are in working with optimisation models using mathematical statistics techniques integrated with computing skills to offer solutions of industrial related problems in theoretical and practical arena. Elias holds a first upper class MSc degree in Mathematical Sciences from University of Malawi. His website is here. During his fellowship, he hopes to support the “public procurement open contract platform” for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Malawi with Hivos.

Ben Hur Pintor is an open-source and open-data advocate from the Philippines who believes in democratising not only data, but also the means of utilising and analysing data. He’s a geospatial generalist and software developer who’s worked on projects related to renewable energy, blue carbon ecosystems, and participatory disaster risk mapping and assessment. Ben is currently pursuing an MS Geomatics Engineering degree at the University of the Philippines. As part of his advocacy for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), he’s a co-organiser and active participant of FOSS4G Philippines and MaptimeDiliman — avenues for sharing open source mapping technologies with the community.

Hani Rosidaini is passionate about how technology can be adopted and applied for people’s needs. She combines her technical skills, especially in information systems and data science, with social and business knowledge, to help companies and organisations in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan. This includes her own ventures. Highly relevant to this year fellowship’s focus of data procurement, Hani has experience as a data specialist for public policy in the Indonesia Presidential Office, where she has analysed the national integrated data platform, data.go.id, contributed to data-driven policy making, advocated ministries and agencies, as well as engaged with civic and local communities.

Kelvin Wellington is a Data Scientist from Accra, Ghana. He holds a Masters degree in Data Science from the University of Southampton as well as a first degree in Computer Science from Ashesi University, Ghana. He has had the opportunity to work in various roles that involve the application of data-driven solutions. He is passionate about using data for social good and has been involved in various volunteering projects to that effect..
Kelvin is also an active member of the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa(MIIA) and a facilitator for Data Science meetups organised by Developers in Vogue, a tech community based in Ghana. He will be joining the 2018 fellowship class to work with the Natural Resource Governance Institute on data literacy in the extractives sector.”

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Announcing our new member: ‘Caribbean School of Data’

Meg Foulkes - June 21, 2017 in Announcement, Community

Today we’re delighted to welcome a new organisational member to our network: the Caribbean Open Institute! They will carry the Caribbean School of Data Initiative.

The new Caribbean initiative is led by Maurice McNaughton who coordinates the Caribbean Open Institute, as the regional node for the Open Data for Development network activities in the Caribbean. The COI coalition of partner organisations and individuals conduct regional open data research, advocacy, and capacity-building activities such as the Global Open Data Index and the Open Data Barometer. The new “Caribbean School of Data” will be hosted at the Mona School of Business & Management, UWI and affiliate institutions are planned for other countries across the Caribbean (including Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti, Cuba and Guyana).

Already in the group’s pipeline is a virtual incubation model to encourage and facilitate data-driven entrepreneurial startups as well as a project to build a Caribbean data competency map, to identify and make searchable and accessible, individual and institutional clusters of data skills, knowledge and capabilities in the region.

School of Data is already working with the Caribbean Open Institute on a Data literacy project in Haïti called “Going Global: Digital Jobs and Gender” for which we have recently recruited two Fellows.

Welcome, Caribbean School of Data!

About School of Data members

School of Data’s organisational members are legally independent groups, affiliated formally through a memorandum of understanding. Our members are groups whose mission and activities are aligned with ours and with whom we plan to collaborate in this data literacy work. Caribbean School of Data is our fourteenth member!

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Welcoming our 2017 Fellows and Data Experts!

Meg Foulkes - June 21, 2017 in Announcement, Fellowship

We’re delighted to welcome our new Fellows and Data Experts to School of Data! We wish them all every success for the year ahead.

Fellows

Idriss Kone, Cote D’Ivoire

Idriss is a statistician and economist at the Ministry of Budget in Cote d’Ivoire where he is responsible for monitoring and evaluating customs activities including the analysis of foreign trade statistics and measuring the impact of tariff reforms and trade agreements. Furthermore, Idriss has experience in Education and Financial Inclusion having worked as the MTEF(Medium Term Expenditure Framework) specialist at Ministry of Education and served as a principal investigator for “Women, Monetary Practices and Technological Innovation” project in Côte d’Ivoire. He holds an engineering diploma in statistics and econometrics from the National Advanced School of Statistics and Applied Economics of Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire). He will be joining the 2017 Fellowship class to work with the Publish What You Pay coalition in Cote d’Ivoire on extractives data.

Pascal Elie, Haiti

Pascale Elie holds a BA in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Montreal and specializes in statistical and actuarial analysis. She worked as a statistician and actuarial adviser for various Canadian and Haitian companies, particularly for the Auto Insurance Fund for the State Employees in Haiti. She also participated in launching a start-up insurance company in Haiti, UniAssurance S.A. Currently, she is a consultant for HaitiPay S.A., where she leads the company by proposing and implementing financial product using strategic mobile payment solutions. With HaitiPay, she is also responsible for marketing a mobile wallet service operated by the National Bank of Credit, by developing and implementing distribution strategies and leading elaboration of new products and services related to mobile banking. She will be working to develop the data literacy community in Haiti as part of the Going Global: Digital Jobs and Gender programme.

Lyse Marie-Carlie Ladouceur, Haiti

Lyse is an engineering student at the Ecole Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince). She served as a GIS and Data Entry Intern for UNOPS where she used data to created maps that detailed the road conditions in the south of Haiti following Hurricane Matthew. She will be working to develop the data literacy community in Haiti as part of the Going Global: Digital Jobs and Gender programme.

Yan Naung Oak, Myanmar

Yan is passionate about civic tech, open data, and the power of new technologies to empower communities and civil society. He is currently work at Phandeeyar, an ICT Innovation Hub in Yangon, Myanmar, which is spearheading the use of technology to accelerate change and development in Myanmar. He is a native of Myanmar but studied and worked in Singapore and the United States, before coming back to Yangon in 2014. He will be joining the 2017 fellowship class to work with the Natural Resource Governance Institute on data literacy and data availability in the jade mining sector.

Sebastián Oliva, Guatemala

Sebastián Oliva was born in Guatemala and got into computers since his early childhood. Although he majored in engineering and physics, he kept an interest in social science as well as for the multidisciplinary realm of exact science.

Sebastián has worked both for tech companies and for social tech projects. He also develops free software and hardware. He was a in intern for Google, in the “cloud” division, where he gathered knowledge of programming language Python.

Sebastián was member of the winner teams in the Latin American development challenge Desarollando Latinoamérica 2014 and was a finalist in the Space Apps Challenge 2014. His interest in School of Data comes naturally when you align his social impact interests with his technical skills in data extraction, processing and presentation. Amongst his other interests you can count documentary photography and, why not, role and strategy games. You can send him a tweet at @tian2992

Data Experts

Nuru Magwaza, Tanzania

Nuru is a data trainer and researcher from Dar es Salaam Tanzania. After graduating with a Bachelors degree in Computer and Information management, she has worked as a research assistant and data consultant in Tanzania including with the Open Data Institute. As a data enthusiast, she is now working as a data fellow in the Data Zetu project under Code for Tanzania which helps citizens in addressing their problems by using data.

She will be joining the 2017 data expert programme working with the Tanzania Media Foundation and NRGI to clean extractive sector data from TEITI, develop an extractive data journalism fellowship curriculum and run in-house data training for TMF staff.

Ketty Adoch, Uganda

Ketty is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist based in Kampala, Uganda. In 2013, inspired by a Twitter post about an upcoming online data expedition (School of Data MOOC) on global carbon emissions, Ketty joined Open Knowledge and signed up for the course. Passionate about the environment and feeling the need to expand her skill set, she found the data expedition methodology very useful and has used it in her training in Uganda. She will be joining the 2017 data expert programme to work with the African Centre for Media Excellence in developing GIS skills and tools for journalists and media organisations focusing on the extractive sector.

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How do you become data literate? Part 3

Meg Foulkes - May 31, 2017 in Community

What does it mean to become ‘data literate’? Where do you start and how can you use data within your work and projects? To explore these questions, we would like to introduce some of our community members and data activists from around the world, who ended up working with data at some point in their lives. We were curious about how they actually got started and – looking back now – what they would recommend to data newbies.

Each month we will publish a new interview, this is no. #3. Got feedback? Have questions? Feel free to get in touch: [email protected]

Vadym Hudyma

Social change activist, data trainer at School of Data, from Kiev, Ukraine

Topics: responsible data, data security

Tweets: @VadymGud

Introduce yourself.

My name is Vadym from Kiev, Ukraine. I’m a School of Data fellow working on responsible data and privacy. I worked with different Ukraine-based NGOs and helped them to design their data pipeline and their data projects in a more secure and responsible way. I’d like to give them an understanding that data sometimes can not only be liberating, but also harmful. I’m trying to persuade NGOs to consider this issue in their internal processes. Also I’m doing independent research on how our government is using personal data, how it is being stored and reused. I’m also following data discussions on the current Ukrainian situation, because we have a very huge and vibrant open data community.

When was the first time you came across data and when did you start to use data in your work?

I started interacting with data as a website editor. I worked on a very interesting project on monitoring MP’s activities and at some point our partners, who supposed to be doing analysis, failed miserably doing their job. We had two weeks left to finish the project before the launch. I have looked through the results gathered so far with my journalism background and I sensed that something terribly wrong could be published. So I gather some data-savvy friends, who could quickly gather the data needed and analyze what was really going on. We managed to finish our project in time. So this was the first stress test on data analysis and data cleaning. After this I started working with government data and slowly discovered other datasets for me.

In Ukraine, between 2012 and 2013, NGOs were under much pressure by the government. Many have been investigated, we were monitored all the time. It’s still the case now, but much less dangerous than it used to be. Within the NGO I worked with, I took care of digital security. I was trying to secure our communication and tried to implement basic understanding of digital security within the organisation.

Basically, it was when I begin to understand both the importance of data usage for putting pressure on the government and why it’s important to protect your digital infrastructure.

What topics and projects are you currently working on?

There is one very progressive governmental agency working in education. They recently published datasets on educational data, but it wasn’t properly anonymised. There are some possibilities to de-anonymise thousands of people and their educational records, which is a very sensitive information on different levels. So I was working on an article about this issue and I’m in contact with the agency to solve the issue on the public personal data. There needs to be a better understand of how data can be used and published securely. Having data available opens up many possibilities, but we should be aware of the risks as well.

How would you explain data literacy, what does it mean to you?

We live in a society that hugely depends on data, whether we understand it or not. In the last years we were dealing mostly with data held by governments. But now we have much more access to data and the whole process was further democratized in a way. This availability brings possibilities as well as risks. For me, data literacy is the ability of people to think about data not as a neutral tool, but as something that could shape society in a way, that we initially may not even expect. We should really be careful and thoughtful, when designing data project, doing research and investigations. We need to think not just about our audience, who reads our data stories or uses our data sets, but also about the people behind those data sets. So data literacy for me is understanding that there is not just numbers or data points, but also real people behind those.

What would you recommend to someone interested in data, but does not know where to start?

Probably I would recommend defining your goals. It helps to know, what you want to achieve and then look around for information and data sets available online.

Links:

Blog posts by Vadym on School of Data

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Ask Your Questions to Former School of Data Fellows

Meg Foulkes - March 23, 2017 in Announcement, Events, Fellowship

Do you have questions about what it’s like to be a School of Data Fellow? What will I learn? How can I fit Fellowship work around other commitments like work and family? Will I need to travel a lot?

As part of our call for applications for the 2017 Fellowships and Data Experts, we’re hosting a live, informal Question and Answer session next Monday 27th March at 12.30 UTC with two former fellows :

Julio Lopez, a Fellow from the Class of 2015 from Ecuador
Sheena Carmel Opulencia-Calub, also from our Class of 2015, who’s based in the Philippines.

You can read more about both of their backgrounds and interests here.

The Q&A will be live on School of Data’s Youtube channel: link. Look forward to seeing you there!

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Second #OpenDataParty Comes to Benin City, Nigeria

Meg Foulkes - December 9, 2015 in Announcement, Events, Fellowship

“– bring your laptops, coffee mugs and power extension cords!”

On December 11th, the second #OpenDataParty kicks off at Benson Idahosa University, Benin City. During two action-packed days, #OpenDataParty will welcome open data enthusiasts united by the desire to make, meet and speak everything open data!

This exciting event is the creation of Nkechi Oduwuone, School of Data’s 2015 Fellow in Nigeria, and Oludotun Babayemi, a School of Data alum. Together with support from The Indigo Trust , Heinrich Boll Foundation Nigeria, and the Edo State Open Data Portal, Sabi Hub, Nkechi has come up with a promising agenda including a Data Expedition Class focusing on environmental and health data and a session focusing on a new platform for NGOs, journalists and citizens to use in tracking environmental expenditures.

This promises to be a fantastic event and an opportunity for the Nigerian open data community to gain new skills, make connections and have a lot of fun. We can’t wait to hear all about it!

There’s still time to register for the event at opendataparty.org, which runs from Friday, December 11th to Saturday, December 12th, 2015, 8am to 5pm both days. The full agenda is as follows:

DAY 1 (FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2015) DATA EXPEDITION

9-9.30am – Registration | Introductory/Welcome Remarks

9.30 – 11am – Data Pipelines?

Open Knowledge Foundation School of Data

11 – 11.30am – Coffee Break/Media Briefing

11.30 – 1.30 – Skill Share [Using Mobile Phones to Ground Truth Data | Data Scraping Tools | Data Analysis Tools [Excel, Google spreadsheets]| Digital Security and Privacy

Reboot | eHealth Africa | School of Data | CODE | Heinrich Boell Foundation

1.30 – 2.30pm – Lunch

2.30 – 3.30pm – Telling Stories with Data [Storytelling mechanisms and tools for Journalists | Using Data for Advocacy for NGOs| Using the FOIA]

Radio One | Premium Times | Follow The Money | Right to Know

3.30 – 4.30pm – Skillshare 2 [Tools to Collect and Find Data | Data Scraping Tools | Data Analysis Tools [Excel, Google spreadsheets]| Digital Security and Privacy

Save the Children | Population Council | ONE.ORG

4.30 – 5.00pm – What have you learnt

DAY 2 (SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2015) IDEATION SESSIONS

Through Follow The Money, how can we collaborate to track expenditures on the Great Green Wall in Nigeria Go? Let’s Find Out! How can we develop a tool to reduce waste in Benin City?

9.00 – 9.30am What have we learnt?

9.30 – 9.45am What about Following The Great Green Wall Funds?

9.45 – 10.00am What about the Environment Data Sprint?

10 – 10.30am Tea/Coffee Break

10.30 pm – 1.30pm Mapping | Data Sprint [Laptops + Music + Coffee + Drinks]

1.30 – 2.30pm Lunch

2.30 – 3.30pm Rounding Up + Presentation: Mapping | Data Sprint

3.30 – 4.00pm Networking + Vote of Thanks

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