[AfrICANN-discuss] African Governments, Internet and Governance

[Nii Narku Quaynor]

On Nov 2, 2012, at 18:35, SM <sm at resistor.net> wrote:

> In some parts of the world governments have been supporting the re-use of public sector information.  This allows people from outside government to make use of the data to create new services and products.  According to the World Bank, for the general public obtaining information from governments in the developing world is usually difficult.  It was also mentioned that the biggest challenge is changing decades old political and bureaucratic cultures of secrecy and unresponsiveness to the general public.
> 
Evidently it's becoming more difficult to have full complement of expertise in house and reaching out makes specialized expertise available. The reuse of the public sector information typically requires a change in mind set since in some cases the information eg printed detailed maps were previously sold. The decades of old style secrecy and fear of giving out information is certainly a barrier. We have to show the policy maker and civil servants some value and I note that good data mining and visualization has impact