4-year old Kenya Open Data portal has been viewed over 44 million times since it was launched about 4 years ago, according to Linet Kwamboka , Open Data Project Coordinator.
The announcement is in line with the celebrations marking the platform’s fourth anniversary. There is also the launch of the Open Data version 2.0 website which will make core government developmental, demographic, statistical and expenditure data available in a useful digital format for researchers, policymakers, ICT developers and the general public.
Making government information available in this way promotes the development of useful “apps” based on the data, encourages researchers and watchdog groups to use the data to make suggestions for improving government and life of Kenyans, and makes state agencies more efficient by allowing access to information.
Congratulating the Kenya Open Data team, Victor Kyalo CEO ICT Authority also said,” We got a lot of critics a few years back as many thought that the Open Data was a failed project, but then we were in an incubation period and during the same period we have really grown in provision of data from different Government entities. It is easy to do a lot of things once you get comfortable with data. We plan to launch the Open Data version 2.0 in various phases to different people as we also allow the team to make enhancements where needed.”
