Open Data for Africa platform

AfDB has implemented the OpenData platform for all countries, regional organizations and Statistical Training Centers in the region through their capacity building initiative. This platform is implemented in the countries in partnership with the National Statistical Offices (NSOs). It provides a unique opportunity for the countries and the regional organizations to disseminate their data through a common suite of tools that offer access, download and visualization in the form of dashboards, reports, charts and queries. This platform also offers capability to access data by the data users in machine readable SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange) standard. SDMX is an initiative to foster standards for the exchange of statistical information, sponsored by BIS, ECB, EUROSTAT, IMF, OECD, UN and World Bank.

IMF collects data from its partner countries across various domains in various frequencies. This data is collected through 47 different excel based report forms. As per the prescribed timeliness, the country correspondent downloads the report forms, updates them with the latest data and uploads it back to the IMF. These report forms are specific to IMF and involve manual effort on the country side to make the updates. Other organizations, like AfDB, also follow similar processes for their data collection which involves updates of similar report forms by the countries. Data collections across organizations not only have overlap in scope of data collected, but also differences in the reporting standards resulting in duplication of effort at the compiling agency side.

AfDB and IMF have partnered together with a goal to standardize and streamline data submission process leveraging the OpenData platform at the country side. This effort would require implementation of content standards across all data collected by the IMF, training of the country correspondents in the OpenData platform and submission of data securely to IMF through the OpenData platform leveraging SDMX.

The suite of tools offered by the OpenData platform is quite extensive and offers a strong platform that can be used for disseminating country data. AfDB intends to extend the access to the platform to other official data producing agencies in the countries for implementation of their data dissemination portals.

 The initial effort to leverage data from the OpenData platform and reduce data reporting burden on national institutions is focused towards building capacity in the countries and streamlining the data submission process to the IMF. Following the same framework, data submissions to other organizations can also be streamlined subsequently and would require the countries and the respective data collection organization to work in partnership with AfDB