President Benigno Aquino III launched the Philippine government’s official transparency portal called “Open Data Philippines” as part of his administration’s ongoing reforms towards instituting good governance.
Open Data Philippines is a website for publicly available, up-to-date national data on categories such as economics and labour, transport and traffic, environment, geospatial data, health, education and many more.
During his speech at the Good Governance Summit held in Manila earlier this week, the President emphasized that everyone should not make the mistake of thinking that Open Data Philippines stops at being a repository of data.
President Aquino said:
“Ultimately, opening data is more than just making columns and rows of figures available for viewing; it is about empowering the people through information,”
“As President, I thought that I would have access to all kinds of information any time, every time, and all the time. To a degree, that is true. But it is not as simple as punching a few keys on a keyboard. Sometimes, it actually involves wading through documents that are fragile, given their age—and that only happens, of course, if you can find out immediately where these documents are located. With Open Data Philippines, we have useful and relevant information at our fingertips—which we can use to better assess, improve, and even develop programs and policies.”
Furthermore, he also highlighted how developers can make use of the data available in the portal to create their own applications to address needs and issues in their local communities.
Among those already included in the website are applications that can help Metro Manila residents plan their daily commutes. Other applications seek to make government expenditures more accessible such as those developed during a recent hackathon hosted by the Department of Budget and Management.
Start browsing Open Data Philippines HERE. --Source: Asia Pacific Future Gov