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You’ve probably heard the term ‘OpenData’ being bandied around these days. But
what exactly isOpenData andwhy is there such a fuss about it?
Jamilah Lim
explores.
or mobile format to theMalaysianmarket.
Parts of the datasets given to participants
were provided by the Ministry of Health
(KKM) and the Malaysian Meteorological
Department (MET).
Events like the National Big App Chal-
lenge 1.0 are exceedingly important as
they highlight the importance and value
of open data, which help to catalyse
initiatives by government ministries to
release valuable data in readable formats.
This encourages the flow of data for
useful purposes, such as improving the
livelihood of the Malaysian citizenry,
and allow for citizen-centric applications
& services to be created by the public via
open innovation without government
intervention. As of now, most of the 100
data sets from various Malaysian govern-
ment agencies are in PDF format, which
pose a huge problem when it comes to
extracting data.
The information from government
ministries possess a lot of potential for
predictive analytics, especially when it
comes to better decision making with
health issues such as HIV, AIDS or Dengue
epidemics or social issues such as crime
rates in different areas, all of which have
significant impacts on the nation’s well-
being.
Open Data initiatives within
ASEAN
In early 2013, there were talks by the
Malaysian Government for Open Data
initiatives, and in early 2014, Malaysia’s
inaugural open data portal (data.gov.
my) was launched. An initiative by The
Malaysian Administrative Modernisa-
tion And Management Planning Unit
(MAMPU) as part of the Prime Minister’s
Department (PMD), it is a repository of
over 100 datasets by 11 ministries across
10 sectors.
Similarly, in 2013, Singapore an-
nounced the launch of more datasets
and a promise to make more datasets
on Singapore’s national database “data.
gov.sg” and “OneMap” more machine
readable, with the aim to drive social
innovation and co-creation.
National Big App Challenge 1.0,
Malaysia
InOctober 2014, Multimedia Development
Corporation (MDeC), together with co-
organiser Tentspark, a leading IT consul-
tancy and solutions provider, co-organised
the National Big App Challenge 1.0, a
competition and platform for teams, start-
up and software companies to showcase
their Big Data applications in a web-based
BUSINESS
S
cientists
tend to be
matter-of-fact people.
As the name suggests,
“Open Data” is data that
is “open”. To be more
accurate, this means
that such data is free for
anyone to use, re-use, and re-distribute
(subject to certain share–alike provisos).
But why is it so important?
All data are important, but some data
are more important than others, so the
potential for commercialising data is
high, and with this commercialisation
comes problems. For example, who really
owns genome mapping data? And how
much more difficult would it be if people
started commercialising specific maps of
the human genome?
A lot of philosophical and ethical
problems may arise when data pertain-
ing to humanity or the world becomes
increasingly inaccessible and hidden
under layers of restriction. We would
be facing unnecessary roadblocks in
the progress of humanity, which, if you
realise, would be incredibly ironic, given
that we have the technology to unlock,
identify and understand way more now
than ever before.
Open Government Data
To this effect, the Open Data movement
seeks to make more data “open”. One
way to do this is to encourage “Open
Government Data” – data and infor-
mation produced or commissioned by
government or government-controlled
entities. They are a valuable, yet largely
untapped resource with potentially huge
benefits when made open and readable.
Available open government data sees
positive impact in terms of improving
governmental efficiency, private and
public innovation, improved private
products and services, civil participa-
tion, and transparency and democratic
controls.
Open Data for an Open World
MDeC CEO, Dato’ Yasmin being
briefed by the champions on their web
application, the Dengue Index (Web).